I am currently trying to upgrade my videocard. I keep hearing either firegl or nvidia quadro. That is about all I know though. So maybe not that helpful.

I think that I am going to go for a sub $500 Quadro. Does anybody know what is a good card for Digital Project/Maya/Rhino

I have a nVidia geforce gaming card which makes Rhino and other OpenGL programs look nice and pretty, just make sure you tweak your 3d display settings in the control panel. My friend has a Quadro and its quite good at displaying huge models, but my slightly newer and quite less expensive gaming card actually outperforms it. Im not an expert by any means but to my understanding the video card only really helps you display models, and unless your working on some massive super high polygon behemoth I dont think upgrading to a Quadro will make that much different. It might be better to invest that money in some more ram, or fa aster rpm hard drive, the new 10000 rpm raptors are pretty sweet.

I'm pretty sure the video card will only help with redraw when you are moving around the model, with rendering itself being a function of the processor. Can someone who knows what they are talking about chime in?

Janosh: you are correct.

Others: I've had a sneaking suspicion for years that nvidia/ati, etc are having a good laugh at us spending $1,000+ on "workstation" graphics cards that are essentially middle of the road gaming cards ($300?) with tweaked software drivers. Practically the same hardware with different software, the soft being optimized a bit for opengl performance and stability.

I used an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (a good gaming card) for years, eventually upgrading to an ATI FireGL 5100, and i swear it's a bit slower! I ran a couple of benchmarks which reported the 5100 was performing better... but in day-to-day use (drawing and manipulating largish 3D models in Rhino) the fancy-shmancy 5100 seemed about the same as the 9800.

Ideally, I'd like to see a reliable independent web site (tomshardware.com?) test ALL the new graphics cards (gamer and pro) with ALL the software (everything from Crysis to Maya). I can only ever find reviews that are one or the other. And who can say if high performance in crysis will translate to high performance in maya?

If you can afford it, I'd buy both cards (the high end gaming card and the however-much-you-can-afford workstation card), try em both for a couple of days and return the loser.

Quadro vs. GeForce

http://lightbox84.blogspot.com/2008/06/graphics-cards.html

I recommend picking the highest number they have. Then you can move on and not trivialize circuitry so much.

Your ATI fireGL will OMGWTFBBQPWN a gaming card when it comes to running aps like ACAD, RHINO, etc.

I used to agree with Apurimac, but now I don't. I think most of the time the hardware on the cards is more or less the same as the gaming cards. Sometimes theres no difference except the card firmware.

I bought an nVidia 9600GT. Not expensive, but quite good hardware. Or you could run a pair of 8800GTs in SLI and really blow the doors off.

The card's firmware makes all the difference.

The reason I know all this is I bought a gaming card which was top of the line back in its day thinking that I could game on it and run Archicad's 3d engine (which is just OpenGL) way more smoothly. I got the gaming power out of it, but when I ran Archicad it was like there was no real difference over my old card (I went from a 32MB GeForce 3 to a 256MB ATI 9800XT btw, this was a few years ago).

Then doing a huge BIM project with archicad on my pathetic little 128MB integrated lappy card about a year ago I completely crashed my computer whenever I went into 3d mode.

Bottom line, if your planning on doing big projects with high poly counts, invest in a good card for the job.

Here's the deal: much of the hardware is very similar, with tweaks in software, as mentioned above.

With CAD cards, you get a more stable card... meaning higher poly counts and less dropped pixels. This has nothing to do with rendering, which is handled by the CPU.

The trade-off for stability is a slightly slower card than the gaming cards, which in turn aren't as stable.

I had a Quadro card back in about 2002 on my old computer, and even though it was used and a bit older, it was rock solid and never had any trouble with any of the software I was using. I wasn't doing any rendering, so that worked out well.

If in doubt, just go to the software makers' websites. If the software runs better on certain hardware configurations, they will tell you.

the guys at xbit labs have an extensive article on professional graphics cards

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/quadrofx-vs-firegl.html

i know it's not the latest greatest but i run 2 6800's soft mod to quadro 4000 that i bought for 120$ a year ago.

GTX 280 would be the best card currently

BFG OC 512mb ram 6800's

lots of discussion and information on this solution everywhere
ex: http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/video-card-support/137848-soft-mod-bfg-geforce-6800-ultra-quadro-fx-4000-a.html

Can I start by saying how much I love this topic? Yeah? OK!

I've looked at (and read) all the links folks have posted here, and I keep running into the same thing: no one has really tested gamer and pro cards at the same time on the same hardware/software. Many repeat the assertion that the pro cards are more stable for CAD/DCC because of "extensive testing" and "special drivers" but near as I can see that assertion originates with the card manufacturers. Who, obviously, have a vested interest in selling their pro video cards for a lot more money than the gamer cards.

I would love love *love* to see somebody like the folks at tomshardware.com have a crack at testing a whole slew of these gamer and pro cards at the same time on the same hardware running the same apps (autocad, 3dsmax, rhino, maya, etc.).

Annecdotaly, I started with an ati 9600 pro (gamer card) many years ago, and had absolutely no trouble running Rhino/Autocad etc. Several years of crash-free usage and butter-smooth redraws. I upgraded to an ATI FireGL 5100 (two-three years newer than the 9600 pro) and I maybe saw the tiniest bit of performance improvement.

Two weeks ago I upgraded to an NVIDIA 9600GT. It's substantially quicker than the FireGL 5100 (but also of course, at least a generation or two ahead hardware-wise) so... that's not to say that the latest generation FireGL wouldn't also be a whole lot faster than the older 5100. So far I've had no stability issues with the 9600GT. Least not with Rhino, 3dsmax, and photoshop. Haven't tried it yet with autocad or premiere, etc.

The card manufacturers seem to be implying that the pro cards are waaay more stable, at least in their ad-speak to us architects/video producers. But how well do you suppose an unstable gaming card would perform in it's market segment? When there are 50 different cards to choose from and no reason to put up with games crashing due to buggy drivers.

I paid $130 for the new nvidia 9600GT... and it's fast baby! Eat that FireGL for $500 plus. (not to knock ati, I'll bet their $130 gamer card would kick ass too).