Hello everybody!

As far as i understand, Vue's viewport image quality is much better when using an NVidia Quadro (or  ATI FireGL) graphics card instead of any consumer/gamer card. But what about viewport editing SPEED? Last year, i bought an NVidia 7600 GS gamer graphics card with 256MB memory. My CPU is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ with 4GB of system memory. But when i manipulate objects in  larger scenes, it's simply a pain, refresh rates are VERY slow. Finally, i gave up using Vue. Can this be improved by using a "workstation class" graphics card like a Quadro FX 1700? I would not mind spending some extra money -if it's really worth it!

GENKI

What you need is a graphic card that has a good openGL implementation , and loads of memory. You don't need the highest end of graphic cards for Vue. Higher end are very expensive, and don't deliver much more power than more consumer cards. They are certified for high end apps and their technical support is garanteed for years, which is not the case for consumer cards. Their garantee  have a very short life span. ATM, 8800gt cards work very well with Vue, and get the one with the more ram you can find.

So in fact you think there is just a slight speed / image quality difference between a Quadro FX 1700 (corresponding to a NVida 8600 GT) and a consumer 8800 GT (for example) card? The bottleneck of my 7600 GS is the memory? Is that right?

Thanks,
GENKI

I use 8600 with 512 RAM and they are superb, so an 8800 with same or more ram would be good, RAM is vital, as it allwos more textures, which is a major resource hog in Vue :)

Quadro and FireGL have optimized openGL and DirectX to work in certified apps such as Max, maya, etc, but the rendering is not done by the GPU, so you won't notice any change in rendering speed. If you use real time rendering apps, though, you'll need a Quadro or FireGL

Thanks for your answers! Bruno, i know that rendering a scene is done by the CPU only. But as far as i know, Vue's viewports use OpenGL. So when editing/modifying a scene, OpenGL speed an driver qualiy are of importance. And this is what i'm interested in: What improvements can i expect from a specialized graphics card? I'm not very satisfied with my actual 7600 GS.

I have recently switched to the ATI FireGL 7600 and added memory. I found that the memory add did more for overall responsiveness than changing the graphics card, and cost much less!

The better video card does buy you more responsiveness . . . one thing to remember is that texture memory, even on expensive cards, is limited. This is where those Poser imported models cost you-- the geometry does just fine, but the 8 zillion byte texture maps choke the card.

So the other performance tip I'd give is to downsize texture maps and/or replace them with procedurals. .  . this dramatically improves scene performance.