Quadro?

[xmanrigger]

I am in the process of helping a guy select parts for a build I am doing for him.

How hard-core do you need to be in Photoshop or any app that utilizes a Quadro gpu, to justify having one? Namely dishing out the $$$$$.

This guy has lots of dough and wants a bad ass rig. He said he wants to kick ass gaming as well as use Photoshop. Do the Quadro cards even game decent?

I am thinking a GTX580 or a pair will be lots. He originaly picked this card NVIDIA Quadro 600 by PNY 1.0GB DDR3 PCI-E16 DVI Display Port Fermi Workstation Video. Card Pretty low end card at any standard in my opinion.

Not sure why he picked this mobo either: ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution X58 with this cpu Core i7 Extreme Edition 980X Good board for overclocking that bitch?

[NeverGive7]

Let's assume the obvious shall we, that Macs are pretty much the industry standard for video + photo editing while running Adobe based products like Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere...

OK, that was easy. So now lets look at their specs for GPUS.

Highest iMac has a ATI 5750

Highest MacPro has a ATI 5770

So with that in mind I would say that anything over that is probably excessive for Photoshop. I personally only run a 9500GT 1gb and that is more then enough for PS CS5 Extended. (For me anyways)

Gaming on the other hand falls under the "sky's the limit" rule I suppose. I don't have any personal experience with Quadro based gfx cards, but I have never had a client ask me to put one in a rig either, LOL. A quick search turns up a common theme though.. Yes they can be gamed on, No they are not the best for gaming.

What I would do is find out which games he likes to play and do a little searching for benchmarks and results and try to find the optimal card for his needs. Sounds like he is going for 'cool' though, so just load it up with as many GTX580's as you can and call it a day I suppose.

Just don't forget to tell him that all the 580's in the world probably isn't going to get any pussy to jump up and down on his dick, and his rig will only be cool until the next generation of cards comes out :up:

[CrazyJoe]

Yup, what NG7 said.

If you can game at decent framerates, Photoshop/CS5 will run fine. The only thing I would highly recommend for Photoshop/CS5 would be as much Ram as possible. If he does a lot of photo editing or Video editing, 12 gigs would be optimal on a standard PC rig. :up:

[NeverGive7]

^^ Totally agreed, that is one area where mine really suffers. I have 4gbs of memory and allow PS 60% usage. I only need to open about 18 or so 15mp RAW files through Camera Raw and that is tapped out and I am running on scratch then.

Another thing to ponder is some sort of redundancy for his storage. I go triple with mine to my OS drive, internal storage drive, and a external storage drive (manually, no RAID) If he is going for 'bad ass' though you might try and sell him on a RAID 1 or 5 array to keep those pics safe. If he edits for a commercial purpose though I wouldn't present it as an option, but a necessity.

[xmanrigger]

Let's assume the obvious shall we, that Macs are pretty much the industry standard for video + photo editing while running Adobe based products like Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere...

OK, that was easy. So now lets look at their specs for GPUS.

Highest iMac has a ATI 5750

Highest MacPro has a ATI 5770

So with that in mind I would say that anything over that is probably excessive for Photoshop. I personally only run a 9500GT 1gb and that is more then enough for PS CS5 Extended. (For me anyways)

Gaming on the other hand falls under the "sky's the limit" rule I suppose. I don't have any personal experience with Quadro based gfx cards, but I have never had a client ask me to put one in a rig either, LOL. A quick search turns up a common theme though.. Yes they can be gamed on, No they are not the best for gaming.

What I would do is find out which games he likes to play and do a little searching for benchmarks and results and try to find the optimal card for his needs. Sounds like he is going for 'cool' though, so just load it up with as many GTX580's as you can and call it a day I suppose.

Just don't forget to tell him that all the 580's in the world probably isn't going to get any pussy to jump up and down on his dick, and his rig will only be cool until the next generation of cards comes out :up:

Thanks for the reply 7. You cleared it up and confirmed my thinking. I was pushing him towards a GTX580. And after reading specs @ nvidia, the Quadros are aimed at CAD and 3D Design. And I am thinking he is more geared to gaming power than Photoshop. So problem solved.

As far as the memory goes, he chose 2X Corsair XMS3 TR3X6G1600C9 6GB, so he should be good. What is better, 2 kits of 6GB or 1 kit of 12GB? Pros / cons?
I recommended the Dominator GT 2000mhz instead. He said he wants an epic machine after all.

[ND40oz]

If it's only photoshop cs5, then he should be fine with the GTX580. If he's using Premier Pro as well, then he may want to go with one of the cards on the Mercury Engine list.

As for the P6T6 WS, it's a beast, definitely one of the best X58 boards, shouldn't have any issues hitting 210 BCLK.

[EIGHTLUG]

^^ Totally agreed, that is one area where mine really suffers. I have 4gbs of memory and allow PS 60% usage. I only need to open about 18 or so 15mp RAW files through Camera Raw and that is tapped out and I am running on scratch then.
.

Something to keep in mind is that your PC will begin to utilize a section of your hard drive as virtual RAM, when RAM usage begins to get tapped. It's referred to as a "Paging File." I believe there are settings where you could change the perameters of your paging file. If i recall correctly it defaults to 1.5 times the size of your RAM. It's MUCH slower, obviously, than your RAM.. But it saves your PC from crashes, due to excessive RAM usage. ;)

[NeverGive7]

Something to keep in mind is that your PC will begin to utilize a section of your hard drive as virtual RAM, when RAM usage begins to get tapped. It's referred to as a "Paging File." I believe there are settings where you could change the perameters of your paging file. If i recall correctly it defaults to 1.5 times the size of your RAM. It's MUCH slower, obviously, than your RAM.. But it saves your PC from crashes, due to excessive RAM usage. ;)

You're right DC in regard to the paging file, but the setiings within PS stop you before you get to that. (At least the recommended settings anyways..)

So for example I have 4gbs of memory. At idle I use about 1200mb so I have about 2800mb left. I have my PS set to use 60% of total memory which is 2450mb. After I use up that 2450mb of memory it starts writing to a 'scratch disk'. So even though I have maxed my allocated memory in PS and am writing to the scratch disk, I am still only utilizing 90% total of the available memory.

Here is where the pros talk about it :)
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-748aa.html

[CrazyJoe]

... As far as the memory goes, he chose 2X Corsair XMS3 TR3X6G1600C9 6GB, so he should be good. What is better, 2 kits of 6GB or 1 kit of 12GB? Pros / cons?
I recommended the Dominator GT 2000mhz instead. He said he wants an epic machine after all.

I'd get the matched 12GB Dominator GT's.

I have 6 right now and am about to pull the trigger on another 6. My only concern is that the next set may not have the same stability / timing capabilities as the ones I already have.

[FaRKle!]

What resolution is your friend running? The 2GB of VRAM on the ATI 6950/70 could come in handy. Then again... there are those new 3GB GTX 580s...

And the P6T6 WS Revolution is a great board. I've had mine since Dec 09 and it's been rock solid. having 6 PCI-E x16 slots is great.

[Kuro]

Two SSDs in raid 0 for the OS and CS5 will be faster and more noticeable improvement then a Quadro GPU. (Unless your talking big bucks spending on Quadros and then you still would want a SSD or two)

Where's Langer? he's had a few Quadros in his time