3D Modeling Graphics Card Help

[ricanflow]

I dont base my purchases off newegg reviews, a lot of times the people themselves tend to be not so computer savy, i would say buy it and see if it works for you. If not, then rma it and get a quadro.

 

[veg1992]

ATI huh? I always hear bad things about their drivers. And that review doesn't sound promising...haha

Newegg reviews are idiots.. end of that...

 

[Timaphillips]

Newegg reviews are idiots.. end of that...

I ALWAYS take them with a grain of salt. You can usually weed out the ones that don't know what their talking about.

Either way, I thought NVidia made a better product than ATI as of late. Seems like a lot of people don't know much about OpenGL cards compared to the gamer hardware.

 

[darksideleader]

ATI huh? I always hear bad things about their drivers. And that review doesn't sound promising...haha

Nvdia fans are always critizing ATI's drivers cuz their just inconvient (not in control panel) and garbage like that. No one complains wen the 8800 terrible drivers came out but they spaz about ATI's driver constantly wen its already been fixed.

 

[UA_Iron]

The new FireGL cards have been beating the quadros in benchmarking.
The difference between the consumer level cards and the drafting/enterprise cards is that you get a lot more support - hence the higher cost.

What you could do is get a 2600xt and use the hacked v5600 drivers. The firegl v5600 beats the quadro FX4500 in almost all benchmarks in which they've been compared. I use an FX4500 at work and it flies with huge assemblies in solidworks. Essentially you'd get a 600 dollar card for 115 bucks. All the hardware is the same.

Or get a 2900 Pro, flash it to the 2900 XT and use the V8600 drivers for it. Essentially a 2000 card for 175 bucks...

 

[veg1992]

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100222L Radeon HD 2900PRO 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

you can get it for $145... thats pretty cool right there, first flash the hd2900pro to an HD2900XT (search it it needs a bootable Flash Drive) and then use the hacked drivers as UA_Iron said, but thats pretty cool right there UA_Iron, you should make a thread like that and then get it stickied for future purposes (but than again most n00bs don't take the time to read it..)

 

[UA_Iron]

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100222L Radeon HD 2900PRO 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

you can get it for $145... thats pretty cool right there, first flash the hd2900pro to an HD2900XT (search it it needs a bootable Flash Drive) and then use the hacked drivers as UA_Iron said, but thats pretty cool right there UA_Iron, you should make a thread like that and then get it stickied for future purposes (but than again most n00bs don't take the time to read it..)

The 2900Pro 512bit version is the one you want - that one is out of stock on newegg.

Once I actually do get a 2900PRO and install hacked drivers - I'll post a full guide on how to do it, benchmarks in openGL applications, etc. I've been reading a lot about it and am strongly considering it - especially being a big solidworks user. The only problem is that hacked drivers dont exist for XP64 which I use. I might dual boot XP32 just to try it out.

 

[Poizen22]

i do kno that ati gaming cards are also very good for video rendering, unlike nvidia. so you could pick up the 2900pro, and bios flash it then get the 8600 drivers, youl be set and itl have cost you a fraction of what you wanted to spend, you can then spend the diference on a q6600. if your willing to spend the 500$ and then you would have a monster rendering machine.