topic professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards in Installation & update

professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:58:40 GMT

does archicad support professional graphic cards (like fireGL or quadro)?
if yes, does it have any advantage over regular gaming card with the same chip?
http://geizhals.at/589544
vs.
http://geizhals.at/554793

thank you.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Katalin Takacs — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:30:59 GMT

Here you can find the list of the supported video cards for ArchiCAD 15: http://archicadwiki.com/VideoCardsForArchiCAD15

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:50:15 GMT

according to this list there is no need for a professional card.
gaming cards are much cheaper and equally efficient.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:29:54 GMT

From what I've seen the high end cards don't deliver much of a boost if any. I knew someone with a fancy Quaddro card that cost around $1500 and it didn't seem any better than my GeForce which was under $300. My rule on these has always been, if you're not sure you need it you almost certainly don't.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:37:49 GMT

thank you very much for the information.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 22:07:08 GMT

Historically i would have agreed on the "gaming card is good enough", however more recent experience on reasonable size projects at work has raised the issue of screen corruption. Looking at GS material it appears the workstation class cards are built for accurate pixel display, whereas gaming cards are all about speed (refresh rates for games).
In a nutshell, for domestic scale projects, gaming cards are fine. For large commercial projects - consider the Quadros...!
(Actually while historically a mac man, I use PCs at work, and am seriously looking at the HP Z1 for next PC @ home - over an iMac - precisely because of the graphic cards options - the Z1 supports Quadro cards..).

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

KeesW — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 07:47:14 GMT

rtw
Please elaborate advantage of professional cards for large projects. If gaming cards have enough graphic ram, and your computer is powerful enough, I don't understand how benefits are created.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 04:37:57 GMT

Sorry I don't have any technical knowledge of how these things work- it was just an observation of a pretty good gaming card vs an entry level quadro!
I think GS might be better placed to answer this one.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:31:07 GMT

The official answer from Graphisoft:

http://www.archicadwiki.com/VideoCardsForArchiCAD15?action=show&redirect=Video+Cards#A.22Professional.22_vs._.22Gaming.22_video_cards

It is probably worth reading the whole thing, not just this section.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Arcadia — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 22:13:41 GMT

My experience with gamer cards has put me off them completely. Even low end pro cards will be a much better option. Try getting a previous generation pro card on ebay - it can save a lot of money.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

KeesW — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 06:37:58 GMT

Arcadia

I've been using Archicad with gamer cards since 1996 and have never had an issue with any of them. Perhaps I don't know what I am missing!

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:49:19 GMT

I belive quadro has a better memory-optimized drivers for running multiple instances of archicad, versus single-application optimization for a geforce-type card.

Other than that, Graphisoft gives a complete rats ass about optimizing for quadro cards. This work from Autodesk is miles better, and they seem to actually be talking with Nvidia and AMD about developing the software/hardware relationship. Graphisoft only recommends mac's, if not in clear text, in certain ways of putting things that suggest mac is the preffered platform inside Graphisoft.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 13:27:28 GMT

johag wrote:
Other than that, Graphisoft gives a complete rats ass about optimizing for quadro cards. This work from Autodesk is miles better, and they seem to actually be talking with Nvidia and AMD about developing the software/hardware relationship.

Johag,

On the following page:

http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/video-cards/recommended-video-cards-for-archicad-18/#8220Professional8221_vs_8220Gaming8221_video_cards

you can read this:

GRAPHISOFT cooperates with:

* Nvidia to test and certify video card drivers for the Nvidia Quadro FX, Nvidia Quadro and Nvidia Quadro K series. This product line is recommended by GRAPHISOFT for ArchiCAD 18.
* AMD to test and certify video card drivers for the AMD Fire Pro series. This product line is recommended by GRAPHISOFT for ArchiCAD 18 as well

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 11:21:55 GMT

I'm also trying to figure this out. As in other programs i noticed that a simple GTX 970 is superrior in Maya to a 3x more expensive quadro card.

Since there is no benchmark, like Cinebench we have actually no real info on that matter.

One thing I noticed, there is no real difference between a HD 7870 and GTX 770, while in every other program the GTX 770 is significantly (25%) faster.

I did very large and very complex 3D scenes on these cards, but Archicads 3D viewport engine does a terrible job.

That's why I don't think that a 1000$ quadro would be any faster than a 300$ 780Ti, which is superrior in all other 3D programs.

Well there is one option, which is that the GPU usage of non-professional cards is not 100% on purpose.

We run a small very small company and buying 10 pieces of K4200 because of that is a rip off. It's cheaper to use other software.

People want to know real number like SPecviewperf, cinebench, where we can see the FPS count, video memory usage ETC, GPU utilization.

If a program uses 40% of gaming GPU and 100% of quadro. It means that the software is not using it properly. Not that nvidia or amd pay you to do that to run 100% on pro cards.

I am considering to buy a Titan X with 12GB VRAM, but if it's not used by the software, we have to buy a Quadro card, which will be in other programs waaaay slower.

I would be nice to know more.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Paul King — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 04:24:40 GMT

Arcadia wrote:
My experience with gamer cards has put me off them completely. Even low end pro cards will be a much better option. Try getting a previous generation pro card on ebay - it can save a lot of money.

My experience is exactly the opposite! The worst performance and greatest visual corruption issues have accompanied the 'professional' Quadro cards, while even half the amount spent on latest generation gamer card will perform better on any meaningful real world benchmark for ArchiCAD.

Most of the purported speed and quality benefits of Quadro actually seem to apply to AutoCAD rather than ArchiCAD - something to do with AutoLisp optimised drivers.

This performance gap is likely simply a function of price and technology - the same money (the only meaningful way to compare cards is within a given budget range) buys you an earlier generation low end 'pro' card or a current generation top of the range 'gamer' card. With an extra year or two to iron out bugs, and improve manufacturing and graphic drivers etc, and millions of beta testers worldwide, a mass produced new card is usually going to beat a small run of older cards targeting a small market.

And if you use GPU rendering - (i.e the Octane plugin or similar) , this is a no brainer.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 12:19:26 GMT

Paul wrote:
My experience is exactly the opposite! The worst performance and greatest visual corruption issues have accompanied the 'professional' Quadro cards, while even half the amount spent on latest generation gamer card will perform better on any meaningful real world benchmark for ArchiCAD.

Exactly my experience too.

Same here, comparing cards such as 5850, 7770, 750 to K22000, K5200 W7100 is just sooooo wrong and misleading.

It's the same since AC 16 and is still going on.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 04:03:23 GMT

gingerslo wrote:
Paul wrote:
My experience is exactly the opposite! The worst performance and greatest visual corruption issues have accompanied the 'professional' Quadro cards, while even half the amount spent on latest generation gamer card will perform better on any meaningful real world benchmark for ArchiCAD.
Exactly my experience too.

Same here, comparing cards such as 5850, 7770, 750 to K22000, K5200 W7100 is just sooooo wrong and misleading.

It's the same since AC 16 and is still going on.

Plus one.
I have a 3gb R9 280 at home and a 4gb firepro at work. The $300 home card outperforms the $1000 work card in almost every way.

I'm pretty sure it's just down to pretentiousness. Professionals wouldn't be seen dead with a mere 'gamers' card.

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

shtarkel — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 16:04:07 GMT

surfinchina wrote:
gingerslo wrote:
Paul wrote:
My experience is exactly the opposite! The worst performance and greatest visual corruption issues have accompanied the 'professional' Quadro cards, while even half the amount spent on latest generation gamer card will perform better on any meaningful real world benchmark for ArchiCAD.
Exactly my experience too.

Same here, comparing cards such as 5850, 7770, 750 to K22000, K5200 W7100 is just sooooo wrong and misleading.

It's the same since AC 16 and is still going on.
Plus one.
I have a 3gb R9 280 at home and a 4gb firepro at work. The $300 home card outperforms the $1000 work card in almost every way.

I'm pretty sure it's just down to pretentiousness. Professionals wouldn't be seen dead with a mere 'gamers' card.

What is the model of the Firepro card that you compare to the R290?

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

shtarkel — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 16:28:12 GMT

Have you all looked at the tests with different polygon count - very interesting. New test page for Archicad 19 - http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/video-cards/recommended-video-cards-for-archicad-19/

Gamer cards are scoring too low?

Re: professional quadro cards vs. regular gaming cards

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 21:05:49 GMT

What is the model of the Firepro card that you compare to the R290?

It's a W5100.

Which brings me to my theory on how Archicad uses graphics cards.

I think, that it's all down to memory.
My firepro can work on bigger models faster in 3D, because it holds more triangles in 4gb before it has to spit them out to normal memory.

R9 280 has 3gb of faster ram so can regen smaller buildings faster than the firepro.

Renders are entirely down to CPU.

CAD people make a big deal on how accurate Quadros and Firepros are, but I don't really care if a few pixels go missing when I'm whizzing around editing in 3D - it's so small as to be not noticeable.
When accuracy is required, obviously it's there in the publishing (ACAD code), and in the renders (CPU).

So, if you work on big buildings, get a lot of memory in GPU, otherwise 2 or 3gb is fine for residential (what I do).

I hope this helps