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Need for powerful graphics card...

Hey Vesh,

You got some wierd spaces in your posted link above. I will repost it here.
<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/quadrofx-vs-firegl.html" target="_blank" target="_blank">
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/quadrofx-vs-f iregl.html</a>

I have always said for the current Wildfire releases, I measure the "quaility" of the video card by the available onboard video RAM. The GPU (graphical processing unit) is really a moot point for modern, entry-level CAD video cards. This can be seen in the bottom part of this page ("Moreover, we even got the impression that our CPU prevented the Quadro family from showing its real power."). Basically, this shows the fundametal problem with the speed of the video card GPU overloading the speed of the CPU, or "bottlenecking".

[url]http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/quadrofx-vs-f iregl_16.html[/url]

For the testbed workstation, this is around the calibur machine I have.

[url]http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/quadrofx-vs-f iregl_10.html[/url]

The minimum onboard video RAM I recommend for any serious (business related) ProE user is 128 MB and of course a video card supported by the release of ProE intended to be used.

To answer you question more specifically if you have a Pentium IV class processor with clock speeds above 2 GHz (most modern workstations on the market today), I would strongly recommend getting the most system RAM you can afford. My computer contains 3.0 GHz p4, 2 GB RAM, and Ati FireGL v3100 PCIex 16x (128 MB RAM). This works well for Wildfire 2.0. I am convinced that the having 2GB system RAM keeps alot of the ProE "crashing" to a minimum.

Hope this helps.




Edited by: acook
 
OpenGL and the videocard is only used in realtime operations, as far as I have come to understand it over the years. It does not help in speeding up the creation of a raytraced rendering, only processing power does.


So if you handle either very large assemblies or very complex parts you need a decent graphic card, in the other cases you'd better spend your money on CPU, RAM and disk. The keyfactor is the number of faces that need to be calculated to produce an image. That explains what I started with : you have either many faces because there are many objects or/and because the objects have lots of (complex) surfaces.


Alex
 
Thanks alot for your replies.

I am putting a Quadro FX560 into a mates new home computer and needed additional justification as to why it should be enough.

Cheers...
 
Have a look at the 3dlabs graphics cards.


They are the best for driving Pro/E.


I have used the GVX-420 and now I have the Wildcat VP880 Pro.


Both cards have 256MB ram. Graphics cards for Pro/E should have no less than 256MB. Also, 3dlabs cards can be optimised for Pro/E. This makes a huge difference.


The Quadro cards are glorified Gforce, with a few different switches and pipes turned on/off. Moreover, extremely over priced.


I am about to try out 2-off Nvidia Gforce 7600GT in SLI mode. Both cards have 256MB of DDR3 memory. I have been using 1-off quite successfully, but does get bogged down on large assemblies (1000 plus parts).


I will report back next week, telling you all how it went.
 
CAD does not need a lot of VRAM at all. VRAM is used as a cache buffer for textures in games. CAD jockeys usually don't use textures at all, and when they do it is nowhere near the amount that games utilize.

What you look for with CAD is pretty much only geometry acceleration, aka T&L. This means a fast GPU, and no need at all for any pixel shaders. You don't need a lot of VRAM, and you don't need fast VRAM either.

Even a lowly GeForce MX440 does fine in most circumstances, but nVidia nerfed the drivers in order to "encourage" people to cough up dough for a Quadro instead.

If you look at the Quadro 500-series they are pretty much this: a decently fast GPU albeit lacking in the VRAM and pixel shaders department. Unless you do exotic stuff, it should be the best choice for most.

Further: 3DLabs has left the building. They have pretty much been crap since years now. The high-end Wildcats were nice, but you could get the same performance for a fraction of the cost with a Quadro.

You go ahead and tweak the "optimizations" for Pro/E all you want. If you notice any difference, I'll eat my hat. All they do is change a few minor, esoteric and not to forget pointless details in how the display is managed. As far as I know, feel free to educate me if I am wrong.

I myself am running WF3 on a GeForce 6200 right now. It works well enough, but when I get models with lots of edges - such as the blue elements when meshing in Pro/M, it is slow. So I am ogling the Quadro 560 apprehensively.
Edited by: MichailS
 

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