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I would say NForce 6800 Ultra, or GT, or GS, those are last cards from Nvidia that could be tweaked to Quadro, this particularly to Quadro 4000.
But problem is that this card cannot be purchase in stores (at least here in Cro), because they don't sell them any more.
So if you could purchase it, that would be great card.
I personally didn't try it, but from benchmarks and user reviews is great card.
As for other cards, I would also say Nvidia, some of 7xxx series, but I would say only 7600, 7800 and 7900.
I would say that Nvidia 7800 GT or GTX would be the best choice considoring price and performance.
And one more thing, when you looking at card for ProE, you should look at card properties: GPU clockspeed and memory clockspeed!
If thous 2 speed are high card is faster, and have better performanse.
As for example:
Nvidia 7800 GTX 512 Mb GDR3
GPU clockspeed: 550 MHz
Memory clockspeed: 1700 MHz
I currently have a system running 2-off Nvidia 7600GT PCI-Express(256mb each)graphics cardsin SLI mode. They work pretty good even on large assembly. I am still working on performance for these cards because its hard tomake any comparison fromopengl cards.
On another machine, dual zeon cpu workstation, I run a 3dlabs Wildcat VP880 Pro graphics card (256mb). This for mewasstrictly enrty level as it wasgreat value for money. Unfortunatrly, Creative Labspurchased 3dlabs and have stuffed it all up. They are nowmaking graphics cards for mobile phones and handheld devices only.
The 3dlabs graphiccard in my words blows away anything that nvidia has ever released.Once you have used one of these cards it is very hard to use anything alse. 3dlabs cards also had specific setup for Pro/E.
The 7600 GT cards are just alright, at the time they cost me $480 (Australian Dollars) and were a good option. They do need some tweeking in the settings though. Their real downfall is in Mechanica, the play-back inanimation is really crap on large models.
I have not used a nvidia quadro cardsince I went to the 3dlabs some time ago.Quadro are simply overpriced Geforce cards and they just are not worth the money. Stick with the Nvidia Geforce series cards starting at the 7600 GT. They need to be PCI Express runningonSLI mode to get any reasonable performance.
The next obviuos choice would be the Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX. From reports that I am getting is that they can be tweaked a little for Pro/E and they handle large assembly and animations reasonably well. This however issecond handinfo that I cant confirmfrom experience. I will be setting up a 64-bit system later this year and will be definitely look at using the 8800 in SLI mode.
Remember, Pro/E only relates itstrue power by pure ram quantity. This is both true for CPU and Graphics VPU. The more ram, the better Pro/E runs. Finally, Pro/E uses opengl drivers for Graphics VPUand there is now the new dirctx 10 which is meant to help graphics along as well.
You must remember, these cards are designed predominately for 3d games. Having said that, 3d games are getting more complex and now starting to use some opengl drivers similar to what cad systems demand. As games get more complex, which they are, the gap between opengl and non-opengl graphics cards is getting smaller.Eventually we will not need specialgraphics cards for mcad.
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