Recommended Comsumer Level Video Card For 3ds Max, Maya Etc.
Mods my apologies if this has been asked and or answered elsewhere in the forums before. I checked but could not find it.
I am wondering what sort of video cards you guys are using and what you'd recommend?. My system currently DIES or just plain locks up on any scene with 2 million or more polygons in 3dsmax. Sometimes if I let it sit for 30 minutes or so it comes back to life. Aside from that, navigating and selection models in max is just plain painful. I click and then it takes 5-10 seconds before my selection becomes active.I cant work with 2mil plus poly scenes unless it's in wire frame. Same with panning and rotating - I hit the 2 million poly mark and stuff doesn't pan or pans 10 seconds later.
I use primarily UDK, 3ds Max, Maya, Photoshop 64bit, Mudbox, Zbrush Xnormals. Please no PRO level cards (firegl, Quattro etc)as I do not have that kind of money to spend. I also play games on my rig so i wouldnt not want a dedicated DCC GFX card (maybe in the future i'll build a separate rig for that.
My current system specs are as follows:
windows 7 64bit
4gb DDR2 Pc 6400 RAM
Asus Geforce Gtx 260 (896mb)
Raid0 160gb HDD
10000 RPM HDD as primary drive with windows
I know that my 4gb of ram is puny, so that is my next upgrade probably to 8 or 12gb, then the gfx card. I was going to get a GTX 460 as that seems to be great bang for the buck but then i read some posts online that said that those cards are crippled in max and even the old school 8800gtx outperforms them.
So again what would ya'll recommend from gaming/consumer level cards for good/solid performance in 3d apps (max, maya etc), thanks!
- Chicken
I am wondering what sort of video cards you guys are using and what you'd recommend?. My system currently DIES or just plain locks up on any scene with 2 million or more polygons in 3dsmax. Sometimes if I let it sit for 30 minutes or so it comes back to life. Aside from that, navigating and selection models in max is just plain painful. I click and then it takes 5-10 seconds before my selection becomes active.I cant work with 2mil plus poly scenes unless it's in wire frame. Same with panning and rotating - I hit the 2 million poly mark and stuff doesn't pan or pans 10 seconds later.
I use primarily UDK, 3ds Max, Maya, Photoshop 64bit, Mudbox, Zbrush Xnormals. Please no PRO level cards (firegl, Quattro etc)as I do not have that kind of money to spend. I also play games on my rig so i wouldnt not want a dedicated DCC GFX card (maybe in the future i'll build a separate rig for that.
My current system specs are as follows:
windows 7 64bit
4gb DDR2 Pc 6400 RAM
Asus Geforce Gtx 260 (896mb)
Raid0 160gb HDD
10000 RPM HDD as primary drive with windows
I know that my 4gb of ram is puny, so that is my next upgrade probably to 8 or 12gb, then the gfx card. I was going to get a GTX 460 as that seems to be great bang for the buck but then i read some posts online that said that those cards are crippled in max and even the old school 8800gtx outperforms them.
So again what would ya'll recommend from gaming/consumer level cards for good/solid performance in 3d apps (max, maya etc), thanks!
- Chicken
Replies
It really depends on what you'll be doing in max?
Are you going to be using realistic mode with meshes that are in the millions of polys and complex shaders with complex light setups?
Or
Do you not care about viewport previewing and are working on >200k meshes?
Thanks for the prompt response Mark. I'll be building complex high poly models in max and baking out maps. Maybe bringing in decimated high poly models from Zbrush as well to bake out normals maps. I dont care much about shaders in max and the lighting, as i'll be doing that in UDK. So primarily i'm needing to be able move freely and efficiently around high poly scenes.
Ben, bounding box mode would "work" but i'm needing to see what i'm working on. espeically when i'm setting up objects for a bake, or when i'm assembling entire models or scenes in max. it just seems crazy that my rig cant handle 2mil polys.
2 million is pretty vague.
2 million raw from zbrush/mud?
2 million with a sub-d modifier?
2 million total or in one object?
Generally speaking, if you can split up your mesh into a bunch of small chunks, so you only see what you're working on that is best. I regularly do 2-5 million poly models in modo with my old 8800 GT, but I dont often have more than 500,000 onscreen at once, and its in sub-d mode, which is much much faster than raw polys.
even with a quad core cpu and 4 gigs of ram and a gtx 260?
2 million raw (obj file) or 2 mill collapsed mesh. i usually have all modifiers collapsed when i'm baking out maps etc in max. sometimes it's split across multiple objects tho. for instance i am working on a high poly tire currently. the tim and rubber sections are separate. both combined clock in at 2.5 million polys.
Maybe a better question to ask is what kind of GFX cards do you guys have and what sort of performance are you getting so i can better make a decision on what to get.
Yeah, 2 million raw, a new video card isn't going to help you there. You need to find more efficient ways to work. I wouldn't ever collapse a sub-d(meshsmooth, turbosmooth, etc) modifier, there just isn't any reason to. These modifiers will bake without issue.
Importing a 2 million poly mesh from z/mud and trying to work on it at a polygon level back in max is also a pretty bad idea.
There are a lot of things you can do in max to improve performance, work with modifiers, instancing etc etc, working with raw polys en masse is about the worst case scenario.
If it comes from Zbrush, Mud then all i do in max it set it up for baking. i might reposition some stuff but thats about it.
I always thought collapsing modifiers was better on system perf. I had that backwards it seems.
What kind of card are you running EQ?
If you want to retopo a dense raw mesh to create the low over the high, import a lower level sub-d that your PC can handle.
Max really isn't suited to work with raw polys like zbrush or mudbox, so collapsing is a bad idea. When you use a sub-d modifier, max only has to worry about the geometry of the cage, and let the video card display the smoothed result. This is a lot faster. Some modifiers may be smart to collapse, but anything that sub-divides your mesh should stay as a modifier. Setting different sub-d levels for display and render can help with performance as well or even turning off the sub-d modifier when your scene gets too complex and you need to work fast.
Not to mention that collapsing your sub-d modifiers means.... Your sub-d cage is gone, you would have to revert to an older file to do any changes. Its just all around a bad idea.
I'm running on:
Win 7 64
Intel Q6600 quad core
8gb ram
Nvidia 8800GT
120GB SDD
All but the SSD are 3 or so years old, so i'm not on top of the line stuff here or anything. I can actually edit semi-realtime up to like 5 million in the modo viewport with a sub-d mesh. If its raw polygons it bogs down at over 500K. Max and any 3d app that isn't optimized to deal with very dense meshes will do the same.
Getting some more ram would be the only thing I would suggest, because ram is dirt cheap and 8GB is better to have than 4GB. But the biggest thing you can do is just rethink how you're working.
Thank you so much! here i am thinking hardware when my workflow was a bigger impact on what's going on. RAM is on the way!
I decided on the GTX 460, 2gb. also upgrading my ram to 8gb. anyone running a similar setup? what's the general experience with the GTX 460 and max/maya been like?