I recently built a solid gaming PC for my step father that he likes to brag about to his family and it turns out his niece needs a new computer. She is in the tail end of her schooling for Graphic design and animation ( or something like that I am not really sure.) but I have been asked to build her machine. As far as components go I am pretty solid on everything but I could really use some advice for the GPU.
Based on the short list of programs she is using and will be using can I please get a few suggestions.
-Auto CAD
-Mud Box
-Zbrush
-Photoshop
**EDIT**
Are FirePro or Quadro cards really worth it?
That is a strange list of programs.
A gaming card should be fine for that list..
I know nothing about graphic design/3D modeling/ Animation I am just going off what she told me. But I was thinking about going the Gaming Card route just wanted some input on the FirePro/Quadro cards because I know nothing about those besides that they cost a lot.
$1600 for the entire build.
Z-Brush and Mudbox are notorious for taxing display performance due to the huge number of Polygons they produce for models compared with more conventional poly modelling programs like 3DS Max/Maya. This is where the professional cards and their drivers make more sense, even if their pricing structure doesn't. At that budget you would be looking maybe at a Quadro K2000. I have that in my workstation and its well, "underwhelming."
A GTX 780 might work well, you might want browse through a forum, Autodesk Area is an excellent resource centre, as is CG Society.
With zbrush the gpu stupidly little. Like less then even photoshop. Mudbox might favor quadros but in my experience it still runs well on geforce cards.
+1 to you sir.
Per Pixologic:
"NOTE ABOUT GRAPHICS CARDS:
ZBrush is software rendered, meaning that ZBrush itself is doing the rendering rather than the GPU. Your choice of GPU will not matter so long as it supports the recommended monitor resolution."
The Autodesk hardware wizard for Mudbox gives a long list of Fire Pro and Quadro recommendations but that doesn't mean that Geforce or Radeon cards won't perform just as well.
I was really hoping to hear that about Geforce/ Radeon cards. Thanks Fetchez as I said before i know squat about these programs she is going to use except what their respective websites say. Before seeing what the autodesk site recommended I was just going to slap a 780ti or 290x in there but then I lost confidence thanks for giving me some back.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2Iwzc
Here, The GTX 780 is more than capable compare to it's workstation counterparts in the same pricerange. I did put a 4820k instead of a 4770k because the CPU rendering things such as photoshop should benefit from the more L3 cache (i think) All around this is probably overkill for what you're doing but whatever, better overkill than underkill