6800 ddr3 vs Quadro FX 1400.. any diff in gaming?

Dell's Quadro only have DDR1 memory. I don't know if Sager will have DDR3 or not but if it doesn't the DDR3 will be better. If DDR1 it should run comparable to a DDR2 version.

If you're just learning Maya, you don't need to spend the extra money on the Quadro. The 6800 is better for games and works just fine for lower level 3D work. When you start working with more complex scenes, then upgrade to the Quadro.

i have a question on graphics rendering and workstation cards. i design kitchens using a 3d CAD related program. the output of the design looks very similar to architectural prints and or CAD blue prints. but, then i am able to render the blue prints into photo realistic models with shadows and lighting and such. i am also able to walk into the 3d perspective by floating the camera, like moving through a fps game like doom3 and such.

i have never used a workstation graphics card before so i don't know if they will bendefit me using this CAD program. what i do notice about using "normal" game cards is that no matter how powerfull they are, there is no speed increase when it comes to rendering images and virtual walk throughs. i do notice that cpu power is heavily utilized when working with the CAD program.

my question is; if i opted to put in a workstation graphics card in the sager 9860, would this increase performance in the CAD program when it comes to renderings and walk throughs? right now, i can move the camera in walk throughs at about half a frame per second. and i can render an image in about 10 minutes is 1440x900 resolution.

here is an example of a rendering;

the advantage of quadro and other DCC cards is realtime rendering in the viewports (like MAYA or other DCC apps).

however, if you're talking about SOFTWARE RENDERING (animation and FX studios such as pixar or ILM use software rendering for final output), the videocard does NOT handle this --- the rendering is done by the CPU (video cards cannot come close to software rendering in terms of image quality at this point... maybe that will happen in the next decade (speed, however, is a different story)).

realtime hardware rendering thru the video card (ie... QUADRO) allows the artist to see 3d models, textures, and virtual lights in realtime so that they can manipulate or adjust the scene. it is a usability issue.

once the scene is to their liking, it is then RENDERED thru the CPU (or a render farm) for final output in high rez.

so in answer to your question, if you are outputting high rez images for clients to see, the quadro will NOT make it any faster. it does, however, have very decent hardware rendering --- but nowhere near the quality of "software" rendering (such as pixar's renderman program).

"movie quality" hardware rendering is the goal of nvidia/ati... but at this point it's going to take some time. they claim they can do it, but if you've been in the movie biz (as i am), it's going to take some time to get to that level of realism and quality.

thanks for the reply, buemonkey. the CAD software i use does not allow me to view realtime renderings. it does allow me to do a "walkthrough". but, at this mode, lighting, anti-aliasin, and shadowing is taken away, but the textures remain and i can float around in the design in 3D. when i position the camera to my liking, then i can render the image with the lighting and AA.

i can also have multiple rendering modules open so i can maintane multiple camera views.

the CAD program allows me to also view in hidden line mode and wireframe. but, it does not apply AA in these prespectives, so the lines are really jagged. the funny thing is that when i print these hidden line or wireframe views, the printer applies some AA so the printed output is not as jagged. i am wondering if the quadro will foce AA in these modes?

when i have a design with alot of shapes, like flowers, dishes, vases, etc, the walkthrough runs like total crap. about half a frame per second. i am hoping that the quadro can really speed this up.

but my biggest gripe is waiting about a half hour to render a perspective with textures, lighting, shadows and AA in 4800 x 2400. the wait for such a perspective is about 30 minutes.

will the quadro give me ANY speed increase at all? i can't see how it won't do anything. but, then again i don't want to purchase an expensive workstation card for nothing.

this is so frusterating trying to get an answer. i have posted on multilpe websites and called the software maker and have gotten very poor answers, sometimes conflicting ones. i have even called someone at nvidia for some help and he said he will pass it on to someone else at nvidia and email me back. no reply yet. he seemed more interested in contacted the software maker to see if nvidia can sell their products to them.

Ordinary Graphics cards will not speed up rendering at all, ever. Once you hit the render button the CPU takes over and just passes the information to the Gfx card for display as Bluemonkey said. The Gfx card is just a display device that will allow you to navigate your scene faster in Wire /hidde/ shaded mode. Whether a Quadro will help you depends on whether the card has drivers specifically optimised and certified to work with your program. If not, it won't necessarily help at all compared to the standard Gf 6800.

Workstation cards like the Quadro's are designed to display heavy geometry without drawing errors and excess slowdowns. Normal cards (game variety) are optimised for D3d, Quadro's are optimised for OGL which is the professional standard in Graphics apps as it's more acurate.

Anti-aliasing in the viewports is a software matter, I don't know if the Quadro will do this itself unless the program has an option for it in it's display properties. There is a possibility though.

In the past Quadro cards have have D3D scores similar to their non-Quadro versions perhaps off by 1-5%. However their performance to handle rendering increases by over 25% depending on the task. It used to be the only difference between the cards were the placement of two capacitors. I suppose this is how SoftQuadro was able to function.

The question is whether the FX Quadro 1400 follows similar bad habbits and allows for software modification to trick a 6800 DDR3 into acting like a Quadro. This feature is available via Riva Tuner. However, I never was able to get it to function correctly with a Go5600 (aka Quadro FX Go 700) even though it was the same NV31M architecture. I was however able to trick the OS into installing the Quadro driver with an INF mod, but I never benchmarked the performance change.