Recommend me a graphics card (Medium Hardcore Gaming, Medium Prodcution Work)

I am thinking about purchasing a graphics card that can run the following programs decent (Assuming we have an i5-3320 or i5-3210 processor with 8GB of RAM)

Games
-Mass Effect 1,2,3 (At least 35 FPS on medium)
-Team Fortress 2
-Minecraft w/ OpenGL Shaders
-Portal 2 (At least 45 FPS on medium)
-Diablo 3
-Crysis 2 (Won't play this on high or ultra)
-DotA 2

Production Software
-Sony Vegas Pro 11
-Fraps Very
-Autodesk 3ds Max 2012/2013
-Autodesk Maya 2012/2013 (This is my main concern, it is the one that requires the most power)
-Adobe After Effects CS5.5
-Adobe Photoshop CS5.5

Suggest me a graphics card that can run this stuff decently (remember I said decently) and won't have the fan blaring or the temperature going over 38 degrees Celsius.

Drawbacks I am willing to make-
-external GPU
-Games running on low if its a bad day (mostly medium)
-Autodesk software can render animations overnight

Thanks!

 

get a desktop and a laptop. push the render work to your desktop.

 

For a great price and for amazing performance go for a AMD Radeon 6870. Great card and have been using one for a while now with no complaints. I can blow through all of those games.

 

7970m!

 

Sorry, might be crazy, I'm getting an ultrabook Can't make a portable desktop (not really at least)

My main concern is the production software Autodesk Maya 2013, can you download a trial and test how well that performed?

I can't seem to find this GPU available for sale separately and not together with a computer.

 

Any preferable laptops you want to mention so we can give you a insight in which GPU is the best....?

 

The highest i have seen in Ultrabook classed notebooks is the 650m from Nvidia.
Should be able to handle gaming.

 

Suggest me a graphics card that can run this stuff decently (remember I said decently) and won't have the fan blaring or the temperature going over 38 degrees Celsius.

Thanks!
.......


I am sure you can find something that will do all those things but this one thing. I don't think you will find a ultrabook with a good enough video card to do what you want it to do. What is good for gaming is not very good for cad/modeling.

how complex are the models you are doing in maya and 3ds max? which ever you choose video card I would go nvidia over ati because of cuda support.

It all depends on how much money you want to spend. If the sky is the limit then get an ultrabook with a thunderbolt port and a gtx 680, but then you are going to need a monitor also.

 

hmm the new XPS 15, 13 models might be something for you, just checked them out

you also want to lookout for the newest MSI and Lenovo models and maybe some of the newer Acer Timeline's

 

I think you're going to want a 650m to handle gaming. But if you're going to be using Maya to do rendering (don't worry about modeling) then it's going to be hard to find a laptop that makes you happy.

The reason you want to get a laptop and a desktop is to push the work of *rendering* to the desktop. Rendering can take an hour, day, or week, and it's simply not a portable task. You want to be able to use your laptop as a laptop, so do modeling on your laptop, close the lid, take it with you, play games, whatever, and use your single computer render farm to do rendering. It's not that hard to set up, you don't need to be at your computer to have it take over the rendering job.

 

Yep, if you need to get a portable, relatively thin laptop, your best bet is 650m or 7750m. These are just fine for 1080p gaming.

The faster mobile cards are only available in bulkier desktop replacement type laptops.

Not sure about running maya and 3DSMaxx, but if you will be working with extremely large image and video files in 64-bit apps like Photoshop CS5, etc., go for 8-16GB RAM and get a good SSD if you can afford it.

 

Hmmm...I suppose I can build an external GPU and plug it in?

 

As far as which laptop I wanna purchase I'm probably going with a Vaio Z or the new Gigabyte U2442, can anyone suggest me relatively light ones that can handle this stuff?