To SLI or Not to SLI - that is the question?

[.Maleficus.]

Thanks Cymae. I intend to stick to one monitor and don't see myself ever needing two. It's merely about 3D rendering performance (not for games) and where to best invest to improve that.

CrazyB

What card are you looking at? Because even with an 8800GTX, you won't see much performance increase without a workstation card. Gaming cards just aren't made to do heavy 3D rendering, just like workstation cards weren't made to game. But man if I could afford one, I'd definitely look into a Quadro (if I ever get good at 3D...)

[Crazy Buddhist]

What card are you looking at?

...

But man if I could afford one, I'd definitely look into a Quadro (if I ever get good at 3D...)

Not looking at anything in particular yet. Am just discovering something about NVidia cards not handling all the graphics processing at 1024 x 768 and this maxing out yr CPU ... I need to investigate more.

What's a Quadro Mal?

CrazyB

[Cookies N' Milk]

Not looking at anything in particular yet. Am just discovering something about NVidia cards not handling all the graphics processing at 1024 x 768 and this maxing out yr CPU ... I need to investigate more.

What's a Quadro Mal?

CrazyB

A quadro is nvidia's line of workstation cards. I built a workstation for a friend a few months ago that used a PNY Quadro FX 3450. Those things are monsters when it comes to CAD and other highend 3D Modeling programs. If all you are going to do is 3D work then you are best off getting a Quadro or ATI's FireGL cards. One other thing, if you invest in the bank busting workstation cards, SLI/CF is not really needed, unless your going to be doing some of the most insane 3D work. And when I say bank busting I mean it. The most expensive gaming card here is $1200. Quadros and what not are way up there at $3500 for the big cards

If you get a Quadro PNY is the only brand you really need to look at.

A lot of people say that the work station cards can not play games very well but that is not 100% true. It depends on how much you spend. If you buy a $400 workstation card it will not match a $400 gaming card in performance when it comes to games, but it will smash the gaming card in 3D rendering. But if you buy a $1000 workstation card chances are it would do just fine with the newest games. The workstation I built ran CS:Source maxed out with no problems or large FPS drops. It did cost $1600 though. But like you said you don't play games at all. A $1600 card might be overkill for what you want to do (Can't say for sure, you would have to ask an expert on how beefy of a card you would need.)

What ever you decide to choose for a card you should upgrade your proc for sure. If there is ever a need for more processor power it is in a workstation. I have an Opteron 185 around here somewhere. The mainboard for it blew out but damn I loved that thing.

EDIT: Check ebay. I just saw a couple Quadros, including the one I used in my friends computer, going for under $300 CND.

[Airbozo]

Good info Cookies! Thanks!

I have access to 2 video cards for my workstation. The one installed right now is the ATI 1650x512 and it runs games great, but barely loads the customer's app (mostly due to windows issues). Since this workstation doubles as a testbed for one of our customers, I also have the Quadro 3450 (yes PNY C&M), and that card will not even load some of the games, but runs the customers application (heavy OpenGL) with nary a twitch. I could also throw another 3450 in there and SLI them if needed (only ever done for testing).

Crazy, since you do what you do, this is the customer I am talking about;
http://accuray.com/

and this is the app I run on this system;
http://accuray.com/Products/MultiPlan/index.aspx

You probably know more about what they are talking about with regards to features and such, but currently they use a Dell 690 (2 xeons 3.0ghz, 8gb memory (upgrading to 16gb), a quadro 4500x512, win server 2003 x64) to run this app and are moving to linux in the near future.

[Mitternacht]

Well I wanted to do crossfire, but I think I'm gonna do SLI in the future. I'd pick 2 XFX GeForce7600GT's. I think that's a nice SLI combo for $250.

[Crazy Buddhist]

Good info Cookies! Thanks!

...

Ditto ... +reps all round

And thank you very much for the info Airbozo. Yes. Thats up my street. My Workhorse ain't what theirs is but I need to head thataways.

I have 2G Ram and will be replacing the Proc with an Opteron 180 (dual core server grade AMD processor for anyone who doesn't know). This can be safely overclocked a long way as its server-grade (i.e they pick out the good ones and call them Opterons).

Apps wise apart from the obvious (Office stuff, Browsers, music, media) Im using Julius, 3D Doctor and Medview medical imaging software. I use photoshop a lot. Not well but a lot. I'd like to run MIPAV but my system can not cope right now. I think getting an Nvidia based Workstation Graphics Card in the $400 price range, along with the Opteron 180 and maybe bumping to 4Gig of Ram would be the thing to do and see this thing fly as I know it can.

The only other requirement I would have is that the card be DVI + S-Video/TV Out as I watch telly on her in the evenings. .... Hmmm .... but then if I build my 6" cube media PC .. I wont need to do that.

Im going to check models at that price in the US and then I will see what the UK cost is. Bet it's nearly double - i.e £ for $. Any recommended models? PNY I have noted.

[.Maleficus.]

This: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133142

[Cookies N' Milk]

This: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133142

That is a good card but it is lacking in memory. If you ever do any large scale render at high resolutions or large textures your going to run into problems. 256MB is about as low as you should ever go. 512 is more than enough for most people. Anything above that... well your insane to need it

This is the newest Quadro card. Click DX10/Vista compatable, 768MB, SLI ready, resolutions up to 3840 x 2400, and no price tag We all know what the no price tag means.

As for brands, PNY is your best bet. I got my hands on one of thier quadro cards two years ago and have not had a problem with it. I have installed four PNY Quadro cards and had no problems with them what so ever. The only other brand I would even think about getting a Quadro from is directly from Nvidia.

Oh and thanks for the rep guys ^^

[Cookies N' Milk]

I would just like to point something out that I remembered just now. I noticed that when I did some 3D rendering in 3D Studio Maxusing my newest computer, (C2D E6600 @ 3.7GHz, 2GB RAM, Two 8800GTS 640MB that are heavily overclocked), I noticed very little difference in rendering time using a single card or SLI. 8800 Cards are pretty powerful. They may not be as good as a $1600 Quadro when it comes to 3D but they can still do a lot. I haven't tried SLI with Quadro cards so I don't know if there is a noticable performance increase. If anyone has an SLI Quadro setup please let me know if it is really worth it. I have always wondered.

So what I am saying is in my experiance I have not seen much of a difference with SLI when using 3D programs.

CB I would suggest that you should invest in a higher end Quadro or FireGL card and not use SLI. You will be better off spending a little more on a single card rather than spending the same amount of money to get two cards. I'm going to phone a friend (or maybe go over there) who likes to spend money for no good reason. He felt the need to go on a spending spree last week and spent 10grand on a new workstation setup... The last of his parts came in yesterday. He bought two of those new DX10 nvidia cards. Lucky bastard.... I will let you know if there is any need for SLI in workstations. My guess is no, not unless you work for Lucasarts

[.Maleficus.]

Just curious C&M, what kind of cooling are you using that's allowing you to get to 3.7Ghz? I mean jesus that's fast! The highest I ever got on my E6600 was 3.3Ghz (air cooling though).