Things slowing down - not able to choose OpenGL in SP0

Hi all,
I've just installed 2004 SP0 on my machine at home, Athlon 2400 with
the nForce2 chipset running the onboard graphics, to do a bit of weekend
work and have run into a problem. The install went fine, I loaded up a part
and as time went by I noticed things, rotating, zooming in/out, slowing
down to a crawl. I decided to check to see if I had accdently checked the
Software OpenGL option but when I went to the appropriate tab in the option
dialogue, I found the Software OpenGL option greyed out. I would assume
from this that I am running in Software OpenGL and for some reason the
session can't find hardware OpenGL. I closed the part, closed SW, rebooted
the machine and in the process of doing this increased the memory for the
onboard graphics to 64MB and then restarted SW. Before I loaded a part, I
checked Tools->Options->Performance and the option is there, not greyed out
to choose Software OpenGL - but I didn't, it was unchecked. I then loaded
the part and checked the Software OpenGL option again - it's now greyed
out. Has anyone else come across this problem and have a fix?

I'm running this on Win2000 with the latest, V3.13, nForce drivers
and that's about all, nothing special. Any thoughts, comments greatly
appreciated.

Regards,
David

 

It's always greyed out as long as a part or assy is loaded

Krister L

 

If that's the case, then any other ideas on what's causing the slowdown? It
looks like it is the same problem that a Google for

solidworks "slow down"

reveals Funny thing is that at work, which is a roughly the same speed
machine, same ram but with a 3DLabs card and running XP, this does not
happen - home machine, on board graphics, Win 2000 and it does happen...
Probably a combo of graphics drivers and OS. Thanks for the answer anyway

David

[snip]
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Sorry to say....beats me....I was warned on an early stage for the Force
cards so I went straight for Quadro and has been there since that. Guess
this problem is related to the card and/or the driver.

Krister L

 

The issue you are seeing is common to all 'consumer' level graphics
cards such as the GeForce and Radeon (nForce video is really just
integrated GeForce). These cards are targeted toward the gamer.

The 'professional' level cards like Quadro, FireGL, and WildCat do not
suffer from these issues. These cards are targeted toward high end
graphics applications like CAD.

 

The Geforce2 chipset can be upgraded to the Quadro 2 chipset by using
Softquadro, works great for me on my home computer. The card chips are
identical but NVidia progressively crippled them to attract different price
range markets with 'different' cards.

 

I had the same thing happen to me. I'm using a Quadro4 900 XGL video
card and had no problems up until SW2004. My problem occured when I
added a second monitor. After fiddling around with with display
settings I got SW to run without the Software Open GL.