Continue to Site

Welcome to MCAD Central

Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.

Spec’ing out new computer, graphics card

Scotth

New member
I am currently spec'ing out a new Creo/Matlab workstation station, most likely from Dell. I am wondering what do buy for the graphics card. The machines in general have really come down in price, so I can probably spend $1K on graphics. Now I have a FX1700 and it works ok, but would like a little mroe performance.


Any opinions on:


1X Quadro 2000


2X Quadro 2000's


or 1 Quadro 4000?
 
Here you are a good link to see some performance benchmark (specviewperf 11):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5846/hp-z420-workstation-revie w-competition-heats-up/3

As you can see the gain in ProE with different GPUs is very poor, because the architecture of ProE/Creo is memory based and the core engine was written a long long time ago (about 1987/8).

Usually I suggest the 2000: it has the best ratio performance/cost.
2x doesn't worth: the performance are the same!

Hope that can help you for a good choice.
 
Well, I ended up getting the Quadro 2000. I could only get an i7 in the Precision 1650, and the 200 was the best card available. I will report back on the performance compared to my FX1700.
 
So my MIS guy came around today and said he has extra money in his budget & can slip in a new workstation for me this year. I was looking at the these claims for the AMD FirePro graphics and was wondering if anyone had some first hand experience.

AMD FirePro

http://fireprographics.com/resources/creo/Creo_OIT...

I used to be a fan of AMD many years ago but then there was a period when they were buggy and not worth considering. They seem very price competitive these days if there are not bugs. We are on WF4 now but plan on moving to Creo2 soon.

I'm considering the 4GB AMD FirePro W700, it's about the same price as a 2GB nVidia Quadro 4000.
 
I have Dell Xeon X5687 3.6GHz, 8GB RAM AMD FirePro V7900 2GB and it does what is was expected up to.

At home I`ve recently bought W500 with ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 -- 512MB(shared with main memory).

I was suprised by the performance(this laptop is not new but instead bought as after-leasing device)
 
Getting ready to order and the W7000 is no longer an option. Guess I'll stick with the Quadro 2000.

Jacek - No bugs/glitches with the V7900?
 
Jacek - No bugs/glitches with the V7900?

so far - none. I must admit it is very reliable machine. Rare is to shut down the system because of whims of Pro/E(Creo).

However I admit if frankly, I do not work on large assemblies nor big drawings I did play with back then at Wabco.

Now only surfacing stuff - plastic part design.
 
PTC supported hardware list does not include any of the K series yet (as of March 23). No doubt it will but not sure I should get ahead of the drivers. Maybe a Quadro 4000, it has 2GB but it costs more than a K2000?
 
Seems that the graphics engine got a major rewrite in CREO 2.0 - theres some background at www.fireprographics.com/download/resources/wksup_creo_en.pdf.

VBO seems to allow the model geometry to be loaded into the card for processing - this is not available in Wildfire. Seems you need a card that supports OpenGL 4 to get these enhancements, so are available in latest Quadro and Firepro but the OIT transparency in Firepro only.
 
Last edited:
Seems that the graphics engine got a major rewrite in CREO 2.0 - theres some background at www.fireprographics.com/download/resources/wksup_creo_en.pdf.

I do really doubt it is all true, especially big step forward in performance while manipulating the geometry in no hidden or hidden lines graphic mode.

I switch between WF 4.0, Creo 1.0 and Creo 2.0 palying with the same STP geometry. Quality of edges set as Very High and smooth lines On, and there is no difference what version of software is trying to dsiplay it out! It is "step by step" speed of animation, sloooooowllllyyyy....

IMHO, what really does have influance on Pro/E performance is the CPU.
 
I gues they(PTC), tuned some stuff transparency related, to make it display more realistic, but regarding the performance of ordinary hidden line or no hidden mode display, I see no improvement if Very high quality of edges is expected.

Set it to High or low, turn the Smooth lines off and every thing works fine, but it works the same regardless WF 4.0 or Creo 2.0 is used.
 
I'm buying a laptop soon, two models have caught my eye, and they are the same price, one has a better CPU, the other a better Graphics card. unfortunetly no Quadro or FirePro, so I'm here to seek help from you guys, which one would you choose? purpose of use, obviously running 3D CAD and FEM:
1- Inspiron 5520/i7-3632QM (quad core)-6M cache/AMD Radeon 7670M/8G RAM/1TB HDD/
2- Inspiron 7520/ i5-3210M (Dual core) -3M cache/AMD Radeon 7730M/8G RAM/1TB HDD/
 
They both seem about the same speed - both cpus have a turbo boost mode but make sure Dell lets you turn it on.

For FEM the quad core i7 should be better - turn hyperthreading off though.

Not sure about the graphics cards - Radeon not supported by PTC so whos knows what you will get - you might have to try Direct3d (DirectX10)
 
Last edited:
VBO should make a big difference as the geometry gets loaded to the card and the commands less verbose. VBO can render points, lines and triangles so maybe hidden lines is done some other way.

Also with data now being loaded to the card, GPU memory will be important when previously it wasnt - maybe your model is too big to fit in?

Do you get any cross section artifacts with edges turned on - my old Quadro has starting doing this with CREO2?
 

Sponsor

Articles From 3DCAD World

Back
Top