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best components available today for 3D workstations

It's time for us to invest in a new-generation of 3D workstations again. And per the usual, the big question is which graphics card to standardise on. Has anyone access to benchmarks or first-hand experience pitting the latest Quadros, GeForces and FireGLs against one another? This is for a typical mix of applications on the latest Linux kernels: Maya, Houdini, MentalRay, 3Dlight, etc. And naturally we're keen to make the most of hardware/GPU rendering.

I'm already familiar with the vendors' HCLs, the perils of soft-modding and the likelihood of (and familiarity with) being blanked by vendor tech support. What I hope some of you can share is what you are finding works best in the real-world and therefore where the best-bang-for-the-buck is to be had these days.

Warm regards,

Paul

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dbr
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Might be an idea to reword “bits” to “components” – I initially thought you meant 32 or 64-bit'ness

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paul nendick [ Editor ]

OK, I'm pretty much through this now. Here's what I've learnt and what could safely be recommended today (March 2010):

  • Like Ian said, go with NVIDIA Professional level cards - FX1800 and FX3800 being the most popular. Yes, they cost too much and some ATI card is slightly faster and some, other GeForce is card slightly cheaper. But the point is that Maya works best with NVIDIA Quadros and the problems you'll encounter using lessor cards will negate any savings quickly. Also, do you really want to worry about supporting multiple, fussy video drivers in Linux? No, you don't.
  • 2, 6-core Xeons, 2.66 GHZ. This is the price/super-performance sweet spot, available from the end of the month.
  • 12GB-24GB RAM

The rest is obvious: load up on cheap disk space plus watch the prices of SSD drives to consider using as your system drive. The rest of the specs you're likely to encounter - like NICs - will almost certainly suffice.

Regards,

Paul

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ian_68

Hi Paul

I have always found a Nvidia based card best when working in a Linux environment. They have good support and drivers for Linux. I would also suggest using a high-end gaming card over a pro because you get a lot of bang to buck. If you are serious about rendering on the GPU then a pro card will be needed. Both ATI and Nvidia have software a solutions for this. Check there websites for more info.

My two pence, Ian

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