need 3d rendering gpu: questions you can answer!

hi
i am in need of a good gpu for 3d work and rendering, and i am looking through notebookcheck site for gpu comparisons.

i am focusing on the cinebench r10 scores because i think that's what determines how good a gpu is for rendering, yes?

but i want to know what makes a gpu a better gpu than the other. i dont understand the memory bus width and the GDDR3's and GDDR5's.


for example, i am comparing these two:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-FX-3700M.14962.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-FirePro-M7740.18791.0.html

ATI firepro has better score in cinebench, but it has lower memory bus width, and it's a GDDR5.
while the quadro fx3700 has more memory bus width, and is a GDDR3, and has lower score for cinebench.
what is DirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1?
is it much better than 10.0 and 4.0?

can someone straighten this out for me?

 

Careful putting too much faith in the notebookcheck.net benchmarks, they've been wildly inaccurate in some cases.

 

at least the specifications are correct right?
so can you tell me what to look for in a gpu?

 

I would assume the specifications are correct, that's just standard information. The benchmarks can be pretty off though, as I believe they're user submitted.

Unfortunately I don't do any rendering, just photo editing, so I don't have the knowledge to tell you which way to go. If no one here can help, maybe try a 3DSMax or general 3D design forum.

 

The GDDR5 in the ATI card will basically cancel out the 128-bit memory bus, so memory bandwidth should be the same on each card. Number of shaders and clock speed can't really be compared between ATI and Nvidia since they work differently, but since those cinebench scores were taken with the same processor, and the difference was so drastic, I would have to recommend the ATI... unless you would possibly use CUDA.

 

If you want to do renderings you should look at CPU´s, not GPU´s.

For now, GPU´s only take part in the real-time rendering of the viewports. "Real" renders are done by the CPU.

Next year we should probably see the first render engines that also take advantage of GPU´s.

 

Still, that really speeds up work on complicated models. Even if the full render is done on the CPU, doing the working renders on the GPU makes it much quicker to make changes and so on.

 

I'd suggest that you take the ATI card, it supports a newer version of OpenGl which is what mist CAD and 3d modeling software use.

 

if you want GPU performance... the first thing to really look at is the memory interface (64-bit, 128-bit, 256-bit, etc..)

that will determine both its overall performance and its longevity for future usage.

Also, currently videocards are coming out with GDDR5, which has curved the performance results towards lower memory interfaces.

So a high-end 256-bit card with GDDR3 can actually get competition with a mid-range 128-bit GPU with GDDR5.

Either of your choices should be fine... go which ever one has better driver support and pricing.

 

thanks
this helped alot