Compromise Video Card required - your assistance requested

First off, I know nothing about SolidWorks.

A friend has asked me to help him spec out and help him build a new PC for
him and his wife to use at home. He uses SW at work and would like to use
his site licence to be able to finish some work at home. He also wants to be
able to do the odd bit of gaming (and I know him well enought to know it
will be more gaming than work).

His wife is a teacher and her needs are basic office applications - no big
deal other than storage.

I'm leaning towards these basic specs:
2.8C Intel, Asus or DFI 875P, 1 Gig Ram, 160 SATA HD, etc...(there is a
budget to meet)

Obviously I have a problem...what video card to buy...

Is there a "reasonable" compromise card for general use? (if you need
specifics on what features he uses in SW - I can get them)

Any and all suggestions or feedback are welcome and appreciated.

TIA

RS

 

SolidWorks through their resellers are having a sale on nVidia cards. They
all are excellent for SolidWorks. They actually have features built into the
video cards that enhance the SolidWorks visual effects.

FX 500 has 128meg ram and is only $185. They have higher models, but for
what you describe, that is all you need.

But call the reseller today, I think the sale ends today.

I hope this helps,

Dan B.

 

I agree w/ Dan the best new value would be the QuadroFX-500. Newegg.com has
it for $229 no tax, no shipping, if you can't get the reseller special in
time.

If not that card try ebay and get any of the Quadro cards with model number
Quadro4-750XGL or higher. You can go with a cheap cheap Quadro 700 or 900
model but it will not be AGP 8x and it won't be as fast for gaming.
Remember that no gaming card will do as well in SWX as a true cad card and
no cad card will do quite as well in games. BUT a cad card runs games
better than a game card runs SWX.

I won't go deep into Softquadro or SoftFireGL hacks because you really need
a drop in solution. I will just say that a good compromise can also be
found in Geforce Ti4200 (or above) using hacked drivers to get it to perform
like a Quadro4-750XGL. I have experience with this and I know that it works
but you have to be able to only run a specific hacked driver. Once you
update the driver (like Windows Update wants to suggest), your Quadro cad
advantages are gone.

Go with the QuadroFX-500, new or ebay

- Eddy