What card for gpu renders

[dotbat]

my mac pro 3.1 is in trouble. i believe it is the video card. wont know for sure untill tommorow. my question is if i need a new card what should i get. it has to be nvidea. i do 3d and graphics, no gaming. i need the nvidea because im using a rendering engine that renders thru the gpu cores the more cores the better [octane render in beta now and is very nice}. any help greatly appreciated.
Mac pro 3.1 10gigs ram, card 8800
thanx in advance

 

[MacVidCards]

gtx285

 

[strausd]

I've heard from a few places that ATI does better with 3D rendering, but I'm not totally sure about that. If you can, you might want to wait til the next MP update for better GPUs to be released.

 

[nanofrog]

If you're stuck using nVidia, the GTX285 is all that's available. You'd be waiting longer than the next release of the MP for one of the newer cards (if it's developed), as currently, they're too new for Apple to have had adequate time to create the firmware and drivers for them. Then there's the current availability issues (very low quantities shipped so far).

I'd look into the software you're using in further detail (and perhaps give the specifics as it could help here), as it should also apply to ATI's offerings, not just nVidia (makes more sense for the GPGPU functionality to be available on more than one brand, assuming the card is new enough it supports GPGPU functionality). ATI's newer offerings do as well.

Worth the research IMO, as it's expected that the 5870 will be available at the time of release of the next MP models (card's been out long enough there's been adequate time to develop an Apple version, and there's no production/availability issues either).

 

[dotbat]

gpu renders

the reason for the nvidea is the cuda implementation on the card, ati i believe is more open cl. the software developer has targeted cuda for now and later development might include ocl. its still in beta and very impressive. so i'll go the 285. thank you all for the replies

 

[strausd]

This might help:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/macpro-whats-better-ati-radeon-4870-or-nvidia-gtx-285-20090720/