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Graphics Card for 3D Studio Max PC?

M

mbmadness

Gawd
Joined
Mar 21, 2001
Messages
803
I'm building a PC for a friend of mine and he's going to be using 3D Studio Max along with a bunch of 2D graphics software like Adobe Photoshop. He does this stuff professionally and as a hobby. I'm not sure what video card I should get. I've been looking at video card benchmarks and none of them bother to list 3D Studio Max. So, I'm thinking that it's CPU dependant and the video card is irrelevant. I wanted to get one that doesn't use any of the system memory because he's going to need that for the large graphics files he has. It looks like all the X300 and NVIDIA Turbocache models use system memory. So, those are out. It has to be PCI Express. The two I found on Newegg are

The X550. I can't tell if it uses system memory or not. I'm guessing no. It goes for $65.

SAPPHIRE 100118 Radeon X550 128MB PCI Express x16 Video Card - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102562

and

Albatron PC5300 Geforce PCX5300 128MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail $59

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814170067

Both of these support OpenGL 1.5. I'm not sure if any of these graphics programs would need OpenGL 2.0. But I'm guessing no. Any thoughts or suggestions?

So far the system specs are as follows:
Intel Pentium D 820.
4x Maxtor 250GB with 16MB cache
2GB DDR2 667
ASUS P5LD2 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 945P ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
450 Watt Fortron PSU
 
FireGL and Quatro, from ATI and nVidia respectively, are their CAD cards IIRC.


And what you should be looking for if this is a soley CAD computer with no gaming
 
A CAD card isn't necessary for 3DSMax. Hardware rendering acceleration is supported through OpenGL and DirectX in newer versions, and preview acceleration has had OGL/DX 3D acceleration since 4. A consumer level nvidia card (NV3x and higher) is better than a consumer level ati card because of the higher precision, but both should work ok.

And of course, no special card type is necessary for Photoshop.

edit: i'd recommend a 6200 (any 6200 :p) over that PCX-5300 for the nvidia choice.
 
I may be wrong here, but isn't it important to use a 64bit processor/OS with CAD applications? Isn't there supposed to be a noticable difference in speed?
 
It's not important to use a 64 bit processor...but it helps a little. Dual Core processor is what is going to make the biggest difference. As for the video card, anything that is not CPU dependent like you said will suffice. Also it doesnt need to be PCI express, It can be AGP. The "CAD" cards like the Fire and Quadro are just certified to work. The architecture is a little different, but nowadays consumer and proffesional video cards are becoming more and more similar. Processor, RAM, Hard Drive Speed, Video Card (from most important to least important is how you should prioritize what goes in the system).
 
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