EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti FPB vga card

[angelonthny]

Hi All,

This is my first post in the forum. I'm planning to by a EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti FPB vga card.
I'm a 3D max (2012) user who dose 3d Architectural visualizations with Vray 2.
Will that vga help me to get good performance. My budget is $240, if any other vga recommended.

My PC Specs :

Intel i7 2600k 3.80Ghz
Intel Desktop Board DH67CL
2 x 4GB Kingston DDR3 1333MHZ
500GB WD Harddrive 7200 RPM (Sata)
Power Logic Azzura 3000 casing
Power Logic 900W (450W Pure Power) 24Pin Power Supply

Please kindly give me your comments and help me.

Thanks,
Angelo.

[DarkLane]

Hi,
it all depends whether you´re going to be doing any gaming on this machine. The GTX is a great card and would do a lot of arch viz stuff easily and beautifully, but if you´re going for a professional workstation you might want to consider a Quadro card like the 2000 Quadro 2000 They generally have more RAM, better cooling and are more accurate. It might stretch your budget but you might get lucky and find a deal in your range.

[angelonthny]

Hi DarkLane,
Thanks for your reply, it's very helpful. Mostly what I do is Arch Viz, I'm not that much of a game person.
I will consider on the Quadro card too. Also I have heard about the AMD FirePro cards. what do you all think
about AMD FirePro V4900?

[jiminy-billy-bob]

Quadro and FirPro cards are really overpriced. You can buy a consumer graphic card a lot more powerfull for the same price. Unlike 5-10 years ago, the pro cards don't have a lot of advantages : Now the graphic processors are the same for both. With pro cards, you get specific drivers for CG apps, but that's it really.
Consumer cards are totally fine for working in 3dsmax and Vray RT (Vray "not RT" doesn't use the graphic card at all).

For 240$, you can get a Nvidia Geforce GTX 560Ti with 2Go of RAM. It's one of the best Quality/Price ratio on the market.

(I wouldn't recommend you the new GTX 6xx cards from Nvidia, since the drivers are a bit buggy for CUDA and pro stuff. Plus the previous 5xx cards are now cheaper)

[angelonthny]

Yes that's true jiminy-billy-bob I checked some prices of the Quadro & the Firepro cards.
The prices are really high. As you suggested I would have to go for a GTX card.