New workstation design...

My mate is looking for a home system to run ProE/Mechanica and
SolidWorks/COSMOS. I have designed a system for him with the
following...



Intel Core 2 Duo E6600

Asus P5B DI965 conroe

G.SKILL 2GB Kit (2x1024MB) 800MHz

Seagate 320GB Serial ATA 300 Hard Disk Drive



My main question is the graphics card. I was thinking the Quadro FX560
although I have heard that the entry level workstation cards are no
better then a same price gaming card.



No games will be played on the machine so wanted to get some suggestions on what would be best suited.



Also does ATi (FireGL) make any descent entry level cards?



Thanks in advance...

Hey Vesh,

In my opinion, the NVIDIA Quadro FX560 should be enough for a fair amount of CAD work and Mechanica analysis. Firstly, the card is approved by PTC (tested and certified) which you can't go wrong with. Second, the card has 128MB which, also in my opinion, is the least amount of graphics RAM you should have available. For many modern cards, I ignore the "entry-level" designation and simply buy based on the PTC HCL (hardware comptability list) and the video RAM.

Currently, I am using an ATi FireGL V3100 (128MB, PCIexpress 16x) and I could not be happier. I work with fairly comlplicated structures and the graphics quality is very good. I also do alot of mechanica work (which usually isn't extremely graphics intensive) and it works fine. I guess the FireGL V3100 is considered an "entry-level" card too.

Most "gaming" cards (NVIDIA GeForce series, ATi Radeon series...etc.) are NOT supported by PTC ProE anymore. They were in the past, but are no longer with the Wildfire releases. Many people in this forum and I know personally have had trouble using these "gaming" cards.

See this link for additional information:
<a href="http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/support/proewf2.htm" target="_blank">
http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/support/proewf2 .htm</a>

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. Looks like we will get a FX560 as it is listed there.

My final design is...

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Gigabyte GA-945PL-S3
Leadtek NVidia Quadro FX 560 GPU
G.SKILL 2GB Kit (2x1024MB) 533MHz
Seagate 320GB Serial ATA 300
2 x 19" Widescreen monitors CMV

Please feel free to state any improvements or recomendations.

Cheers...