new video cards

I'm spec'ing a new high end game system for home which will also be
used for working at home using SW2006 on the weekends. I'm asking for
recommendations between the 512MB NVIDIA® Quadro™ FX 2500M and the
256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 GTX, probably with dual cards. Both
for SW and rpg's.

This will be a laptop. So far I'm looking at Alienware MJ-12 m7700a,
Dell M90 and Hypersonic Fusion EX7.

Any thoughts? I'm better manipulating software than understanding
hardware, so shopping hardware gets confusing for me.

Thanks, Diego

 

The consumer level Geforce 7 series cards perform just as well or better
than an equivalent Quadro in SWX. You can even use the partner
certified drivers if you're really worried about compatibility. Also,
larger amounts of RAM amount to 'diddly-squat' for CAD applications.
The most important components are overall system throughput (bus size),
GPU "pipelines" (texel operations), and GPU clock speed.

 

Not really, try having 10 or 12 parts or assemblieis open at the same time.
This is pretty common for me when working with large assemblies with lots of
subs

Where did you get this information ?? And what do yo call "large amounts".
SW loads all parts and assemblies into RAM when you open them. When it runs
out, it writes to the page file slowing down your system. In this case, bus
width don't mean diddly squat because you're limited by the hard drive
speed.

If you're going to do "real" work, you should install as much RAM as you can
afford, up to the usable limits of the system. That would be 3GB for XP, or
2GB for Win2000. If you have XP64, you should install as much as you need to
eliminate paging for your typical work.


Mark

 

If you re-read his information, its specifically for the video card.
His comments in that regard as far as ram ect... are correct.

 

I'm thinking the larger amount of video ram will help with quicker
rendering and shading for the rpg's, not as critical with my SW usage,
as I don't do SW rendering.

Most of my SW assy's are under 100 parts, mostly sheet metal and
hardware, and have limited motion. (Think road paving parts and store
pos displays.) At work I have a Quadro FX 500/600 and 1gb of system
ram, and with a half dozen parts and assemblies open, especially with
drawings open, things slow down noticably. If I'm careful as to what is
lightweight I get by ok, but it's still a pita sometimes.

Hopefully most work will stay at work and home use will be more rpg
oriented.

Thanks for the input. Diego

 

One more non-performance thing to consider if you are planning on a
laptop. Dual 7900 cards is going to be a power hungry solution. You'll
either need a 10lb battery, or to stay very close to an outlet.

It may wind up being less expensive, and give better performance, to
build a higher end gaming PC, and a mid-range cad station, than to try and
stuff both identities into a laptop.

 

So, you've been talking to my wife again? Money, money, money!

Seriously, I appreciate your input. Thanks, Diego

 

I have almost the same setup as you do and have about the same size
assemblies. My system slows down slightly when these assemblies are
loaded, but not a tremendous amount. The one thing that may be
different is that I was careful to get a mother board with a higher
backplane speed. As I remember some of the Pentium 4 boards had a
pretty small bottle neck at the back plane. (this has been a while so
some of the details are not 100% clear). But, there were some fellows
that doubled their RAM and their CPU speed and saw only about a 10%
improvement. Even better graphics cards didn't always help a tremedous
amount.

Just something to consider.

Ed