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[ronaldefarmer]

This old Optiplex 320 with a minimal onboard graphics adapter and Core 2 Duo CPU does a very poor job of displaying objects and scenes in the Anim8or workspace. Am I correct in thinking that a better graphics card might help with this?

[johnar]

 I've finally upgraded 2 a better pc. Not that flash. Intel Celeron, 32bit,dual core 1.60GHz. 2Gb Ram. (win 7 home premium)  Better than my old one. Put an old nvidia GeForce 7800GT graphics card in it. Lovin it. Steves been a nvidia man for some years, and i imagine that nvidia graphics cards go hand in hand with anim8ors requirements.
 The nvidia Geforce i put in has really made a nice difference to how anim8or runs and displays.

[ronaldefarmer]

Johnar: Thanks for your response.

I am shopping for a video card and just trying to get an idea what to expect from this particular upgrade while having a generally mediocre system otherwise. I guess I am wondering how much the CPU (as opposed to the graphics processor) affects the Anim8or workspace. Of course, I'm also struggling to decide between Radeon vs Geforce--any suggestions?

[kreator]

Both are good for anim8or! but lots of CPU cores are the key to faster rendering even though anim8or does not currently support multi threading.

[ronaldefarmer]

Hi Kreator,

I can live with the slow rendering (for now). My scenes are sometimes very high-poly and so the workspace often becomes very sluggish and glitchy, making it difficult to model and positions objects and lights, etc. I'm hoping that a good video card will help but I know my CPU is weak also.

[kreator]

My scenes are sometimes very high-poly and so the workspace often becomes very sluggish and glitchy, making it difficult to model and positions objects and lights, etc

Here is a tip I was told many, many moons ago.... Hide everything in scene mode that u are not working on. This speeds up the CPU considerably, and then it wont be so sluggish 

[ronaldefarmer]

Great tip, Kreator, thanks. That certainly does help.

[kreator]

There used to be a great tips section, but it looks like that got lost some time ago, perhaps it should be restarted somewhere again.

A lot of old members no longer frequent the site and have moved on..

The Gfx card will certainly give you a better display experience, but as previously mentioned the CPU is the key this helps the workspace considerably as would more memory.

I am running 8Gig dram on both my Desktop(Duo Core) and Laptop(Quad Core) machines with a Nvidia 9500GT on the desktop and AMD Radeon HD6520G on the Laptop. 

[MvGulik]

HP Compaq Business Desktop dc7100 Small Form Factor
Not a bad system, as general computing goes. (Gaming ... erm, lets ignore that part for the moment.)
Biggest problem ... The none standard format 240 power supply, preventing plugging in any current 3D cards. (all video cards now a day asking for at least a 300 power supply)

That includes the Club 3D GeForce® 8400 GS I recently obtained.

Although, I can't complain about the price. $0.00 + $0.00

[cooldude234]

Am I correct in thinking that a better graphics card might help with this?

A better graphics card will help with realtime rendering (preview view) of higher resolution models. Where as a better CPU will help with rendering the final image and as well as editing objects (not just viewing them but editing the vertices on the models, positioning vetecies etc.).
More ram will definally help if you have a lot running in the background of your computer (internet pages, music and video players, etc). and it will also help with running extremely complex models with a very high vertex count.

[ronaldefarmer]

Are there different kinds of GPUs for different tasks? Would a low-end "workstation" graphics card (Firepro 2270 -512mb, DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1) be a good choice for running Anim8or, or should I look for a standard desktop card?

[cooldude234]

Of course there is. I know quadros are very useful for CAT scan systems whereas a normal gaming card wouldn't be. However Quadros are several thousands of dollars each, not a very viable budget for the every day consumer
However any decent graphics cards from today (as in from 4 years to now) should be fine even for more complex modeling. Heck even lintel's latest built in graphics chips on their CPU's (which from a computer enthusiast stand point I ABSOLUTELY HATE) have enough horsepower and good enough driver support to be outstanding for use in Anim8or.
Of course though the more horsepower a GPU has the better anim8ors preview will run but there is a limit to how noticeable it is. For instance if I can render 30 fps max in the realtime preview render I am going to notice a difference if it ran 100fps max; but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1000 FPS vs 10 000 FPS, because it runs silky smooth either way.
Now if you are running extremely high res models (several million polygons in a model), that would lower the frame rate count in the preview render so having that extra power GPU would be nice. There are also other benefits to having a better GPU like GPU specific features; but that requires your software to support which anim8or doesn't (things like PHYSX or Nvidia's new way of doing realtime global illumination which be it amazing I still don't think is as good as realtime path tracing).

So if you were looking for a new graphics card for mainly anim8or use on a budget, I would go with a lower end gaming card (70-100 bucks). They might not offer the best buck vs frame-per-second value, but they are cheap and they do work.
Alternativly you can sometimes find used older (but at their time, higher end) graphics cards for cheap that someone is trying to get rid of (if your lucky you might even get it FREEEEEEEEEEE , that's how I got my GTX powered laptop).