Nvidia or AMD?

# 1 15-02-2013 , 05:40 PM

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Hi folks,

going to build a new pc for the first time in years. I've always had nvidia cards before, since they were more stable with maya and other apps to.

PC will be used for personal 3D work (not professionsial, that will stay at the office) and gaming.

I've read about a lot of issues with the lasest nvidia cards and maya, which makes me think that maybe they're on a level playing field now as far as the 3d work goes?

Researching this on the net myself just now but any advice here would be much appreciated,

thanks,

gubar

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# 2 15-02-2013 , 06:09 PM

Acid44

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nVidia. ATI (as far as I know) has always had problems with Maya. I haven't had a problem with any nVidia card I've used with Maya, and nVidia has CUDA (useful depending on what you're doing).

Just better hope this doesn't turn into an ATI vs nVidia thread user added image

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# 3 17-02-2013 , 01:42 AM

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lol, yeah hope it doesn't turn into a battle of the cards.

Thanks for your input. I've not had many problems with nvidia cards either, but haven't bought one in a long time (I've got a GTX 275 at the moment). I've read in many places that the later ones have been handicapped for open gl use and many people have had issues. Whereas, AMD has gotten better with maya in recent iterations.

Anyway, not going to buy one for a while until I've read more about it.

cheers

gubar

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# 4 17-02-2013 , 02:36 PM

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Nvidia cards seem to be more stable with maya and other apps like zbrush photoshop max and c4d lightwave etc . But you can use anything you like really for tinkering . When you get a little more into cg and have lots of depth and polygons you will find the ati cards will crap out on calculating depth with a really slow view port to go with it .

...

You know you have been working too long in cg when your out side and you look up at the trees and say

"Wow that's spectacular resolution ."

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# 5 19-02-2013 , 07:28 PM

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On Windows it has to be NVidia and 100% compatibility it has to be Quadro. Don't get me wrong the other Nvidia card will work but when you are kicking around hi poly meshes then Quadro is just smooth.
I have run both and current rig has a Quadro 4000 and hasn't missed a beat in 2 years.

On Mac OSX the ATI cards drivers are much, much better at running Maya for some reason.

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# 6 19-02-2013 , 08:00 PM

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Quadro cards are perfect and if you can't afford the those stick with your 275 maya got really weird with gaming cards ever since version 2010. Personal experience with Amd cards was extremely horrible

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# 7 02-03-2013 , 12:32 AM

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I run Maya on two HD 6870's in crossfire without a hiccup. You are correct that there was a time when nvidia was way ahead. That was true for my build before my current one. I'd gone with a gtx 285 around 2008 or 09. Ati has caught up, yet their prices haven't. Since memory is more important than speed, the simple fact is you get a lot more card for a lot less money with ati. The main difference you'll have to get use to is how ati handles driver updates, CAPs. I think it's more efficient. Plus the added bonus of supporting an American company if that sort of thing matters to you.

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# 8 02-03-2013 , 12:57 PM

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Hi,

Owning an AMD V5900 Firepro which is certified for Maya and I never had any issues! I hade before an Nvidia and also had no issues. I think this is depending from other hardware, software, drivers etc. If you take a certified card, you are on the sunny side :-)

Cheers; Lecra

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# 9 02-03-2013 , 01:34 PM

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Am I the only living human being that has the problem where maya stops refreshing the screen and the channel box and the outliner go blank using nvidia?

This is NOT an isolated problem! I have had this on every machine that I try to run maya on since maya 2010 an up to 2013.

I have had this same problem with evga 285, 470, 480, and 570 cards!

Ironically, the least frequent crashing and overall best performance was on my gtx 285.

Ever since my 285 had to be replaced, the problem occurs so often and I have be unable to use maya at all! With the current evga gtx 570HD 2.5GB card maya stops refreshing the screen constantly (I cannot get 10 minutes of modeling done!) and now when it hangs I can save but I cannot exit! You try to exit and the program just keeps running in the messed up state where it does not refresh! The only way to exit is to kill the process, which screws up the prefs file.

The bottom line is it's impossible to get any work done because my train of thought keeps getting interrupted and I have to spend ten minutes out of every ten minutes saving, killing maya, fixing the prefs file, and restarting maya!

Many keep saying that this is an isolated issues but I have had it now on EVERY god damn machine I have tried to run maya on, like 5 different machines and 4 different nvidia cards, five if I count the 9800GT I tried as a test.

I have a project I was working on for Dave for going on a year and just cannot get it done. I have had a couple opportunities to get maya projects that I have lost or had to turn down because I cannot fix this problem and cannot afford to just keep throwing money at graphics cards in the hopes the problem will go away!

I have begged autodesk for more then a year to look into this problem and all I am told is they are aware the problem does exist but they do not know what the cause is, nor are they making any attempt to find a solution because geforce cards are not supported and the problem does not happen frequently enough (and I am guessing none of the big companies that use maya are bitching about it, so basically they are sayaing you are a peon so go piss off!).

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 02-03-2013 at 01:43 PM.

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# 10 02-03-2013 , 02:05 PM

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Am I the only living human being that has the problem where maya stops refreshing the screen and the channel box and the outliner go blank using nvidia?

This is NOT an isolated problem! I have had this on every machine that I try to run maya on since maya 2010 an up to 2013.

I have had this same problem with evga 285, 470, 480, and 570 cards!

Ironically, the least frequent crashing and overall best performance was on my gtx 285.

Ever since my 285 had to be replaced, the problem occurs so often and I have be unable to use maya at all! With the current evga gtx 570HD 2.5GB card maya stops refreshing the screen constantly (I cannot get 10 minutes of modeling done!) and now when it hangs I can save but I cannot exit! You try to exit and the program just keeps running in the messed up state where it does not refresh! The only way to exit is to kill the process, which screws up the prefs file.

The bottom line is it's impossible to get any work done because my train of thought keeps getting interrupted and I have to spend ten minutes out of every ten minutes saving, killing maya, fixing the prefs file, and restarting maya!

Many keep saying that this is an isolated issues but I have had it now on EVERY god damn machine I have tried to run maya on, like 5 different machines and 4 different nvidia cards, five if I count the 9800GT I tried as a test.

I have a project I was working on for Dave for going on a year and just cannot get it done. I have had a couple opportunities to get maya projects that I have lost or had to turn down because I cannot fix this problem and cannot afford to just keep throwing money at graphics cards in the hopes the problem will go away!

I have begged autodesk for more then a year to look into this problem and all I am told is they are aware the problem does exist but they do not know what the cause is, nor are they making any attempt to find a solution because geforce cards are not supported and the problem does not happen frequently enough (and I am guessing none of the big companies that use maya are bitching about it, so basically they are sayaing you are a peon so go piss off!).

Originally Posted by

Dude honestly get a quadro card, there are even cheap versions and you will never have to worry about gui problems. Gaming cards are specifically for that....just gaming

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# 11 02-03-2013 , 08:24 PM

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Am I the only living human being that has the problem where maya stops refreshing the screen and the channel box and the outliner go blank using nvidia?

This is NOT an isolated problem! I have had this on every machine that I try to run maya on since maya 2010 an up to 2013.

I have had this same problem with evga 285, 470, 480, and 570 cards!

Ironically, the least frequent crashing and overall best performance was on my gtx 285.

Ever since my 285 had to be replaced, the problem occurs so often and I have be unable to use maya at all! With the current evga gtx 570HD 2.5GB card maya stops refreshing the screen constantly (I cannot get 10 minutes of modeling done!) and now when it hangs I can save but I cannot exit! You try to exit and the program just keeps running in the messed up state where it does not refresh! The only way to exit is to kill the process, which screws up the prefs file.

The bottom line is it's impossible to get any work done because my train of thought keeps getting interrupted and I have to spend ten minutes out of every ten minutes saving, killing maya, fixing the prefs file, and restarting maya!

Many keep saying that this is an isolated issues but I have had it now on EVERY god damn machine I have tried to run maya on, like 5 different machines and 4 different nvidia cards, five if I count the 9800GT I tried as a test.

I have a project I was working on for Dave for going on a year and just cannot get it done. I have had a couple opportunities to get maya projects that I have lost or had to turn down because I cannot fix this problem and cannot afford to just keep throwing money at graphics cards in the hopes the problem will go away!

I have begged autodesk for more then a year to look into this problem and all I am told is they are aware the problem does exist but they do not know what the cause is, nor are they making any attempt to find a solution because geforce cards are not supported and the problem does not happen frequently enough (and I am guessing none of the big companies that use maya are bitching about it, so basically they are sayaing you are a peon so go piss off!).

Originally Posted by ctbram

Out of curiosity, what board and card manufacturer do you go with? The same card from a different company can have stability issues. I'm using ASUS right now and am very satisfied. I know it's a bit of work to look into part numbers too...but you can usually find info on which factory / plant hardware comes out of using model numbers. It's not uncommon for NVidia to have a bad batch of stuff from say...a plant in South Korea, but a good batch out of singapore (just examples). Read reviews on Newegg...probably the best info you can find. Stability issues can also be from bios on a board. Sometimes a flash can fix things...IE a bad memory controller.

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# 12 02-03-2013 , 09:20 PM

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Thanks for the feedback. I was using a evga gtx 285 FTW w/2GB of DDR3 up until novemberish. That card and the 9800GT I had before it work fine with Maya up to around version 2010. From 2010 on I started getting the refresh freeze issue.

In an attempt to fix it I built a whole new system around the 285 board and still had the problem. Then the 285 actually failed and had to be replaced. It had a lifetime warranty from evga but they no longer had replacements for the 285 so they sent me a 460 with 1.5GB of DDR5 and that card was aweful!

I found that starting with the 400 series the architecture of the geforce cards was actually changed and the earlier boards including my 285 and the 9800 were based on quadro architecture and actually ran better then the 460, the 480 and even the 570hd they have me upgraded to now!!!!

Anyway I bitched up a storm and they sent me a 480 and that was no better in fact maya not only stopped refreshing the screen but this is when the behavior of not being able to exit maya once the screen refresh bug popped up started.

So I bitched some more and they sent me a 570HD and it was worse then all of them. By now, I was so frustrated that on several occasions I actually had a hammer in my hand and was ready to beat the shit of of my system!

Well further testing found that the 570HD they sent was defective! So they sent me a replacement to that. I got that replacement evga gtx 570hd w/ 2.5GB of DDR5 about a month ago. So this process of replacing my 285 has been going on non-stop since around the end of October (just over 5 months now!).

Something came up in the way of a family emergency around the time I got the last board and between that and just plane burn out from fighting this annoying problem I have not down much to test it. But I spoke to Dave and poppped open the project I have been working on a couple days ago and within 20 minutes Maya stopped refreshing the display, the outliner and channel box went blank AND I could save but not exit Maya.

So after 5 months of swapping nvidia cards I am right back at the same place I started and Maya is completely unusable to me!

What is really upsetting is I have access to 3 other systems unfortunately I must use the same graphics card and they all have the same problem with Maya, yet I can run max, modo, solidwork, inventor, all the adobe products, mari, zbrush JUST FINE! Only Maya keeps randomly ceasing to refresh the display, and update the channel box and outliner and now refused to exit.

So at this point I don't know what to say. I have worked with computers for over 30 years and this problem to me smells like a Maya specific issue. More specifically some kind of software driver, dll, or hardware device driver conflict but short of wiping my entire systems and just installing maya, I cannot seem to isolate it and I am getting absolutely no help from autodesk. Unfortunately, I do not have time to spend, nor can I afford to remove all the other software that is working just fine in the hopes to uncover a conflict with Maya.

So here I sit no longer able to do shit in Maya and quite frankly I am just sick of dealing with it!

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 02-03-2013 at 09:25 PM.

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# 13 02-03-2013 , 09:28 PM

Acid44

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Considering I just dumped $200 on a 560Ti, your bug posts starting to scare me D:

I haven't had a chance to try it with Maya yet, but I'm hoping to sometime over the weekend, as long as this plague I seem to have goes away. Since I only model, are there any super-specific to modeling bugs I should watch for? (Other than the refreshing thing)

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# 14 02-03-2013 , 11:29 PM

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I'm curious who uses quadro cards, which card specifically, and how the performance is in reality. And with non-3D apps, like games (not really a gamer, just curious). Don't mean to sidetrack the thread, but it's kinda relevant.

-stwert

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# 15 03-03-2013 , 12:58 AM

Acid44

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I don't see the point in Quadro cards at all, not for the average Maya user anyways. Would be good for rendering, but beyond that, they don't seem so great.

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Nvidia or AMD?

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