Hi nxio
Thanks for the enquiry. It's good to see that requests and seeking advice are being made about hardware requirements, rather than jumping in and assuming things will work on any platform.
The V5900 is definitely below minimum requirements. Also, it's architecture and support of more recent graphics features is lacking, for example only supports PCI-e V2 (not V3).
The
FirePro W7000 Passmark is 4061.
The
FirePro W8000 Passmark is still only 4329.
Those Passmarks fall at the low end of Moderately Complex Scenes, and definitely not at the Complex/Very Complex Scene level.
Price wise at nearly $1000 for a W8000 compared to the top of the pick GTX Titan Black/Titan X, and the GTX 980 at half the cost, it's almost a cost option to consider a separate dedicated PC.
Selecting a range of videos is a great way to clarify definitions of scene complexity
. It's hard to put in to words, but even harder to define in fixed terms as there are so many variables. It's a mix of building complexity, entourage complexity/detail, interiors detail, and Effects complexity.
My assessment, based on the videos is:
![[dot]](https://forum.lumion3d.com/Smileys/default/dot.gif "Dot")
There's a range of lower Moderately Complex to Mid (and Upper) Highly Complex
So the range of Passmarks needed would be 6000 to above 8000.
To be conservative, client should aim for 8000 plus. The price differential in some cases makes little difference to go up, especially considering it's a business investment with a 2 to 3 year life.
Have they considered Quadro cards?
There's one other option to consider. Add a card dedicated for Lumion. The price points are low for GTX/Radeon cards so it's a feasible alternative, or with a slightly lower priced CAD based card. The advantage is the wealth of user base and Lumion support with GTX based cards, but more importantly, performance. The (only?) issue I would foresee is that unless they run the workstation with two screens, one for each card, they will not be able to run both CAD and Lumion at the same time, but that may not be an issue anyway
One other consideration, many of our members find that Lumion is providing additional projects or allowing them to extend or expand their services or client base. So, although they think they may do mainly still image renders, it's likely with the ease of producing animations, that they may move much further in to producing animations (you can tell I have my Lumion hat on today
). From that perspective, it's a good idea to look for a solution that gives them added capacity and capability, and not to be too locked in to one hardware path.
Hope this feedback helps in your client decision and progress to using Lumion.
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Disclaimer/Caveat: these comments are provided only to assist forum members in considering their options for purchasing hardware to use with Lumion. They should in no way be considered as recommendations or qualified advice.
Topic: Defining 'complexity'? (Video card recommendation please) (Read 1249 times)