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UPDATE: I went ahead and ordered it.

I'm thinking of buying this card. Any thoughts on it, or do you know of a better card at around the same price range or less?

Would it help speed up my brush in 3d coat? I don't have a cuda card right now, and sometimes things like 'move' are really slow.

Thanks!

Here's the card I'm looking at:

MSI N250GTS Twin Frozr 1G GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Here's a link, but it's on the daily deals page, so may not be a good link for long!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127478&cm_sp=DailyDeal-_-14-127-478-_-Product

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Yeah that should work no problem. I am running a 275 and can say voxel sculpting in 3DC is pretty darn sweet with it. I think you'll be happy.

As for what it will improve, just voxel sculpting! That is the only thing in 3DC right now that uses CUDA. I'm sure that will change in the future of course.

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Thanks Geothefaust - nice to have some re-assurance. The card I have now isn't bad, but for 3D Coat it really lags in the vox room.

If you could spring a little extra, I would try and see if they could upgrade your order to a 260 or 275, as the 400 series cards have driven the 200 series down even further. You should be able to get a 275 for $180 or so...The naming convention doesn't sound like much of a difference, but for 3DC it's quite a difference, as the 275 has about twice the number of cores as the 250.

The 250 is essentially a re-branded 9800gtx. I had that model (gts 250) before I upgraded to a 275 and I noticed quite a bit of difference. It's definitely worth the extra $30-$50, if you can swing it.

EDIT: Just noticed that 275's are rare on the market now. I guess NVidia refuses to make any more. Nevertheless, you should be able to score on EBay for about $180 or less.

http://cgi.ebay.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-275-896-superclocked-edition-OC-/130398987940?cmd=ViewItem&pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item1e5c62a6a4

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Woops, too late - the 250 came via UPS today. Newegg ships fast!

I am really happy with it though! I installed the CUDA 3 drivers and the difference is like night and day from my old card. I'm actually able to sculpt on something with over 18 million tris (using the smaller brushes). I know, that's too many to be practical, but had to try it and it worked GREAT!. :D

Ian

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Sorry to jump in on your thread iangregory, but I was wondering...if you have to choose between two cards, one with less RAM but more cores, and one with more RAM and fewer cores, but otherwise that are not too different...which one would you opt for?

Will 3DC in CUDA voxel sculpting only use your video cards RAM or will it use your system RAM too?

I'm on a budget...and I HATE to over heat my system because of a large video card etc. So I'm looking at something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162043

To put it in perspective, my current card only has 8 streaming processors! I don't play games, most of my 3D is RENDERING intensive not realtime intensive...still even this card should be a huge improvement right?

Mr. Jones- I know you have that beefy card, but I'm not hacking my case or upgrading my power supply just so I can sculpt bacteria living on mites that are living on fleas, that are living on rats that are...

In the end, I'd like to dip my toe in the voxel sculpting world a bit more and see if I can ditch zbrush with this card in my machine. Heck I'll probably ditch zbrush anyway since I need to upgrade some expensive software licenses soon. To be honest I only need to sculpt something once in a blue moon...and often it's only of moderate density (aka 2 million triangles or so). The rest I'd do with procedural textures or normal mapping anyway. So will this card get me over that hump?!

Thanks,

Gideon

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Memory on graphics cards is only really relevant for high res textures.

The performance difference with higher memory graphics cards in tests is usually negligable or non existant.

Voxels I believe use system ram.

I would say get an equivalent(same priced) radeon but I'd likely get shouted down for that.

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Memory on graphics cards is only really relevant for high res textures.

The performance difference with higher memory graphics cards in tests is usually negligable or non existant.

Voxels I believe use system ram.

I would say get an equivalent(same priced) radeon but I'd likely get shouted down for that.

But 3DC doesn't use OpenCL yet right, so I wouldn't really gain anything with a radeon card- correct? I love AMD, but I still am kind of weary of using any ATI cards...the drivers kind of mess with programs like SI too much...

Now if it were for games alone...well then I'd be hitting it up!

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