Which video card for gaming + productivity (Photoshop, Maya, etc)

[enyceexdanny]

I've recently started started doing some 3D rendering at home, and since I play some games as well - I wanted to know which video card was most suitable for my situation.

Ideally, purchasing a workstation card would be best for productivity - but since I would like to game on my 30" monitor as well, I would need to make compromises.

I pretty much use Maya exclusively for 3D, along with the Adobe suite (cs6) for everything else.

Would appreciate some guidance.

Thanks!

 

[Jorona]

My wife works alot in CS5 Master Suite and Maya and its always seemed to run better since I put in her GTX460 VS an HD5770. I'd stick with Geforce.

 

[enyceexdanny]

It is a bummer they gimped GPGPU on the 680 because a 690 would make sense in terms of playing games on my 30". Since CS6 now supports OpenCL, I was hoping to see some benchmarks between the top of the line Nvidia and AMD cards, but haven't found any so far.

Yeah, I was leaning more towards Nvidia and hopefully GTX 685 is what I'm expecting it to be.

 

[Xeth]

AFAIK CS6 products do not make much use of double precision FP so you're fine with a 690. In fact nVidia recommends the Tesla equivalent of the GTX 690 for image processing rather than the Big Kepler.

 

[Sn0_Man]

AFAIK CS6 products do not make much use of double precision FP so you're fine with a 690. In fact nVidia recommends the Tesla equivalent of the GTX 690 for image processing rather than the Big Kepler.

In fact, nVidia recommends a card that is out now for image processing rather than a card that won't be available for 6 months.

Makes sense.

@OP: I'd wait to see some Benchmarks, since the AMD cards are beasts at GPGPU, but nVidia definitely has a better history of supporting Adobe CS etc on their gaming cards compared to AMD.

 

[bmoney9]

In fact, nVidia recommends a card that is out now for image processing rather than a card that won't be available for 6 months.

Makes sense.

@OP: I'd wait to see some Benchmarks, since the AMD cards are beasts at GPGPU, but nVidia definitely has a better history of supporting Adobe CS etc on their gaming cards compared to AMD.

I agree x2

 

[zero2dash]

along with the Adobe suite (cs6) for everything else.

Very good site with some info (albeit CS5 related): https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

I put a build together for a friend with a GT 440 since that was the cheapest 1GB card with the most SP's (Stream Processors) I could find. Using the patch on that site, the card works fine (even though technically it's unsupported according to Adobe). Obviously with gaming being a consideration you're going to want something quite a bit more powerful than a GT 440 - but at least that'll give you a baseline starting point as to something that is more than acceptable for CS.

If you have the scratch, I'd get a GTX 670. If that's too high, go for a 570 or at least a 560 Ti.
I do use CS5.5 with my 6950 but then again I'm not in After Effects or Premiere; I'm more on the 2d design side (Ps, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat).

 

[enyceexdanny]

Thanks for the answers guys. I guess I'll wait a bit for some benchmarks and news of near-future models.