GTX 4XX as Primary Display in 3d apps - help, Octane users?!

[johan21]

Hi everyone

My first post

I'm here with good reason - after much hunting around I've worked out that for obvious reasons, this forum is probably the best location (in the world!) to track down users who are using a GTX 4XX card to run their primary display in 3dsmax (or maya, but I'm primarily interested in 3dsmax being a max user). It's a bit of a niche use for a card that is primarily for gaming, at the end of the day.

I'm trying to work out the components for a new build desktop at the moment, and am keen to get a GTX, probably 470, with a view to later getting into octane. I'll probably get two 470's in an SLI, just for game purposes so will have a fair bit invested in this card. However I can't help being extremely concerned about the apparent number of users having problems running 3d apps and the GTX 4XX cards. If you google '3dsmax gtx 480' you will find countless threads of cases where users 3dsmax and maya viewport speeds are experienced at say < 10 fps, and a whole lot of outraged customers...There's even a section on wikipedia! The worrying thing was that a lot of these threads don't end with any solution being found, and just trail off. However a lot of the threads are also from earlier this year.

This thread on the Octane forum, in the third post from Andrian, is the only report I have had of a user not experiencing any problems in the 3dsmax viewport, which is extremely reassuring:

http://www.octanerender.com/forum/viewt ... 7&start=40

Andrian appears to be a pretty active user here and seems to still be doing just fine with a gtx 480. However he mentions using the 197.75 WHQL version of the drivers, dated from May 2010, even at a time when these were superseded (now up to 263.09). Other reports I found suggested that using the right version driver did make the difference between viewport speed being really fast, and completely unacceptable (nothing in between).

So to reassure myself that this card is for me, would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the following:

1. Do you use a GTX 4XX card as a primary display (for modelling/editing), with max or maya?

2. Have you had any problems with frame rate?

3. What version driver are you currently using? - this is the most critical issue. If there is only one driver version that lets this card run acceptably in 3dsmax/maya and everyone is still clinging to that driver, then this does not seem to bode well for the future. It would be great to know that in general, the cards still work ok with more recent drivers.

4. What 3d apps have you successfully used with the GTX 4xx? I am using 3dsmax 2011, whereas Andrian's success appeared to be with 3dsmax 2009. A number of the problems seem to be reported on 3dsmax 2011. It's one more factor for me to be worried about...

Thanks in advance for anything that will shed light on the current status of this problem.

[Lutze]

Hi,

I bought a gtx470 to use it with Houdini and Softimage under windows 7. Houdini is close to none workable with the gtx470 under windows. Even an old gts250 is faster in the viewport. On the other hand, there seems to be no problem with the combination gtx470/windows7/Softimage. The viewport is as fast as it could be, all is well.
When I boot the same machine under ubuntu 10.04 Houdini suddenly runs like a charm on the gtx470, so it seems to be a problem with the nvidia windows driver and the gtx as it works fine under linux. On the other hand, softimage runs well, so this is a realy tricky problem. Tried almost every driver I could get a hold on, but to always the same end.
I also heard, that other applications (esp. Max) have their problems too with the new gtx cards. It is realy a shame. I spent almost 400€ for the card and it is outperformed by a much older and slower card on windows.
I think this does not help you, but be prepared to run into problems with 3D and the gtx470.

Oh, by the way..... I tried a new gtx460 last week, and it performs better under windows than the gtx470, but .... not as good as it should.

Lutze

[johan21]

Thanks for the response Lutze.

Out of interest, have you tried the 470 on a machine with other than Windows 7?

Would be great to get your complete system specs as I'm trying to find any pattern in machines that work and machines that don't.

Cheers

Hi,

I bought a gtx470 to use it with Houdini and Softimage under windows 7. Houdini is close to none workable with the gtx470 under windows. Even an old gts250 is faster in the viewport. On the other hand, there seems to be no problem with the combination gtx470/windows7/Softimage. The viewport is as fast as it could be, all is well.
When I boot the same machine under ubuntu 10.04 Houdini suddenly runs like a charm on the gtx470, so it seems to be a problem with the nvidia windows driver and the gtx as it works fine under linux. On the other hand, softimage runs well, so this is a realy tricky problem. Tried almost every driver I could get a hold on, but to always the same end.
I also heard, that other applications (esp. Max) have their problems too with the new gtx cards. It is realy a shame. I spent almost 400€ for the card and it is outperformed by a much older and slower card on windows.
I think this does not help you, but be prepared to run into problems with 3D and the gtx470.

Oh, by the way..... I tried a new gtx460 last week, and it performs better under windows than the gtx470, but .... not as good as it should.

Lutze

[Lutze]

As I said, the 470 runs great with all 3D-Apps (Houdini 11 and Maya 2008) on the same machine under linux. Same apps under windows feel like chewing gum. Softimage 7.01 and 2011 run smoothly under windows, even with the gtx 470.
Now something srange. Tried the gtx 470 yesterday in my old xp-machine...and it is faster to work than under windows 7. Still not as fast as under linux, but considerably faster than under 7.

Specs are:

HP Z600 Workstation:
Dual Xeon Quadcore (last year)
12GB Ram
Palit GTX 470 (since last week a Zotac GTX 460 because I need a display port)
Windows 7 Prof 64-Bit
Ubuntu 10.04 64-Bit

Lutze

[Odeas]

A quick word of warning!

The GTX 570 is due to be released next week. This has 480 cuda cores instead of the 448 of the 470 and higher clock speeds too.

Its slated for release december 7th and the 580 is due shortly after (9th i think?)

Sorry i'm no help with the 3ds max problem but thought you should know as prices will either drop or buy the 570 instead for around the same money as the current 470's hopefully.

[SamPage]

I will second the notion, do NOT get a GTX 4xx series card for your display on 3D apps. While drawing curves (interestingly) on the 400s is pretty fast, mesh drawing is terrible. The 285 will far outperform the 480, on Rhino the 285 is delivering about twice the frame rate.

Some more links for pursing:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=181574
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=166757
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards ... 065&page=1

Different drivers do not address the problem, nor does soft modding the cards, so either it is a hardware issue or the driver is now smart enough to detect soft modding. So, a couple of possibilities, it is just a glitch in the 400 line. We will see if the 500s has the same issue. Next, it could be an attempt to depreciate OpenGL 2.0 and force a move to 3.0+, but that seems unlikely, some other CAD apps using DirectX are reporting the same issue. Sadly, it seems most likely that NVidia could be purposefully throttling down their GTX cards as to make them unsuitable for CAD use, forcing more sales of overpriced Quadros. NVidia has been very quite on this one.

Sam

[Chris]

I`m a 3ds max user myself. I tried to run max with a gtx 470 but the fps was really crap. I had to change back to my Quadro FX 4600.

Chris

[Emcs07]

I am using Maya and the 470gtx is crap for viewport performance. I bought a quadro 4000 as my main card and have had no issues since. The 470gtx is reserved for rendering.

[kletos]

@Lutze

Lutze, you have a GTX 470 in an HP Z600? Does it run stable? I'm thinking of trashing my FX1800 for a GTX 470. How do you power the 2nd PCIE aux slot?

[Jaberwocky]

'Sadly, it seems most likely that NVidia could be purposefully throttling down their GTX cards as to make them unsuitable for CAD use, forcing more sales of overpriced Quadros. NVidia has been very quite on this one.'

I'm not sure Nvidia would be that stupid.It would just as likely push those users to ATI card's if that was actually happening.

That would be like cutting their nose's off the spite their faces.