Wildcat Vid cards

[wulfie]

I'm putting together a new computer system and have been reading everything I can on graphics cards. I will want the best dual monitor card I can find. (Well, within financial reason that is....and I know I can quickly lose reason around cool technology)

The Wildcat VP990, the VP 880 and the VP 970 all look like great cards. The 990 is pretty expensive and I'm not sure which is better the 880 or 970. What's the difference between the 880 and 970? Is the 990 worth the price tag? What would I be gaining by getting 990?

Lightwave is my primary application (primary most everything really) so I thought I would ask you all. Any thoughts or knowledge will be greatly appreciated. Thank you so very much ahead of time.

Bev

[Heimhenge]

For what it's worth, I decided to cut my losses on my current PNY Ti 4600 (which has been problematic from day 1) and get the VP 970. It's got good recommendations elsewhere on this board.

If you go to the 3D Labs site theres a good comnparison of all their cards. The other you mentioned exceed the VP 970 on a few specs like "polygons per second," but the 970 is a good deal. Found it for $375 at widgets.com.

[mattclary]

Wulfie, I have the VP 970 and like it pretty well, but if I had it to do over again, think I would have just gone with a GF 4 TI 4200 or better. Can't say I can tell a big difference from my old GF 4 TI 4200 I replaced with the VP 970. From what I'm hearing, LightWave just doesn't tap into the full potential of Open GL, so serious OGL accelerators just don't shine in LightWave.

[wulfie]

Thank you for your help guys. I am sorry the Wildcat 970 isn't helping more Matt. I still have hopes that LW will increase it's abilities to make better use of these GPUs

In any case I thought I would mention that I saw it for $359 at new.egg.com.

[mattclary]

Yeah, that's where I bought mine. I think it was $387 when I got it.

[CoMetX]

These Wildcat 3D cards are designed for 3D work... But ... Can they be used for games, and if so.. how good would it be? Better then normal consumer cards? I'm thinking of buying the Wilcat 4 7210 8x AGP Pro ($2500 US) Im hopeing this card will be good for more then just 3d? Thanks.

[CoMetX]

Hello? Does anyone know about the cards?

Thanks.
-CoMetX

[js33]

Personally I would never waste, er... I mean spend $2500 on just a video card. It's not worth it. It won't be any better than a $129 GF4 Ti4200 for LW and I don't think it would make any difference for games. It might be worse for games than a $100 GF4.

Use the money for something more useful like a faster computer, bigger or more HD, ram etc...You could buy a VT3 for that money and have video editing, compositing, paint, DDR, etc... and now even a full version of LW for not much more than you would spend on just a video card.

Of course thats just my opinion.:D

Cheers,
JS

[CoMetX]

My boss is paying... :D

[js33]

Hehehe
Well still I would spend his money on things other than a video card. LW plugins - Sasqatch full, G2 or many more. Get the DFX+/8 upgrade etc...many more useful things to spend the money on besides an overpriced video card that will be obsolete soon anyway. Get the GF FX5900 instead. It's about $400.
Just stay away from ATI cards. Bad OpenGL drivers.

Cheers,
JS

[MarkG]

Just stay away from ATI cards. Bad OpenGL drivers.

While I had some issues with the antique original Radeon in my old PC, so far the Radeon 9500 Pro in the new PC has run Lightwave fine: ATI's OpenGL drivers have improved substantially in the last couple of years, to the extent that they now run every OpenGL program I've tried at home, whereas two or three years ago you were lucky if anything other than the big name games would run.

[mattclary]

Cometx, I've never used the really high-end Wildcats, but I wouldn't spend the cash. I have a really hot 3ghz P4 machine with the VP 970 and I probably have half that amount in the whole machine. Have him buy you two machines instead. ;)

The VP 970 does pretty well with the games I've tested. I've used Jedi Knight II, Neverwinter Nights, and Icewind Dale II. The first 2 are Open GL, the last Direct X. FYI, none of the WIldcat cards implement Direct X 9, but no games do yet either (though some are forthcoming like Halflife II)

[js33]

Originally posted by mattclary
FYI, none of the WIldcat cards implement Direct X 9, but no games do yet either (though some are forthcoming like Halflife II)

Another good reason to save your, or your bosses, $2500 and buy a GF FX 5900 which does support DX9. :D I would buy a Video Toaster instead of the Wildcat. :D :D

Cheers,
JS

[MarkG]

Given the low performance of the GF FX on the DX9 shader benchmark numbers I've seen on the web (typically around half that of the 9800 Pro unless they, um, 'optimize' for the benchmark by replacing the shader with a different one), I'm not sure that's good advice: but then, to be honest, given the low frame-rates that any current DX9 card gets with some of the DX9 demos out there, I'm not sure that any current card is going to run real DX9 games too well. For example, the demos I've run on my 9500 Pro that make real use of DX9 shaders look very nice, but tend to be 30-40fps at best with AA enabled.

[js33]

Well Mark what do you want to do?

Play games or get some work done in LW?

I would still stay away from ATI for Lightwave use. They have a poor track record of usability with Lightwave compared to nVidia. So save even more money buy getting a plain GF4 card which will work fine in LW. DX9 means nothing to LW at least at this time.

Cheers,
JS

[MarkG]

You were the one that brought up DX9 as a reason for buying nvidia: personally if I was going to buy an nvidia card just for Lightwave I'd do as you suggested and buy a GF4, I can't see any reason to buy an FX instead, whether for games or Lightwave.. about the only thing it can do that a GF4 can't is run a few DX9 demos.

[CoMetX]

Hey. I want a video card that plays games/movies and runs LW well. What card would you recommend, please give me the best card, not the one that will save me money in the end. Thanks for your help.

-CoMetX

[petersonsf]

The best I'd get would be a Quadro 980XGL. I'd hold back on the FX Quadros until they get sounded out a bit more. Of course on the flip side I've gotten OpenGL games to run without too much trouble on a FireGL2.

As for what I'm using now, I alternate between a Quadro2 and a Ti4600. The Ti is faster obviously but I can't see much difference in quality. I took the 9800 Radeon plunge recently and when it gets here we'll see how well it works.

[neuromancer78]

I have a 1.3 ghz Intel CPU with 758 mb RAM and a 128 mb GF3 card .
1. I used to use a 32 mb ATI card and all it did was crash, it even crashed AFTER I took it out since Windows wasn't that smart to remove ALL the drivers for it and conflicted with the GF3 drivers.
2. Lightwave really only uses the OGL drivers for the real time imaging of the objects and textures while in the program, but does not do much to improve the render times, since all of that is crunched with the CPU.
3. Save your money, don't go with Wildcat regardless of the "graphic workstation class video card" title. if a GF3 card can run LW without problems and with decent speed, then ANY current 3D card can outperform mine.

BUT on the other hand when it does come down to how many polygons my card can render, once it gets into the 10,000 range it does slow down a bit - but not so much I can't keep working. Besides if you plan out your models right, you can still achieve high detail with a lower poly count. No need to model every bump and crack when you can use displacement maps.

No matter what it comes down to what you need it for. If your boss is making movies with computers then by all means spend the money. If he is low budget - then go with something that can be upgraded 5 times with the same amount of money the single Wildcat card costs.