Video cards?

Ok no doubt this has been done before, but .. ..
Asking for the design engineer.. Running:
SW2005 sp 3
winXp pro
P4 @ 2.8gz
1GB ram

Currently have an Nvidia Quadro FX 500.
Complaint:: SW slows down to the point of being unusable.. his words..
Major sticking point is on a model with bookoo mates, if I understand
correctly.

Have been looking at the Quadro FX 700 ; Quadro FX 3000 ; Quadro FX 4000
Price goes up as the numbers do.. BIG surprise...

I am the electrical tech at the place and a bit of a gamer.. so of course I
get all the questions of what's best.

I would point them to the geforce series but no listing on the SW web site.

Is there some advantage to using the Quadro's over a 'Main Stream' video
card???
I've always been an ATI fan myself but the numbers look better on the nvidia
cards in the workstation world..

Any comments, curses.
jb..

 

Sounds like a pretty decent machine for Solidworks stuff, unless it's
seriously large assemblies he's working on - check the Nvidia drivers
are the latest reccomended for Solidworks (there's a table at
www.nvidia.com and all the downloads required). Have a look at the task
manager when it's slowing down - it's probably the main processor
grinding away if it's trying to solve mates, so a new card won't help -
more memory and a faster processor would though.
Solidworks doesn't like "gamer" cards - there's certain stuff on the
quadro cards it uses - you can try a package called "softquadro" to mod
a geforce card to suite, do search on this newsgroup for it - there's
heaps of info.
Can't imagine you'd need a high end card - you'd definitely be better
getting a faster processor and more memory first - I've got a Nvidia
980XGL (older, but similar spec to a FX500 I think) and never had
problems with the graphics side, but yes, it can grind to a halt when
rebuilding - have a look at www.dynabits.com for a programme called
"redlight" - gives you more control over when the rebuilds occur and
should save a stack of time.
Hope it helps
Deri

 

See the 'options' settings - in 'performance' you can disable mate
animation - check out some of the other things there like 'level of detail'
and also disable animation in 'view rotation'. Maybe these will help if
indeed it is the video that's struggling. Possibly you could add another 1gb
of ram. There is no substitute for calculation HP. A new AMD will be about
2.5 x faster. Failing that work smarter with sub assemblies, light weight
etc.HTH
neil

 

Shame - good guys - gave me a heap of info when I was possibly looking
to move to Switzerland which was very much appreciated.
To the OP - the Matt Lombard stuff is really good - I learned a heap
about making Solidworks run faster, also search this news group for
stuff like "assembly optimisation", "using sub assemblies" etc - there's
a stack of good tips hidden away in here.
I've managed to cut design times by about 50-70% from when I started
doing Solidworks stuff by optimising sub assemblies and moving up to a
faster machine (P4 - 1.6Ghz with 1.5Gb RAM to a Opteron 248 with 2Gb
RAM). If your company can afford it - buy the CAD dude a decent AMD
machine (good fast processor, 2Gb min of fast RAM, fast hard drives
(RAID SATA ??) and an FX1300 card) - it'll save them a stack of money in
the long run! As a manager it's heart breaking to see someone going for
a ciggy/ coffee break every 15 minutes as the PC whirts through another
rebuild.
Cheers
Deri

 

We run nothing but Nvidia after performance issues with the GeForce
series. The big difference is the software vs. hardware open GL.
There is a good article at Nvidia about the differences between the
two. The bottom line is that gaming cards are good for gaming and the
CAD cards are good for CAD. A common mistake is to assume a gaming
card is good for CAD because it operates well for directX games.
We have found value in high end cards. We run Nvidia Quadro 3000FX and
4000FX. A good solid lower-end card is the 500.
I agree with everyone else about the techniques, which are key to
keeping alive in large assy's, as well as the better computer.
The AMD is universally reported as a good processor, although we just
run the lates Intel chip, gobs of RAM and a fast video card. Dual
processors don't buy you much at all, especially for the price.

 

Thanks for the input so far. I have got the design engineer following this
and other threads from Google.
Didn't get down the hall to the I.T. office to pass this along yet. Maybe
the D.E. will walk down and pass it along. hint, hint R
Dual core. MMMMMM for the day when the software catches up.. that will be
nice..

Any other comments out there? How does the ATI fireGL series play against
the Nvidia's?

jb..

 

I think you'll find a consensus that Nvidia Quadros are the way to go.
They seem to be much more robust and less prone to problems with SW.
Check out the discussion forum under SW website, the "performance"
discussion. There's lots of discussion and benchmarking to support
that claim. Always though, make sure to visit the video card reports
from SW and see which drivers they recommend. You'll find many cards
are not recommended for SW, and many that have known issues.
If this new computer is to run SW primarily, it is well worth your time
(and for the sake of hair retention of both your DE and IT people) to
comply with the recommendations.

We have learned the hard way (many problems with 40+ engineers running
GeForce and ATI cards), but have had no problems after running the
Quadros and recommended drivers.
Hope this helps!

 

I have been running a FireGL card for some time now with no problems that I
can attribute to the card. I like it.

WT