Is an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 64 Mb sufficient for Solidworks?

Hi,

I am in the process of buying a Laptop for Solidworks use.

My Solidworks agent has advised me that the only Graphics card
suitable for large assemblies is the nVidia QuadroFX Go700 card, which
basically means i need a Dell.

Most of the other Laptops I have looked at have a ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
64 Mb, would this be sufficient?

Cheers

 

SW shows them to fail (In red)

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardtesting.html

Regards,
Scott

 

I know a lot of users have had serious problems with the ATI Radeon,
especially the mobile chips for laptops.

DON'T DO IT!!!!!! I'm very serious.

It fails on the SWX website, and that should be good enough. That video
card page is there for a reason, and you should not under any
circumstance buy a card which FAILS the tests. You shouldn't buy those
that pass with limits either unless you know what you are getting into.
Typically, the nVidia geforce chips work pretty well except for the
number of windows limitation -- at least the drivers are solid.

Some people have had to use Software OPENGL just to keep dimensions from
disappearing or to keep from continuous crashing with Radeons -- why
would you put yourself through that?

Take the advice of myself and others and don't cut corners on video, you
will regret it.

Todd