I hear PCI express cards are the new thing in video graphics cards. Well, has anyone tried one using blender? I would like to know what card to get. chipset and manufacture.
PCI-e is only an interface to the motherboard, it’s basically has a bigger bandwidth size than that of a PCI /AGP slot.
I don’t even think new graphic cards even use the full bandwidth anyway (they might be using more bandwidth than AGP, but not the full extent of PCI-e), it’s like the new sata cables… they allow 3GB but the hard disks arn’t capable of sending that much, it’s to make room for the future, advertising and so on…
Most new graphic cards are made for PCI-e due to the fact it has more bandwidth to play with, making a smooth transition ready for the future, however the same cards are still made for AGP for obvious reasons…
I have a PCI-e card in my machine… nothing different to agp in all honesty.
for current games? correct, the only difference you might notice is if the game is copying the rendered image back into ram [which is very slow over agp, but not pci-e]… current games do not do that and you might only do it if you are using something like fraps to record
I’ve played a little with a radeon x300… there wasn’t anything significant to note about it [it ran blender just as well as any decent graphics card I’ve played with]
Hi,
Being a complete Noob to Blender and 3D modeling etc i am looking for advice on buying a new budget graphics card.
What is the difference between say a Leadtek Quardro FX-540 vs Leadtek Geforce 7600GT 256MB gaming card for working with Blender or other 3D software and would either of these be suitable, If not all recommendations would be appreciated?.
Iwould be installing in a new PC including:
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ AM2
Asus M2N-E PCI-E
Crucial PC2- 6400 Ballistix 1GB DD2 Kit (2x512MB) DDR2 800
Seagate Barracuda 200GB 7200 SATA2 11ms, 8MB cache NCQ
Thanks in Anticipation.
Quadro are bad for games, but good and precise for CAD and 3D. Quadro have hardware rendering library’s for Maya (blender cannot use them yet).
in all honesty blender will work great on a gaming card like a 7600GT. Quadro’s are more powerfull than needed, but less fast. they are just rock solid, and don’t approximate anything. (terrible for games though)
Alltaken
Hi Alltaken,
Would you have a recommendation?..I am building a computer for an artist/musician friend who will mainly be using Blender/Photoshop/soundforge type software
Thanks
I use a 6600 (not GT not anything fancy)
with all due respect, the best performance increase for art/music/video is RAM. the GFX card isn’t that important unless needing to deal with massive polygons (or using Video card aware software)
Blender needs an OK graphics card, but it doesn’t need anything like a high high end one. i used it great on a GF4 Ti4200, and now on a GF4 6600 i recently bought another GFX card (identical to the last, so have two in the machine) since i bought another 1600x1200 19" monitor 
but i don’t run the card in SLI mode.
anything from the high end of the 6*** range, or the mid range 7*** series will do great. a GT is high end within the number, but some of the extra letters added to the end mean its worse than the standard. i just go for the average of the range.
Alltaken
hi
I’d go for a Nvidia 7600GS or GT. GS is a little cheaper but on the whole just as fast according to reviews i’ve read.
Nvidia all the way…one has only to read on these boards the problems everyone has with ATI. I too will not use ATI since the drivers are slow in coming and often have more bugs than previous versions.
I’d go for a Nvidia 7600GS or GT. GS is a little cheaper but on the whole just as fast according to reviews i’ve read.
Yes, I have a 7600 GS and I’m quite happy with it.