Loklo Media 3D Animation Blog

One of the best (one of the only) magazine for 3D artists is 3D World. It’s a nice thick magazine, that costs $20/month if you buy it at a local stand. Annual subscriptions run at about $120 USD, which actually gets you 13 issues, as they publish a bonus issue in December for subscribers. 3D Worldmag.com

This magazine offers 3D tips, technical specs for new and recommended hardware, reviews, movie making how-tos, and the like. It also contains a great resource CD full of textures, models, light probes, software (some trial, some full versions) and stuff. For most months, the CD is worth more than the cost of the magazine. And at roughly half price for the annual subscription, more than worth it!! The magazine also has a section of a featured 3D modeling or animation tutorial for one of the mainstream apps each issue.

As I use Blender and 3DS Max, they are both featured applications that get plenty of coverage in the magazine. I think I’m going to subscribe very soon.

8500GT 3D Mark06 Stats

These are the embarassing stats of my existing entry-level/budget video card.  It works for Blender, since blender is so happy with any resources, and is not a resource hoggy type of an app.  But for 3DS Max, that’s another story.  Hence the coming of the ATI.  It should arrive anytime now, according to the tracking info.

The Nvidia handles 3DS Max objects pretty well, but when you get large scenes, with hundreds of objects, and then complixify it with animation, the display struggles.  Lower FPS than is acceptable.  (I’d be ok with 15-20fps for a large scene, but the one in question runs at around 3-5).

Now The New Radeon

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 3D Mark Stats

Ok – so the Radeon is definitely better.  It whopped the Geforce 8500, which was expected.  Interestingly though, the CPU score with the Radeon is a little lower.  I’m not sure if that’s reflective of the extra bandwidth being used, or something else.  Anybody with comments?

So the Radeon is also definitely faster in the 3D viewport in 3DS Max Design 2009.  It’s hard to give any exact test numbers for comparison, as I didn’t record anything officially with the Nvidia.  But it is faster – no doubt about it.

It’s also faster by a couple orders of magnitude in the GPU based Folding@Home program.  Again, no official numbers, but waaaay faster.

So for only $230 after mail in rebate, It’s definitely a worthy card.  My bottleneck now, I think, Lies in my motherboard’s budget abilities, and my budget ram.  Even though the q6600 is overclocked, it’s not fast enough due to mobo limitations.

In my windows computer, I’ve got an Nvidia based 8500GT (silent) 512mb video card. I’ve got some heavier 3D work coming my way, so an upgrade was needed. Still to arrive, is a Gigabyte ATI Radeon 4870HD 1GB. I have always been an Nvidia fan, but 3DS Max, which I need for this particular job, seems to favor the ATI architecture.

So that’s what I’m trying out. It was either that or the Nvidia GTX260 896MB card. Similar pricepoint (though the ATI card in this case has a nice rebate).

So – review and benchmarks coming for this relatively new card.