FireGL 8800 or GeForce Ti 4600?

[beetle]

HI All,

I'm looking at these two options for a video card upgrade. I need it to run Maya and run dual 21" displays. I know the Fire Gl 8800 is more expensive but I have the option to get either card for the same price. What is a better choice? I'd appreciate any feedback

[jerry-hnk]

FireGL 8800 is faster than the fastest quadro 4.... so, no doubt it will be faster than the Ti4600

[senshi]

Re ====> FireGL 8800 is faster than the fastest quadro 4.... so, no doubt it will be faster than the Ti4600

Where the hell did you hear that? The fastest Quadro 4 beats the hell out of the Wildcat III... and have you seen the specs for the Wildcat III?

[c-a--4]

The fire gl is faster as an interface tool. The Geforces are faster in shaded modes. It depends on what you do with your card. If your a production artist the FIRE GL series might be a better fit. If your a game developer/gamer the Geforce is probably better.

[jerry-hnk]

Re ===> Where the hell did you hear that? The fastest Quadro 4 beats the hell out of the Wildcat III... and have you seen the specs for the Wildcat III?

Just look at the benchmarks...hehe

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q1/...quadro4-14.html

[1000101-]

On a side note.
thats not the fastest of the quadro4's thats the 750XGL. The fastest quadro4; the 900XGL hasn't been benched yet.
besides; I wouldn't be surprised if the radeon 8800 had has many nasty visual errors as the original radeon series does in maya.

[jerry-hnk]

oops... guess I missed that... I don't think the drivers will be buggy tho... its the people who made the original fireGL driver who made the 8800's OGL renderer, not ATI

[yellowsayshello]

Also keep in mind that the only CG app tested was MAX, and the 8800 has specialized drivers for it. I was originally waiting for the 8800 but I think I'll go for a Geforce 4 Ti 4600, or maybe the 750 XGL, if I'm feeling particularily spendy that day.

[beetle]

I guess it's pretty hard to determine which of the two cards is better, eventhough the 8800 cost almost double that the Geforce4. This is definetely a weird market isn't it?

I mostly want ithe card to do modeling work, tweaking models with deformers and look at the changes in real time and also to model stuff with SubD surfaces. Another main use is for hardware texturing and lighting to set up still renderings (I'm a product designer).

So would that fall closer to 'production artist' work or 'game developer' work, since most of the feedback I look at is in shaded/textured mode?

[snarg]

Professionally speaking the Fire GL 8800 is better than the Geforce 4 in Open GL by a long chalk. So this is the way I would go if you asked me directly.

As for the coments on the card betting the Quadro 4 cards hmm,. Well lets put it htis way the site in question is getting an e-mail from Nvidia pointing out the way tests results have been shown and concluded. The Quadro 4 cards completely waste the Fire GL cards. They are the fastest out there. There have been many proven benchmarks to show this up online and at SPEC.org. The results we obtained from working systems whilst under load showed how powerful all the new Quadro cards are.

I would wait a few more weeks as its nearly time for the Quadro 4 cards to come swiftly online most resellers should see cards now for mid april.