A Card For CAD / Soildworks

[beer_puppy]

What would be a better but for a PC that is going to be used mainly for working on CAD / Soildworks?
Budget is £200 and for that i can get an 8800GTS 320MB or an Quadro FX560,
I know what sort of gaming performance the GTS hads but aint got a clue what it is like in CAD?

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[JamieL]

It really depends on how heavy the models are, I personally haven't used 'SolidWorks' but if it's anything like 3Ds Max/Maya (I'm not sure if it is?) if you're doing high poly designs you should go with the Quadro.

I have an 8800 GTS 640MB in one PC for gaming, and a Quadro FX 1500 in the other, the performance differences with HIGH poly meshes is incredible, the 8800 gts almost comes grinds to a halt sometimes whereas the Quadro rarely slows down at all.

...of course that's only if SolidWorks is like 3Ds Max/Maya, if not ignore this comment.

edit: nevermind... it seems SolidWorks is quite different

 

[beer_puppy]

hehe thanks anyway

 

[MolDog]

Go for a decent gaming card as opposed to the FX1500 for solidworks.

We have solidworks at work (engineerting company with a drawing office) running on machines with quaddro FX1500's and even a laptop with some laptop variant of the GEforce FX5000 and sumthing (not sure which one) is out performing them in terms of everything. As far as reliability and crashing goes not found either is different except the machines with FX 1500's (P4 3GHz 1GB RAM) seem to be extremely slow compared to machines more orientated at mainstream 3D and games.

 

[jeggsy]

I have a Geforce 6800 AGP 256Mb card and that runs Autodesk Autocad and 3d Inventor fine.

From what I remember the Nvidia Quadro cards are based on normal Geforce cards but just have a few CAD specific bits enabled but cost a whole lot more.

I would have thought any new cards like a Geforce 8800 series would run most CAD programs OK. Better to get one of those and put some money towards more RAM as CAD programs love it !!

One word of advice as I support or CAD PC's at work. Go onto your CAD software manufacturers site and they should tell you what hardware and drivers etc are recomended/certified for their software. Usually find updates etc that help with performance and reduce crashing etc.

 

[MolDog]

Hi

Solidworks.com will almost certainly recommend quaddro's and **** machines etc. tbh don't listen to their recommendations, as in experience their tests and results they show on their certified hardware site are completely different from how they work in reality. As in my example above A laptop with possibly one of the crummiest gaming cards beat a desktop that was pretty much on par with mem and cpu, only difference was it had a quaddro FX1500.

I think the solidworks website will actually have you believe the first few quaddro FX's out will actually outperform a current GEforce or Radeon, which as I said in my experience with the stuff the drawing office at work do with solidworks is complete rubbish.

 

[Trox]

I notice my 8800 GTS 640 slows down a lot using cad, 3D rotate can be a bitch. Probably depends on what your gonna be doing on it.

 

[ZXSpectrum]

For the lower end SW useage go for the Quadro FX560 or 1500+ for higher useage. We built machines day in day out for all CAD applications and a properly configured workstation with a quadro/firegl will outperform any gaming spec card. Also you have to remember that SW will only supply technical support if you are using a certified workstation spec gfx card with certified drivers. You will also find that certain features are available with the Workstation spec cards that are not enabled with desktop spec such as realview etc...