Graphic card for autocad 3d

[shatpank81]

Been asked to look at a system which is capable of using autocad and seeing the drawings etc in 3d
The guy who asked currently uses a toshiba qosmos gaming laptop (i7, 16gb, not sure on graphic card)
System wise he as purchased all the bits (i7, 16gb ram etc)
But we are unsure what graphic card to get?
I know you should get a quadro, but is there a cheaper option like a 750ti be up for the job?

 

[Yaayuh!]

He doesn't necessarily need a Quadro. It depends on what sort of 3D CAD work he's doing and how complex they are and if it needs any specific functions.

Is he just viewing the drawings?

 

[shatpank81]

He does the drawings/design, then views them and rotates etc them in 3d

 

[savagesam117]

I've got this on my machine (so much quicker than college) and at college, the college run it on IGP from an i5, it takes a while to load up, but once there it's fine, we make all sorts on them and are able to view anything.

Guessing it doesn't need anything to demanding!

 

[Yaayuh!]

Then it pretty much depends on the complexity of the designs and since there wont be a need for double precision number crunching, i'd look at a quiet nVidia GTX card with 2GB+ VRAM.
However, it kinda depends what sort of designs.

Put it this way, i work in IT for a design company, we use K2000 Quadros for Solidworks with 16x AA, it's fine. Until a couple of projects for a bit too much for them but is fine on GTX 680.

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

I work with CAD. I have found higher end desktop parts are better than the lower end quadro cards at work (similar price). They are only used for the real time display while drawing, and my main PC is still noticeably faster for 3d work than either my msi gs60-2pe or the dual quad core xeons with quadro 2000s (or maybe 3000s) in the work machines.

So, I would say get a desktop card, unless you are looking to spend a lot of money on the gpu.

 

[shatpank81]

It runs perfectly fine on this 18 month old gaming laptop he has
it only ever runs cad, i would say the 3d rotation is smooth but usable
But he is sick of lugging this huge gaming laptop home and then back to work, so he as some funds for a desktop
The pc is built and he is using it for general office work, emails etc but he asked me which graphic card to get instead of the expensive quadro
I last year built him a pc for his photoshop/marketing department and i used a 750ti which does the job, but i thought autocad would be different in some way?

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

Find out what card is in his laptop, make sure to get a better one

Id say a 960 would be much better than a 750ti. As in, get a proper "mid range" card rather than a low end. The benefit will be noticeable unless he does very simple models, and lighting makes things instantly require a lot more grunt.

 

[passey89]

i built one for a friend at work and put a r9 280 into that.

works brilliantly.

We use AutoCAD at work on a pentium G620 with integrated graphics imaging how slow this is.

 

[DereksDontRun]

When you say AutoCAD 3d - do you mean Inventor, AutoCAD or even Mechanical Desktop? They're all Autodesk and all get referred to as AutoCAD at various times, which doesn't help...

Autodesk moved Inventor (and I think AutoCAD) from OpenGL to DirectX in about 2006 and from that moment it's been fine to use a gaming card instead of a workstation card. Without wanting to get into an ATI/AMD vs Nvidia argument, historically Nvidia cards have been a little more stable (with ATI being joked as Always Trashes Inventor), but for the last few years/releases they both seem good.

Inventor is more graphically/texture heavy than AutoCAD, so I'd suggest something better for that, but at the end of the day it all depends on the graphical complexity of the parts being drawn. A small assembly of a few blocks won't struggle a GTX260 but a large assembly with lots of complex shapes, or an AutoCAD drawing with thousands of lines, might warrant a GTX970 or such.

note, Solidworks and other cad systems still use OpenGL (anything that quotes a SPECviewperf benchmark) where there's still an argument for a Quadro/Fire workstation card over a gaming one.