Hello,

Yes.... It's another vs post. I couldn't find what I was looking for in other comparison posts. So here it goes.

I drastically need a proper, but affordable, PCIE graphics card for my 3D projects. I use my workstation mainly for modeling and texturing game characters/objects in Maya 2008, Bodypaint and Photoshop. On the side I sometimes use Adobe premiere, After FX and AVID Xpress Pro.


Looking at the qualified hardware comparison charts for Maya 2008 and Maya 2008 extensions 2, I notice that the nVidia Quadro is best supported. So I think I’ll go for the Quadro FX.


Now here is where I don’t know what to choose from. I also don’t really know how all the features benefit. All features are explained to be the best quality and the fastest performance and what not. No matter what card I choose. (!?!) But seriously. "Shader Model", "Subpixel Precision", "Antialiasing", "Filtering", "Blending" and all those others. Will they improve only my workprogress (colors/effects in viewport, reaction time, render time, etc) or will my rendered image look better too?

Budged wise, I was looking for something around the 500-600 EURO range to start with. That would be the Mid-Range FX 1500 and FX 1700 from PNY. Although their prices are very close, looking at the PNY comparison charts, they still differ a lot. Here are the major differences:

FX 1500
256MB GDDR3 SDRAM
256bit interface
40 GBps
Shader model 3.0
DX 9.0c
Maya-02 85.31


FX 1700
512MB DDR2 SDRAM
128bit interface
12.8 GBps
Shader model 4.0
DX 10.0
Maya-02 110.80

What to look for?
More but slower memory? (DDR)
Less but faster memory? (GDDR)
Larger memory interface?
How about the Bandwith?
The FX 1700 is a newer model, but still, the memory bandwidth is only 32% of the "older" FX 1500!?

And than there is the not so much more expensive FX 1700 Professional Video Edition. Sounds interesting since I'm doing video editing on the side. But the specs look the same as the normal FX 1700. Or did I overlook something?

Can somebody shed some light on this and help me make a decision?

My current specs:
4GB RAM
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
ASUS P5B-VM