Hey eveyone,

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card for work in 3ds Max 2012 and some 2D and stereoscopic video editing/compositing. 

I have my heart set on the NVIDIA GTX 590 3GB gaming card so I can play 3D games and still have an awesome card for my design work.

Just looking for advice from anyone who uses high end gaming cards for use in 3ds Max 2012 - do you think this card will be effective for the nitrous viewport system and simulations etc that take advantage of advanced PhysX and CUDA?

I understand that Max uses DirectX and the GTX 590 is meant to be the fastest DX11 card around so in theory it sounds great for the job.  It would certainly be an improvement from my old GTX 285.

Thanks in advance for any help whatsoever!

I have done some more research and found that the GTX 590 generates alot of heat and it’s overpriced for what it is.  I will probably go with the GTX 580 3GB.

I am just waiting on confirmation that the 3GB of VRAM in this card with be utilized within 3ds Max 2012.

Please if you have any information or experience that may help, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Ok, so I took the intiative and looked on the Autodesk 3ds Max certified hardware page. 

Although the GTX 580 is not on the “Certified” list, it still checked all of the boxes when it came to Nitrous and IRay etc - all of the important stuff.

I know a Quadro would be better for 3D Design but I want to play games too.

If im missing something let me know.

Otherwise, I will be ordering the GTX 580 very soon.

I have the GTX580 1.5GB on my home workstation. It works very well for max with nitrous. Im working on scenes with 10M+ polys with no problems. The only time it gets noisy is when im gaming.

I dont use Iray so cant comment on that but im very happy with max/AE performance.

If you have any specific questions please ask.

Peter McMullan
http://www.nrc.ac.uk
Intel® Core™i7 : ASUS® P6X58D : 24GB SAMSUNG DDR3 : 1536MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX580
3d Connexion Space Explorer
Max 7 through 2011 : Win 7 x64 pro

Thanks, Pete

I guess my question is will Max use all of the 3GB VRAM on the GTX 580 I am looking at buying?

I assume yes as the Max certified Quadro cards listed go up to 4GB VRAM.

I appreciate your help.

Will probably order the card tonight unless someone recommends otherwise.

I am now 90% sure that Max 2012 will use as much VRAM as you can throw at it. 

Ironically, the GTX 590 may not perform as well as the cheaper GTX 580 3GB in Max as it is essentially two under-clocked 1.5 GB 580’s SLI’d in one card so this means Max will only recognize 1.5 GBs of its VRAM.  On the other hand, the GTX 580 has all of it’s 3GB of VRAM on the one card so Max can use all of it (in theory)

If anyone here thinks I am incorrect in my findings please let me know.

I will get the 580 3GB soon so I will post any issues if I experience them.

I hope this helps anyone who may be considering a gaming card for 3D design.

Don’t get a “2 in one” card. Renderers like iray need the memory in one place so a large scene can fit onto the card. 2 * 1.5GB cards have less available than a single 2GB or 3GB card.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Thanks for confirming, Steve.

Just to resolve the issue of the thread, I finally recieved my EVGA GTX 580 3GB and installed it last night and can say I am very happy with it’s peformance in Max 2012. 

A character containing around 15m polygons rendered in about a minute using IRAY.  Of course this is without any SSS effect but still pretty impressive, right?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if mental images incorporated GPU acceleration into metal ray?...but that’s probably a question for another thread.

Anyway I would definately recommend a high end NVIDIA GeForce card for Max 2012 as an alternative to the more expensive Quadros.

It’s great with nitrous and GPU rendering...and games too (if you are so inclined)

If anyone has any questions I would be happy to help.

@ Adrio999

:) Hello, How did it go? - did you get a GTX?

I’m exploring my options for a new GPU too. For me performance in Max is essential, but also in the other programs such as AutoCAD, and Adobe CS5 etc.

3ds Max 2012 x64
Dell Precision M6500
Quadro FX 2800M
Intel Core i7 Q840 @ 1.87GHz
8GB RAM
Windows 7 64bit