Graphics Card for terragen?

[cyphyr]

I know this has been discussed before but I am still unclear on one thing. Would there be any point at all in a better graphics card versus a lower end one for terragen? Would there be any point at all in more graphics memory, or multiple cards (sli etc)? I know there would be no effect on the actual rendering but would there be an impact on screen re-draw?
Thanks
richard

[Zylot]

I see the effect be minimal, and probably only if you are doing about 5 things at once.

[matrix2003]

I understand that it won't help the render,
But it definitely helps doing the other five things,
  - while you are doing the render!

[PG]

Indeed, I believe the only thing Terragen uses it for is drawing the window. Even then I think that's only Vista. Save your cash for a new processor.

[cyphyr]

Thanks guys, this is as I thought but I wanted to get some confirmation
richard

[jo]

Hi Richard,

Right now you don't need a particularly good graphics card for TG2. However I think for the future a better graphics card will be useful as we improve object previews and such. If I was speccing a machine right now I wouldn't go for the absolute top of the line, but I wouldn't go for the bottom of the heap either. When I order a new Mac, hopefully in the next few months, I'll be adding the 512 MB ATI Radeon HD 4870 to it. That isn't a stupendous card, and on the Mac our options are very limited ( two whole cards to choose from ), but I believe it's a lot better than the 512MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 which is the base model. I'm optimistic that, unlike last time I bought a new machine and up-specced the graphics card, this time we'll actually be adding something to give it a workout :-).

Regards,

Jo

[jaf]

Also, I can't believe there's too many TG2 users that don't run other applications that can take advantage of a good graphics card.

I switched to a Nvidia card so I could take advantage of CUDA enabled programs, like 3D-Coat.  That's a program one could use for preparing models for TG2 and it likes fast graphics cards (though it runs pretty good on some older cards too.)

I believe Andrew eventually will release an openCL (not to be confused with openGL) version that will take advantage of CUDA type processing for ATI/Nvidia or other cards which support it (openCL).

If you are interested, you can look at:  http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn.html  for information on what CUDA is and can do.
This is a good place to gain some insight into openCL:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
And this link has a good overview of GPU computing and references to ATI's Stream:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPGPU

I'm not sure it's wise to purchase a graphics card only because it supports one of the GPU computing formats but you don't really have an application that will use it.  Especially since there isn't a real dominant standard yet (at least I don't think so -- maybe someone can add something on this?)  But at least the cost has come down quite a bit from a couple years back.

[rcallicotte]

jaf, thanks.  I had not heard about this new graphics standard, until now.

[jaf]

I'm not sure it's a standard but rather some posturing over some potentially great performance gains for certain types of data processing.  It's interesting, if you have a CUDA enabled card, to run some of the test applications, especially the graphical ones like fluid and particle simulations.  These are available at the Nvidia site for download.

As usual, the gaming industry has driven the graphics card manufacturers to make better, faster, and cheaper products, which some smart people have found additional uses for (other than games.)  I would be willing to bet there's some TG2 code that could utilize some of the processing power, but that is probably a risky direction to take at this point.