8800 GTX viewport performance

[AJ Jefferies]

Hello!

I know a few of you guys have these cards & I haven't had any luck anywhere else so I'm asking for your help.

We've just set up our lovely shiny new Quad-core/Vista64 machines at work & so far they're great. Excellent V-ray performance & fantastic viewport performance in Max 2008 (DirectX 9)... Except when in wireframe mode.

I have a scene with two (static) character models, each 250'000 polys. I can view them shaded with their 5'000 pixel texture maps without the cards so much as breaking a sweat. however the minute I hit F3 & drop to wireframe mode the viewport turns to treacle - even drag-creating a box takes forever. At first I thought I was just being greedy (after all 500'000 polys isn't a light snack) but the same file on our 2 year old ATI's is much quicker.

I noticed that if I turn on 'Display all triangle edges' it's back to lightning speed - but this really isn't any good as I need to see quads/polys when I model.

If anyone knows a solution or even an explanation I'd greatly appreciate it.

Cheers,

AJ

[werticus]

the new ati cards kick even more arse too. x2900 / 3870's more than double the gtx viewport scores.

[Neilg]

Ive always thought there was just a huge difference in ATI's openGL to Nvidias direct3d - opengl tends to be really good at wireframe, whereas direct3d cant handle lines very well at all.

[PixelJockey]

I think the main problem is that the GeForce cards are gaming cards, not workstation cards. They are designed to process shaded models not wireframe models. The nVidia workstation line of Quadros do a much better job at wireframe display.

I have never used ATI gaming cards with Max, so I don't know how well they perform.

[werticus]

yeah i was really surprised at the ati's performance... I thought the nvidia would be better for sure because their quatro's have always been better than the fire gls. but its just not true for this generation.

[AJ Jefferies]

I think the main problem is that the GeForce cards are gaming cards, not workstation cards. They are designed to process shaded models not wireframe models.

I'd agree if it weren't for the fact that if I enable the display of all the triangle edges it's really really fast...

Over the last 10 years I've used gaming & workstation cards with Max and I have to say that workstation cards just aren't worth it any more.

Especially not as we need to be able to play games at work too (for research purposes).

[werticus]

we just arnt doing anything intensive enough to need serious cards with max... there are other uses for these pro cards. a lot of it is in the driver anyway.

[Blitterswitch]

I thought that it was actually possible to soft-mod the 8800 gts/gtx's driver to run as a quadro 4600 when using directx (i.e max but not maya)
I have not managed to try it out yet because my comp is mothballed in the study until we have time to fully unpack in the new flat.