Hello, all.  This is a book, but necessary to cover points.

Recently, I bought a new machine, and wanted to determine, once and for all, if it’s really worth buying quadro video cards over geforce, as well as HD speed testing between SSDs and traditional drives in RAID.  This is relvant to everyone who reads this forum.  I did this for my own reasons, wanting to have the best performing machine possible, because I don’t have time left for waiting unnecessarily.  I own my own studio (just me ATM), and have 10 machines in my farm.  When I buy new, I want to spend my money where it will get me the most bang for the buck.

Life happens, and while I was well intentioned on making a very in-depth article about this, I just don’t have the time.  However, I do think that it would be of benefit to all to read this.  I will likely post it on my site at some point so it can be found after it stale dates here. My software is Max (2008 in these tests), and I tested on both x64 & Vista 64, using a GTX 285s in single and SLI, a Quadro 5600 and 4500, together and apart.  On the hard drive side, I compared 6 OCZ Core SSD drives, and 16 500GB Seagate 7200RPM drives on a Highpoint RocketRaid card. (Full system specs later.)

All tests were done on an i7 extreme system.  If anybody is interested in the full spreadsheet, just ask.  I did each test 3 times, on a clean install, with nothing other than OS, necessary drivers, and software tested.  I used the benchmarks noted and two of my own scenes.  the 9.1MP scene is free to anyone who asks.  These are not truely exhaustive tests, I admit, but represent a lot of the type of work that I do.

HD performance: (see hdperformance.jpg) Tests were done with IO meter in different configurations.  As you can see from the graph, you can get a lot more performace out of HDs as more drives are added, as you would expect.  Probably more performance is available with some other (more expensive) RAID cards.  This test determined, for me, that SSDs just are not raid-friendly enough to compare to a larger traditional raid array.  Especially when you consider that a 6 disk raid 5 array in this case was $600 (excluding card) for a 160GB array.  The same array in traditional drives would cost $540 for a 2.5TB array… prices from 5 months ago.  (I was seeing if it made sense to have 6 SSDs, and 10 7200.11 drives was faster than 16 7200.11 drives… because I also need at least 2TB of working space.) Ultimately, I chose 16X 7200.11 drives, with 4 RAID 5 arrays, because I didn’t want to chance my system to a drive failure. (Even though I have extensive Ghost backups.) Which is fortunate, because a drive failed on me two months ago in the middle of a project.

Card performance:  I was most interested to see how the Quadro cards stacked up against the GeForce cards; I’ve bought many Quadro cards over the years (always used, on ebay), but even then, a pair of brand new GeForce cards would always have been 40% less than the used pro hardware.  I also did this test with Vista, which, for the most part, was so slow it wasn’t worth doing more tests.  Exception being DX10, which doesn’t work in max, anyway.

Specview: (see specview.jpg) As you can see, in this benchmark, the Quadro cards all significantly outperform their gaming counterparts.  The benchmark obviously hit a wall with Maya, where all the Quadro configs rated at maximum.  I wasn’t satisfied with this, however, as Spec doesn’t necessarily represent what I would see… and the ‘real world’ test below confirmed that.

Max specific: (see bismarck.jpg & 9pt1mil.jpg) At the time, the only relevant 3D software I had was max.  (I now have SolidWorks, but no time for testing.) These were done on basic setups, the first being a large scene of the battleship bismarck that you can see on my site, copied once, with the camera spinning around.  The second was a flythrough of copies (not instances) of a piece of geometry, totalling 9.1 million polys.  Vista performance was crap, but we know that. The most surprising thing for me was that the margin between the 285s and the 5600 was minimal, ultimately only made larger by maxtreme drivers.  Around 2% without drivers, 18% with.  The 285 SLI setup was marginally slower, unless I had one monitor plugged into each card (which makes most sense.) You can, therefore, decide if it’s worth an extra $2400 for an 18% gain… there may be more of a gain from going with SLI 5600s, but I wouldn’t want to finance that. :) I averaged wireframe and shaded viewport runs.

Gaming: (3dmark.jpg, ut.jpg, crysis.jpg) Not that this is relavant to a work machine, but I figured it worth doing the tests when I was at it.  No big surprise here - the gaming cards cleaned the clock of the quadros.

Conclusions:  Unless you’re in a ‘money doesn’t matter’ or ‘when every second counts regardless of cost’ situation, don’t waste your time with Quadros.  If you do, save 66% and buy on ebay.  I did do some non-scientific testing of scenes that used more extensive features, like real-time shadowing and the like, but I didn’t have time to do definitive tests.  (Damn the need to make a living.) It appeared that the Quadros had a little more headroom here, amplified by drivers, but you could just get yourself VRay RT, and use your old machines (or even buy a couple of small, cheap systems) to solve that problem for less than the cost of the higher-end card.  And then have a bigger render farm to boot.

Notes: I’ve got the Quadros (both) in my machine right now, due the benefits of maxstreme in 2008.  I’ve just installed 2010, and I will be testing the 285s, and see how they work out there.  In talking with a SolidWorks rep recently, he told me how he has had personal experience with gaming cards overheating to the point of fire when put into heavy SW environments.  I don’t know what other mitigating factors may be there, like insufficient airflow, but my guess is if you’re dealing with scenes that heavy, you likely have the budgets for Quadros. 

As far as hard drives, large arrays of 7200RPM Sata2 drives are the most cost effective.  SCSI drives are just so expensive, and the RAID controllers are even more.  SSD have issues with write/rewrite which can cause many other issues, and simply are not as RAID ready right now.  The newest generation may be better than these.  As it is, with my current system, I see VERY fast load/transfer times, due in large part into the way that the arrays are divided.

System:

Intel i7 extreme /w CoolIt Freezone Elite Peltier Cooler
Biostar X58 motherboard
12GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 (4X3GB)
16 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives
SilverStone Strider 1200W 80Plus PSU
Highpoint RocketRaid 2340 16 Channel Raid
Lian-Li V2000Plus Chassis, custom printed front vented/fan mount front grille
3X120mm 140CFM fans, 2X60MM 50CFM fans.

I hope that some of you will find this useful.

Kris.
Mafic Studios, Inc.
http://www.maficstudios.com

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Just wanted to add my tests of 2010 - viewport performance is, in all cases, slower. Attached is a graph; /M is maxtreme, /D is directx, using the Quardo 5600 and GeForce 285s.  This is not on a clean system like previous tests - rather my working system that’s been under use for a couple of months.  In lieu of the fact that there are no longer performance drivers for quadros (per nVidia), there’s even less reason to go Quadro now.  I used current drivers.

With the quadros, an average of a 28% decrease in speed from Maxtreme to DX/2010, though only a 3% decrease from DX to DX/2010.  GeForces suffer a 14% decrease.  In 2010, the GeForces are 11% slower than the quadros in 2010.

The other image is a screenshot of the Bismarck scene used in these tests.

Kris.
Mafic Studios, Inc.
http://www.maficstudios.com

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thanks for the info...much appreciated for your effort. It’s nice to see actual results of Quadro vs Geforce....since the Quadros are out of reach by most typical users.

Intel i7 930 2.8Ghz 8 CORE HT / CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus (no OC yet!)
Nvidia EVGA GTX 260 v286.19 DEV CUDA 4.1 driver (Nitrous in max) / Dual Dell Professional P2311H 23” Displays
ASUS P6X58D-E / Corsair Dominator 12GB 1600 DDR3 / Antec tp750 blue / Antec 300 Illusion
Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1
3ds max design 2012 x64 SP2 (since the 1st DOS version!), Mudbox 2012 x64 SP3, Softimage 2012 x64 SP1, Maya 2012 x64 HF2, Adobe CS5.5 x64, CorelDRAW x5 SP3, Painter 12, etc etc
Wacom Intuos4 v6.2.0w5 / 3DConnexion Space Navigator (drv6.15.2)/ Logitech Performance MX mouse (5.33.14)

Conclusions:  Unless you’re in a ‘money doesn’t matter’ or ‘when every second counts regardless of cost’ situation, don’t waste your time with Quadros.  If you do, save 66% and buy on ebay.  I did do some non-scientific testing of scenes that used more extensive features, like real-time shadowing and the like, but I didn’t have time to do definitive tests.  (Damn the need to make a living.) It appeared that the Quadros had a little more headroom here, amplified by drivers, but you could just get yourself VRay RT, and use your old machines (or even buy a couple of small, cheap systems) to solve that problem for less than the cost of the higher-end card.  And then have a bigger render farm to boot.

hi,

thank for the review.

i am looking in getting either 1 desktop or 1 laptop

laptop like mobile workstation tend to be more expensive as it come with Quadros video card.

does it mean Geforce card can be use for 3D rendering performance good?

Please advise.

Just read most of your reviews.  I was wondering if anyone has used or heard about that new Quadro FX 5800 card? I hear its supposed to render in real time, so to speak.  Just curious.  Its like 2-3.1k new.

thanks for Your tests, 3dsmax 2010 display performance should be improved esp. if t comes to lots of small objects complex modeling stacks and multiple groups…

Does the Quadro make a difference? Hmm 10 or 20% performance Gain isn’t worth 10 times the price of a normal graphics card I think…

On the other side gaming cards have problems with z-buffer accuracy in large scenes… also there is currently no 30bit color support for non Quadros from Nvidia - But: If I buy a quadro could I get 30bit graphics from 3dsmax & composite to the screen???

Ok even if the default driver isn’t optimal for 3dsmax - what chance would have a quadro FX1800 - based on an old Nvidia hardware design against a cheap new Fermi GF100 based Card???

What is the benefit of a Quadro for a 3dsmax user?

Waiting for interesting new products that could give me a real benefit - I’m ready to buy - is there anything interesting to sell??

Regards,
nw42

Good work, it would of taken a while. It’s nice to see someone doing some comparisons of workstation vs gaming cards. It is too hard to justify the expense of a workstation card when you can get two top-end gaming cards for the same price as a workstation card.

Dear syskosys, if you have some time. Please test with win7 64 dan 3ds max 2010/2011. I would like to see how improvement carried out to vista drivers is. After all, several post indication problems on 3ds max 2011 + win7 64 + >6 Core cpu hyperthreading.

regards.

Try this again with 3dsmax 2012 Nitrous viewport.. The cheap game cards $500-$800 should smoke the sub $1500+ Quadro cards.

For years I used Quadros until one of them wasn’t recognized as “Certified” by some software. I did try to figure what the problem was, updated and reverted drivers, changed slots, checked configurations, etc.. even contacted some people.

The answer was that it was possible that the OS had an issue. I kept trying, switched machine, checked, did clean OS install, attempted another OS, etc..

There was no way for me to make that little word appear on the screen so I’d have peace of mind about my investment.

CERTIFIED… certified....

It never happened.

Till that day, I thought I was paying for something more than just the card and all the publicity… I thought I was paying for things like service or support. That was not the case.

Since I had never used the cards as renderer or even loaded huge models, I had no clue.

Funny thing is, still today people come to me asking about this. Still today, people do buy useless things believing it is the best on something, investing money to achieve results without having to become a computer expert in the process.

Through those years I’ve learned one simple thing: You can’t be just a Designer or an Architect. You must know computers to climb on such careers.

Always thought the software was there to help and the hardware was a tool.

Must be embarrassing for software programmers when users complain of things getting worse with new releases and a shame for hardware producers when people find out they were sold some useless gimmick. But who knows… they both got their payrolls up to date already.