GPU

[Peter Milner]

My new computer came with a Quadro 4000 graphics card.

Is there any way of utilizing the GPU capabilities to speed rendering up?

[David Nisbet]

I agree.  I also have the Quado 4000 so I'm interested if you find anything

[Ugo Iglesias]

I used to buy Quadros for my Workstations but not anymore and doubt will ever again.

They do the job but since I've discovered that they only improve rendering performance in some rendering softwares or engines, and those GPU's which actually do, only show their shy bling on the USD$600+ price tags, I gave up. I actually have one of those Quadros attached to a hardwood block as a paperweight. Of course, this is a totally personal and not discussable selfish taste on both paperweights and GPU's.

Basically, they are selling you a clocked down version of a gaming card that costs 1/3 and happens to come bundled with some marvelous driver which (between other stuff) simply delays the error reporting cycle of the unit so you believe that it doesn't almost ever crash.

On the bright side, they work very well when it comes to displaying virtually any size of model we're used to, allow the user to work flawlessly because they don't crash often and consume less resources energy-wise, thus generating less heat.

The Quadro 4000 is a very good card for any user that requires real-time display for editing (i.e. working on architectural modeling), but I'm sorry to inform that (again, this is personal), they do not help at all for rendering performance on almost any software. And what I mean is: Yes, there are some which will improve but not over what the CPU can do without it. And just for the record, there are software brands which have discarded the protocols that these cards' boxes promised to be the "ultra fast rendering solution". Pretty much every brand is moving to enable their software to make use of Nvidia's Cuda technology, which is what any contemporary Nvidia gaming GPU has in the toolbox.

The reason why I emphasize the fact that it's personal opinion is because there is too many ways and perspectives about the so called "Workstation Class" GPUs. Too many people know too much about it and will adamantly defend them. I'm just a simple user with a little experience and a couple of thousand dollars trashed pursuing 20 more minutes to improve my workflow. I have stopped my usual yearly PC overhaul (originally scheduled for October 2012) waiting for the cloud to occlude the blinding stars: My next Workstation will be less reliable on it's own power and I'm planning to move the processing to the Cloud, which by then, will pretty much be free of charge... If I find the way

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Nope-- nothing more yet.