Your opinion on workstation vs gaming graphics cards.

DataDragon

I am contemplating buying a new PC for game development and asset creation. Do you guys recommend workstation cards over gaming cards, why or why not?

Thanks

MM

i been using AMD FirePro W7000 (fireGL card) for couple years now which seems to be best of both worlds.
before that i tried both high end quadro cards and high end nvidia gaming cards. neither were good at both openGL and DirectX at the same time.

i can run openGL apps at really fast performance and stability and play latest dx11 games at highest spec with little to no lag. udk, cryengine, marmoset etc all run real good too.

ZacD

Workstation cards are not worth the extra cost. You can make game art just as well on a gaming GPU, and since they are cheaper, it's easier to convince yourself to upgrade for new features every 1-3 years.

Kwramm

we pretty much threw the quadros out for everyone who has to work directly with game engines. Artists who work with Max, Maya and don't require special plugin shaders usually keep them though.

claydough

it's amazing to me how charming 2d 3d may or may not be realized as charming in a stereoscopic space. With 3Dvision I suppose developers really could have cared less and getting good results was still an afterthought. ( I have never heard of any development using pro shuttered glasses to iterate stereoscopic concerns at the very first stages of asset creation on any project? )

As I am a pretty big stereo fanboy...
I am hoping the new wave of VR capital will change all that.
( The best experiences will be created by those with respect for that experience. Instead of as an afterthought. )

But then again I want that stereo option in Maya without the need for pro hardware
reflecting end user experience instead.

Justin Meisse

I worked on a Dell precision workstation at my last studio and the Quaddro did not feel like it gave me any sort of performance boost at all. Buy a gaming card and use the money you saved on more RAM a good monitor and perhaps an SSD drive.

EarthQuake

Quadro/firegl cards are typically much slower at the same price point as consumer GPUs. To get a Quadro in the performance range of a GTX 980 you have to spend $5-6K, which is simply insane. A Quadro (K2200) at the same price point as a GTX 980 is roughly 3 times slower. For game dev work, there is essentially no reason to use Quadro/Firegl cards. Those cards are typically optimized for some very specific purposes like working with CAD apps.

MM wrote: »

i been using AMD FirePro W7000 (fireGL card) for couple years now which seems to be best of both worlds.
before that i tried both high end quadro cards and high end nvidia gaming cards. neither were good at both openGL and DirectX at the same time.

i can run openGL apps at really fast performance and stability and play latest dx11 games at highest spec with little to no lag. udk, cryengine, marmoset etc all run real good too.

Hmmm, I can run OGL and D3D perfectly fine (fast and stable) on my GTX 980, same was true for my 770 and 560 Ti before that. I would be curious to know specifically which apps and cards you had problems with.

For reference, the W7000 is less than half as fast as the 980, while costing about 60% more.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

thomasp

to be fair, you can encounter a whole world of display glitches and app crashes when running a 3d app in a system using a gamer card on some random video-driver. the difference that can make only becomes obvious once you start working with a pro card and having that comparison. they also run generally cooler/quieter.

that being said, it was actually marmoset that pushed me over the edge and made me return to gamer cards. as i recall the very first toolbag release refused to recognize my quadro.

marks

thomasp wrote: »

to be fair, you can encounter a whole world of display glitches and app crashes when running a 3d app in a system using a gamer card on some random video-driver.

I am going to call bullshit on this statement.

battlecow

A good display should be the first thing you buy as an artist, buy a mid end graphics card and put a few more bucks for two good monitors.

thomasp

should have tried 3ds max a few years back on a geforce/DX9 vs. quadro/maxtreme then. flickering meshes, vanishing vertex selections and half-disappeared gizmos streaking across the screen. the occasional crash when using shaders. problems to reliably reload textures in the viewport (or the app simply stopping to do so until a restart) and comparably really slow wireframe display.

it's been a while but now it's all coming back. thanks....

marks

Our entire studio uses consumer 3d cards, including something like 200+ developers, and we don't have any issues. I'm pretty sure most other development studios use primarily consumer cards aswell. I do not believe that this is a common or widespread issue.

Fomori

Justin Meisse wrote: »

Buy a gaming card and use the money you saved on more RAM a good monitor and perhaps an SSD drive.

Dis. I had a Quadro for one of my old jobs and it died/failed within a year.
Workstation my ass.

Invest any extra money in a really nice monitor. Its one of the most critical hardware buys that artists overlook.

MM

EarthQuake wrote: »

Quadro/firegl cards are typically much slower at the same price point as consumer GPUs. To get a Quadro in the performance range of a GTX 980 you have to spend $5-6K, which is simply insane. A Quadro (K2200) at the same price point as a GTX 980 is roughly 3 times slower. For game dev work, there is essentially no reason to use Quadro/Firegl cards. Those cards are typically optimized for some very specific purposes like working with CAD apps.

Hmmm, I can run OGL and D3D perfectly fine (fast and stable) on my GTX 980, same was true for my 770 and 560 Ti before that. I would be curious to know specifically which apps and cards you had problems with.

For reference, the W7000 is less than half as fast as the 980, while costing about 60% more.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

i would hesitate to put quadro and firegl in the same quality. i never had good experience with any quadro. they are just plain shitty for game developers.

i got the firepro on August 2013. at the time i believe i tried gtx 690 and few months before than i tried gtx 560 ti. non of them gave me good fps while sculpting on a 20-30 mil tri model in mudbox while still being able to play latest games at hi spec and be able to run things like UDK, cryengine and marmoset. i also couldnt texture properly in mudbox with any nvidia gaming cards at that time.

https://compubench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=compu20&did1=21222028&os1=Windows&api1=cl&hwtype1=dGPU&hwname1=AMD+FirePro+W7000+%28FireGL+V%29&D2=NVIDIA+GeForce+GTX+690

https://compubench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=compu20&did1=21222028&os1=Windows&api1=cl&hwtype1=dGPU&hwname1=AMD+FirePro+W7000+%28FireGL+V%29&D2=NVIDIA+GeForce+GTX+560+Ti

quadro in the same price range (i tried quadro 5000) was just plain shitty. it caused even more crashes in Maya, and had poor performance in Mudbox and games just ran shitty as expected. i also had BSOD with quadros while in Topogun.

with firepro w7000 i rarely have Maya crashes, mudbox runs silky smooth at up to 25 mil, and i can push to 50 mil and hide parts of mesh and still sculpt easily. all games run super fast which was a surprise. no issues with latest dx11 games at ultra high spec.

also, i posted this in AREA forum back in 2013, notice the polycount and fps:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/general-discussion/computer-hardware/m-p/4379480#M14351


now all of these might be possible with GTX 980 but its currently ~$500 for regular and ~$670 for Ti version.
i got the firepro w7000 for $683 back in 2013 and now it is $620.
i double checked the prices, i am not sure where you get the 60% more costly thing.

but since you recommend 980 that much, i might give it a try soon to see if does all the things(mudbox, maya, game engines, games) firepro does and then does it even faster. if so i will definitely switch back to nvidia.

EarthQuake

That price came from the passmark benchmark list linked above, they list performance and prices, which are usually fairly accurate, but I didn't double check it.

I'm not sure about Mudbox performance with the 980, I don't push it into the 25-50 million range, but 10-million or so is fine in my experience.

Torch

How are your experiences working with the 980? I'm considering buying a new machine in the new year, maybe 16 gig ram. Was considering 32 gig but might be overkill...

Klaudio2U

Anyone maybe with 980ti using Maya? How many max poly in viewport before it is starting to seriously lag?

Fansub

How are your experiences working with the 980? I'm considering buying a new machine in the new year, maybe 16 gig ram. Was considering 32 gig but might be overkill...

I have 16Gigs and use Maya,Modo,Designer and Photoshop.Rarely exceeded 7Go,and at it's maximum my computers goes up to 11-13.

Anyone maybe with 980ti using Maya? How many max poly in viewport before it is starting to seriously lag?

Polycount isn't the biggest problem,it's the amount of objects you have in your scene that matters.

I noticed that having a 6 million polygon mesh or ten doesn't slow that much Maya,but when you have something like 100-250 objects it becomes really,really slow.

EarthQuake

My 980 is lovely. I use Modo quite a bit and Toolbag 2 obviously. Mudbox, Maya, a little but not super heavily. No real issues with any of those apps and performance. Bit of UE4 which performs excellently as you would expect.

Klaudio2U

Fansub wrote: »

Polycount isn't the biggest problem,it's the amount of objects you have in your scene that matters.

I noticed that having a 6 million polygon mesh or ten doesn't slow that much Maya,but when you have something like 100-250 objects it becomes really,really slow.

Yeah i know that it depends on the scene object count and some other stuff.
Still with my crappy MacBook pro 2011 i can have around 500 000 when it starts to noticeably lag and go up to 2million..anything above that is completely out of the question whether that was scene with lots of objects or just a few dense ones.

I hope with 980ti i will at least get 4+ million in viewport 2.0 but it would be really perfect if i can smoothly do modeling on around +/- 8 million...we'll see.

MM

EarthQuake wrote: »

My 980 is lovely. I use Modo quite a bit and Toolbag 2 obviously. Mudbox, Maya, a little but not super heavily. No real issues with any of those apps and performance. Bit of UE4 which performs excellently as you would expect.

Hi Joe, can you please post the exact name/brand and model number of your 980 ?
thanks,

Add3r

marks wrote: »

Our entire studio uses consumer 3d cards, including something like 200+ developers, and we don't have any issues. I'm pretty sure most other development studios use primarily consumer cards aswell. I do not believe that this is a common or widespread issue.

Every studio I have worked at, all developers used consumer grade hardware at the highest spec so we had highest common denominator for PC testing purposes. Doesn't make sense to make a game for a top end PC and not even be able to test the top end specs on your rig.

That being said, I agree with all the comments about a good monitor. That is HUGE. I see people without calibrated monitors testing work, yikes. Some compensate for a blown out screen or under bright screen, and then you get some crazy results elsewhere.

You can def get up to 2-4mil verts on screen in 2.0 on a 980Ti. Adding AO and AA will severely affect that performance though.

EarthQuake

MM wrote: »

Hi Joe, can you please post the exact name/brand and model number of your 980 ?
thanks,

Hey, it's an MSI GTX 4GB 980, I'm not sure exactly what model is as I didn't buy it (I pulled it from our demo machine after GDC). It's probably this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127834&cm_re=msi_980_gtx-_-14-127-834-_-Product

thomasp

marks wrote: »

Our entire studio uses consumer 3d cards, including something like 200+ developers, and we don't have any issues. I'm pretty sure most other development studios use primarily consumer cards aswell. I do not believe that this is a common or widespread issue.

marks, as said. you noticed it when you compared the two directly. the issues are or were many but small enough to be considered 'normal' screw ups until you saw what it's supposed to work like on a tested configuration. stability especially. i don't know about the current state of affairs, having been on consumer cards for so long now, but a few years back i believe max was not even certified to run on anything but quadro, fire GL & co. also maya had severe dual display issues on geforce that required some env variable workaround if memory serves.
some of these display and stability bugs i still see frequently in recent versions on 7xx and 9xx hardware

so it's not like these cards are completely pointless in my experience. just what usually happens in forums like these is the OP's seemingly expect to get multiple times the raw performance in line with the inflated asking price on a 'pro' card.

pior

until you saw what it's supposed to work like on a tested configuration

While tested cards are probably great for raw horsepower in Max/Maya/CAD applications, I highly doubt that such pro cards have ever been thoroughly tested with, say, Toolbag2, Substance Painter/Designer, Quixel, and game engines. To me that's the point that makes these cards largely irrelevant to our specific needs (although I am all for a performance boost in good old 3d apps too, of course).

[edit - just saw you pointed out something similar earlier yourself. Well, the point is hammered now I guess !]

beefaroni

Yea, to add to Pior's post, Substance Painter actually doesn't support Quadro/Firepro cards!

aleksdigital

beefaroni wrote: »

Yea, to add to Pior's post, Substance Painter actually doesn't support Quadro/Firepro cards!

Doesn't support or doesn't work on?

Jerc

We (Substance Painter and Substance Designer) actually now officially support Quadro cards since the latest NVidia Quadro driver

Lamont

Since I'm developing content for these target cards (running engines and whatnot), and I game, I choose gaming cards. Also much cheaper and more bang.

kolayamit

I have a ASUS GTX 660 with AMD 8350, 128GB SSD and 16gbRAM. Mari, Substance, marmoset etc runs fine. I believe investing on a SSD(saves enormous time in mari caching and application starts) and good monitor will serve you better than a Quadro.