Thinking about changing to a GTX 680

B

beta3designs

New Member
Hi there!
I have a Nvidia Quadro 4000 I have to say I'm an engineering student and therefore a future engineer, I've read this card is very good for CFD's, structural analysis, etc. The thing is I am also interested in 3d graphics and at the moment that's what I do in my free time, rendering 3d images takes usually very long but with the actual GPU technology it is getting faster and faster. With my quadro 4000 I can render complex scenes in a decent time but I think having a GTX 680 would be much faster speaking about rendering but I am unsure on how it would perform in some engineering tasks.
So I can't decide myself I don't know if it is a good change or if I will regret it in the future because maybe Quadro 4000 is more powerful for engineering. Besides that, I don't know if it would be as easy as changing the graphics card or maybe I would need a new power supply?
I would like to have some advice so I can decide what to do: keep my Q4000 or change it to a GTX 680?

The whole specs are:
Gigabyte GA H - 55 - M 1333 DDR-800DUAL SATA PCI-e
Intel i7-2600 @ 3.4Ghz
Ball Bearing Fan Extra Low Noise
Dimm Memory RAM 16Gb DDR3 1333 Kingston
2Tb HDD Maxtor/Seagate Barracuda IV UltraDMA Serial ATA 7200rpm
GPU Nvidia Quadro 4000 2gb DDR5
Sound Card Audio Ac'97 7.1 Channels Surround
and some extras.

Thanks in advance! :)
 
Hi mate, whats your budget?
What PSU do you have?

The GTX680 has 6 times the number of CUDA cores so it will rape the Q4000 and even your CPU in certain programs. Pity you cannot OC that 2600, but you should make sure boost is at 3.8GHz or higher if possible.

But if you have a sufficiently powerful PSU and a grand free, then this is the card you want for your purposes. The Titans are sub grade Quadro cards that didn't quite make it, but are still insane and fine for the armature or home user. The nvidia Titan has 10x the CUDA cores that your Q4000 has.
 
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I wouldn't recommend the Titan with the possibility of next generation cards coming down the road, better money would be spent on a 690 in the same regard... however id just say save 500 and get the 680.
 
the 680 will be a good choice. the 690 is a dual gpu card so it would be a waste since your programs will only utilze one gpu, unless gaming...the 680 4 gig card would be great. enough memmory on the card to handle complex things, and a whole lot more cuda cores than you currently have. you could even get the 4 gig version of the 670, save a little, and still be better off then you are now.
 
Hi there! Thanks for the replies, I already thought about Titan and 690 budget is not a problem but I prefer not to spend too much so I discarded them, the idea was to sell my current Q4000 and get the gtx680.
I'm not at home right now but I'll check the PSU when I get there and tell you, but do you think it would be a problem? It is supplying my quadro 4000 correctly but I'm not aware about power consumption differences between both.
As for the rendering speed I know gtx680 will rape my q4000 hehehe but I am still thinking about precision, I don't know if there is much difference in the computing precision (single and double precision gigaflops)? Because that is what holds me back from changing it, I might use the card for engineering applications such as SolidWorks, CATIA, etc.

Getting the gtx670 with 4gb seems also a good option as you said, even though it has few less CUDA's, would perform much worse than the 680?

Btw, what did you mean by:
you should make sure boost is at 3.8GHz or higher if possible.
Click to expand...
How should I boost it?
I don't know if it's necessary but maybe should say I have a partition one with Ubuntu 12.04 and another one with Windows 7 and I usually use Linux.
 
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The refrence to boost is the auto overclock feature that is avaliable on AMD and Intel processors, it is set in the bios.
 
More ram on your gpu isn't going to do anything.

When you game, the image has to be stored on your gpu memory. That's when ram is actually important. But since you aren't gaming across 3 monitors or anything like that, you only need like 2 gigs of ram. I'd shoot for the cuda cores instead.
 
Hmm, not so true. Morphology mathematics requires memory proportional to the base so it can get large. The Harvard students use cards with 6GB VRAM for a reason.

But yeah, cuda cores if used by your applications will own.
 
I can run into instances where 2 gigs of ram is not enough with my 680, i would love 6gb of ram on a card but cannot validate the cost of that card..
 
Thanks for the replies again, very good information, I think my best option is gtx670: not far fewer cuda cores and twice the RAM for a reasonable price.
The only thing that still holds me back is not knowing if I will regret the change speaking about CATIA, SolidWorks, Ansys, Matlab, etc. Maybe I should check compatibilities but I think they all recommend quadro before a gaming card, so I can't decide myself... Maybe should keep my quadro and not sell it but then I don't know if I should spend the price of a 670 right now :S
I will check the PSU tonight and post it here.
Thanks again!
 
the 670 wshould work fine. the added memmory on the card will help in the apps your going to use. precision is where you might have less performance than the quadro card. but i really dont think it will be an issue. if its not supported by the app, then you may have to go into the folder where it installed on your c drive and look for "gpu list" or something refrencing gpu compatibilty. you may have to open it and edit in the name of the gtx 670 for it to work the right way. i know i had to do this with all my adobe software cuz it wasnt on that list so i couldnt use the cuda tech. in the programs. i added it to the list, and bam...works great at rendering now.

to toast...we arnt just talking about gaming. we are talking about other cad and creation apps that will use more than 2 gigs of the graphics card memory. and even if we were talking strictly gaming, id still opt for a higher amount a mammory on the card, since i can play crysis 2 @1080p with ultra settings, then go into the nvidia control panel and turn up all the eye candy up in there, i always use 2.4gig to 3 gigs of my 4 gig card, and maintain high framrates because of the added graphics memory. plus, games are yet to come out over this year and the next which will more than likley use more and more graphics memory. better to get more now, than to have to regret not getting more, later....gaming aside....the OP willl benefit from more vram on his card
 
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