Best Blender 3d Fanless GC?

[magick.raven]

I am looking to upgrade my Graphics card. I want the fastest Graphics Card I can get for Blender 3d that is silent. Currently my card is fanless and that is great. Running a 64bit AMD Kubuntu Linux system with 4 gb Ram.
Thanks!

[Cerb]

In what way is Blender stressing your current video card? What, if any, near future features are must-haves, as far as Blender/video card go?

Oh, and budget?

[magick.raven]

In what way is Blender stressing your current video card? What, if any, near future features are must-haves, as far as Blender/video card go?

Gforce 7600 GS currently. Stressing? That is hard to answer. I can't do Scalpt with meshes with a lot of points. That is the biggest problem currently. Also if the scene has to many objects the program become sluggish. Must haves? Fast? No fan and good 2d performance in both reading quality and also HD movie playback without the CPU having to do all the work on a high res monitor. My current card has a really hard time keeping up with high bit rates of the new HD films. OpenGL is important also. I want to upgrade to a wide screen high res monitor too.

Oh, and budget?

100 Euros or so. Perhaps plus 50 and the cash for a fan-less cooler, if I must. I am willing to pay more if I must because of a price point but I would rather have the whole thing come in at 100.

Thanks.

[tim851]

In what way is Blender stressing your current video card? What, if any, near future features are must-haves, as far as Blender/video card go?

...I can't do Scalpt with meshes with a lot of points (...) My current card has a really hard time keeping up with high bit rates of the new HD films. OpenGL is important also. I want to upgrade to a wide screen high res monitor too.

Are you sure the Scalpt thing is a graphics card limitation?
I am no expert in 3D rendering, but to my knowledge certain renderers might run off the GPU, but the actual application itself is entirely CPU-based in which case sluggishness could indicate an upgrade of CPU or RAM is more prudent.

I'm writing this because you mention an inability to play HD films and while GPU-capabilities are nice, any PC used in 2010 for 3D rendering should have a CPU capable of decoding some little HD video.

[magick.raven]

Are you sure the Scalpt thing is a graphics card limitation?
I am no expert in 3D rendering, but to my knowledge certain renderers might run off the GPU, but the actual application itself is entirely CPU-based in which case sluggishness could indicate an upgrade of CPU or RAM is more prudent.

I'm writing this because you mention an inability to play HD films and while GPU-capabilities are nice, any PC used in 2010 for 3D rendering should have a CPU capable of decoding some little HD video.

Not an inability but just dropouts. My GPU has no support for HD while I know there are like 5 levels of support on the newer cards.

Some other stuff I found.
For the performance:
I tried to decode a baseline 1080P movie on GTS250 and GT240, GT220. The result is strange -- got about 60fps on GTS250, while 200fps on GT240 and 100fps on GT220.
Is that means the decode ability of VP4 is much much better than VP2?

Tobias Oelgarte to bf-blender

The modelling depends strongly on the GPU since OpenGL is used to draw
the interface and the content you edit. Especially when you have large
scenes (many details) a good GPU might improve performance. But usually
it is the rendering that is most time consuming, if you don't tend to
use the weaker (less possibilities, especially shadows, refractions and
reflections) OpenGL renderer. Physics, Postprocessing and Rendering
strongly depend on the CPU and are usually the bottleneck when it comes
to finish projects. A greater use of hardware acceleration (GPU) would
be recommended, since there is much potential sleeping or unused. But it
is hard to implement, because it always has its limits and since not all
users have a GPU new enough to work with OpenCL, a fallback with same
results must be provided.