I'm currently putting the final touches on a new workstation and I'm left trying to decide which route to go graphics wise. I'd like to know the ideal setup between the following two choices:

Quadro 4000 + Tesla c2075 or just a quadro 6000 (any other recommended setups?). I'll be running dual 27" displays. I've read that Houdini utilizes nvidia Maximus technology, which would make the first choice seem a bit obvious. However, I have no experience with Maximus or its level of enhancing Houdini simulations. Any insight on it and it's benefits within Houdini would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Kev

I'm interested on this thread too … beside I'm now probably late as my Quadro 4000 + Tesla already arrived and now trying to find out how much I'll actually use the Tesla itself …

SIGgraph is next week, so you might want to hold off on any purchasing decisions until after any pro hardware news is released. AMD and Nvidia typically release or announce their FirePro and Quadro cards at SIGgraph. (I don't have any insider info, just a hunch)

I believe the Tesla + mid-range Quadro solution is cheaper than the 6000, keeps graphics from stuttering, and avoids any "out-of-memory' errors you might get with a single card. You can use the environment variable HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER to control which card does the simulating if Maximus doesn't kick in.

Quadro 4000 pluss tesla works like a charm! I would definitly go for that solution. Got the same setup. One thing that you will soon notice with the gpu simulation is all the cooking that that still needs to be done one the cpu. The things that the gpu handles is realy fast, but you need to make the sim gpu “friendly” to benefit the big speedups. Just my experience

Hoping for more gpu driven tools in the future!

oh yeah, I did some tests on Friday finally and so far I'm still very impressed!
I'm seriously looking forward for some more gpu friendly Houdini features now!