BEST GRAPHICS CARD

[sojouner]

i'm doing some research for my company and was wondering what people thought about the matrox millenium 512 parhelia as a CAD video card .
I understand that a lot of graphics orintated (?) companies use these cards because of there stability and for the fact that you can use up to 3 monitors on the card !
DOes any body use them for solidworks ?
are these cards supported by solidworks?
thanks guys

 

[MadMango]

I'm not sure of the 512, it must be rather new? Follow this link to the SW website, where they have tested graphic cards from different vendors. From the page, you can select to view a particular vendor or all vendors.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardreport.html

I wouldn't even bother looking into a card that hasn't fully passed in "green". Pass with limitations will bring you headaches down the road. Keep in mind that video cards that work well with 3D games and graphic applications won't necessarily be a good choice for CAD applications... at least not in a production environment.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[G1DESIGN]

we use nvidia nvidia nvidia
no problems with these cards throughout the range the parhelia card is good because for dtp and the like it supoorts more than 2 monitors if you need dual monotor support lots of othercards will do this
we currently use and highly rate the fx1000 cards but then we got by using quadro 2s for a long time also we do a lot of animation work using alias wavefront software which hammers the poor things processor wise these advanced functions arent needed in cad apps though so try a quadro 4 or something youll have few if any problems

 

[MechEng13]

sojouner,
I am using the Matrox Millenium G550 with Solidworks and it runs great. Don't have any of the visual slowdowns or tracers, or any of the other problems I have heard associated with Graphics Cards...now I only work with small assembly's but I doo all top down assembly.


Alan M. Etzkorn
Hoffco/Comet Industries Inc.

http://www.hoffcocomet.com

 

[SBaugh]

I would do as Madmango suggested and follow the website that he has given you. Only use a card that has passed in the green. If you don't you will soon be here comlaining about slow downs.

You have to think not only do you need a card that is going to run SW03 but your going to need one that will run SW04. My understanding is SW04 is going to a lot more demanding than 03 is now. So if you get a low grade card now, you may pay a hefty price later.

but that's just my opinion...

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[G1DESIGN]

"You have to think not only do you need a card that is going to run SW03 but your going to need one that will run SW04. My understanding is SW04 is going to a lot more demanding than 03 is now. So if you get a low grade card now, you may pay a hefty price later" qouting scott baugh

are we to asume this will mean the cad side will be more gc intensive or the rendering that they have borrowed from mental images

 

[SBaugh]

are we to asume this will mean the cad side will be more gc intensive or the rendering that they have borrowed from mental images

"Huh"

I'm not sure what you mean by mental images, but every time SW comes out with a new version it is always more GC intensive and requires more and more power to run it.

I can still remember when SW only required 32 MB of memory was a standard minimum setting, when you bought SW. Now look at it. Nobody recommends that! You need at least 256 to run SW efficiently now. I think all CAD companies are that away anyhow. The Software companies keep producing these high-end programs that sucks the machines power. Then who do you think the people turn to then? That’s right the hardware companies. I need more hardware to run this software! Before long you have the best computer money can buy…for maybe a couple of years then that machine is obsolete and can’t can the program you need it to anymore because of the same problem your seeing now. What do you do…you keep having to upgrade. That’s just the nature of this beast.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[G1DESIGN]

scott by

mental images i mean the new pw2 renderer
the original pw1 wasnt really that intensive on rendering time

The new one is a cut down version or incorporates features from mental ray ie global illumination
We use maya which includes mental ray and catia has used it for a while now when it comes to render times this is pretty dependant on the gc used and from experience when you enable the global illumination the processor takes a beating.

I dont want to get into the debate about visualization and the likes after all its an add on but why include such a feature which on the basis that sw is an engineering package
will not be used by lots of engineers.

this was the point of my question does the core engineering functionality need a better cg or just the add ons

 

[SBaugh]

When I was talking about SW requiring more GC usage I didn't include PW2 in that statement. I was just talking about plain old SW.

But to get to your statement about engineers not using PW2. That's not true at all. I talk to Engineers all day long and a lot of my questions are on PW2. There are a lot of engineers using it to present their ides to their customers and to their VP of the company. Nothing looks better to a customer than where it would be used at, like the Toaster at

http://www.bxhdesigns.com

being in a kitchen with bagels. That gets their attention. Yeah PW2 is not a direct Engineering tool like your thinking, but it's cheaper to use the add-on than it is to purchase Maya - $900. So Maya is cheaper than PW2 but with the Office package you get 5 add-ins that help you with your engineering, toolbox, feature works, utility works plus animator, Edrawing pro, & PW2. You get all that for $100 bucks more. On top of all that, PW2 is integrated into SW unlike a 3rd party program. Using PW2 is worth the money along with the other add-ins that comes with it.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[G1DESIGN]

sorry scott i think ive deleted a part of the message it should have said might not be used just fell right thats all
sounds like your opinion of pw2 is where i was at about 3 months ago trying to decide what is better an add on or the third party product

Our buisness started doing just what you describe above and evolved into design visualisation we are an out and out engineering company we do a lot of stuff from engineering data and so we do lots of visuals like that for clients just makes me wonder, it may be integrated and this is my point how much hardware and time will it take before the software and its add ons become a bigger burden than
doing a full export and render
gone are the days where it was model then present using pw
and maybe it will depend on hardware used but the experience of pw2 which is admittedly biased means that eventually the solidworks pipeline may just extend beyond the boundaries of it all being in one program

 

[maryann]

Hi Folks,
I find the responses to be excellent on this site, but I think a reference to the new fx 500 described at

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/partners/Nvidia/Nvidia.html

would have been in order here, especially as it relates to SW2004. I would have responded quicker, but I followed the links to the resellers that supposedly were selling them, and it wasn't listed yet. I've retryed, and found it at three of them for under $400
James McLoherty

 

[JMulligan]

From the SolidWorks website:
The NVIDIA Quadro® FX family delivers the fastest application performance and the highest quality workstation graphics. But raw performance and quality are only the beginning...

SolidWorks Corporation and NVIDIA are working closely on optimizing the next SolidWorks version (SolidWorks 2004 - release date TBD) on the Quadro FX board to take computer-aided design (CAD) to a new level of interactivity by enabling unprecedented capabilities and precision. SolidWorks users, equipped with a Quadro FX, will be able to easily create fully rendered images of SolidWorks models in real time.

There are 3 versions of this card - Quadro FX 500/1000/2000. I am considering buying the 1000 - does anyone have any experience with this board and SolidWorks 2003?

Thank You
Joe

 

[maryann]

Hi Joe,
Could you explain why you like the FX 1000?
I was looking at the

http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.data/specapc_sw2001plus_summary.html

site, and the difference between the 2nd and 3rd Dell seemed to be only the FX 500/1000.
My take on the data is that the FX 1000 has 5% better performence than the FX 500, while increasing the system cost 24%. Is it just the increased speed, or are there other considerations I haven't noticed?

 

[G1DESIGN]

maryann

what you will find is that the price increase is to cover various features not really used in solidworks the fx1000
use is good for rendering and the like it supports various features for high end rendering such as hdri caustics and global illumination this is useful if you do lots of rendering with 3rd party packages it will do the rendering task in about 1/4 the time of a 64 meg card.
now pw2 supports global illum we found a big time increase in rendering which basically bogs the machine.
if you dont use it sw for rendering then fair enough but if you read the other posts myself and scott baugh had a bit of a debate on solidworks pw 2 and i agree with him basically buy the best hardware you can because as the software capabilities increase these have an increase on hardware requirement

 

[sojouner]

hi sojouner here
thanks for the feed back .
I was wondering does anyone use the ATI fire gl cards?
I saw a comparison between them and the quadro cards from nvida on tomshardware a while ago , and was wondering if anyone could tell me what they are like?
Incidentally the card I was asking about the matrox parhelia is completely in the green according to SWX (see madmangos first post for link to web page)

how do graphics cards cause slowdowns in sw?
is it because the CPU has to do a lot more of the preliminary mathematics before sending the results to the card to display? the reason I ask is that I thought that the cards now days were supposed to take a lot of that stress off the cpu?
Is photoworks 2 a sw only product or is it based on another companies software that sw has simply "licensed".
thanks
brett

 

[ramell]

I looked at the FX based cards for workstations and the price difference between those and the ATi compared with performance benchmarks I found at tomshardware.com made the decision for me...

for me, in the balance between performance and price, the ATi FireGL Z1 was the choice...

 

[JNR]

Don't use a FireGL with SW2003. We had to send them back!!! Too many problems. Again, as I have stated several times in other threads: When you look at the compatibility data on websites CHECK THE DATE for each entry. Some will even give the SW version info, but even SW does not do that - unless they have updated since I last looked.. some of them are SW2000 vintage!

Quadro's are defninitely good to go. (Our VAR loaned us one for a couple of weeks to test). If you can get a loaner to test or a satisfaction/return agreement do it

Only get one card to test. Don't order a bunch until you are sure you got the right thing.

BTW: G1DESIGN, could ya speak in something resembling real sentences - just for us mere mortals. Your posts are hard to read and make sense of. I get out of breath just reading them! We're all trying to communicate and help eachother out here with the minimum of effort and time

 

[G1DESIGN]

Oh dear my apologies for my sentencing and grammar.
But im form yorkshire where we breed pigeons and the like
So therefore can be partially excused.
Seriously I will make more effort for all the American counterparts out there ,its just that my time is quite limited so I just try and get the words down as quickly as possible.
Maybe there should be guidelines on the forum for posting topics
As for getting out of breath I wouldnt want you to have any medical problems caused by my grammar.

 

[Mindnumb]

I have used the the Radeon 9500 with the firegl driver hack (enables the workstation features on the graphics chip, wich is the same as the chip for the firegl series)

I used it with a dual screen setup, and it worked ok to some extent. I had issues with it when the model window spanned over both screens, but was ok when I had the model window restricted to only my right screen. I kept the feature manager bar on my left screen and, also all the toolbars.

I ran solidworks in 1280x1024x32 on both screens (I have a lcd screen), an also with 6x antialiasing, wich is really great because it feels more like working on 2048x1536.

I also had some issues with it that seemed related to the number of windows/parts/assemblys I had opened (low performance in the later opened windows, guess from number 4 or something).

I think the issues are driver related, and I guess ATI is going to fix it in the future.

I had superb performance as long as I did not open to many things. The size of the assemblys where quite large.

if you go for this soulution you are getting a really good "bang" for your buck performance wise, but as mentioned above I had some issues.

The best cards in this series would be the 9700 and 9800, I would not bother with the pro versions for the 9500 or 9700.
They are only slightly higher clocked versions.

Bonus: these are good gaming cards as well.


Good luck.

 

[sojouner]

Mindnumb
you speak of a fire gl"crack" for your 9500 where do you get this "crack" and do you know if it will work on
a ATI 9000 card.(bean counters at it again destroying a reasonable machine.)
one of our machines spat the dummy today and kicked another hard drive out the window (second one in less than 3 months )i'm hoping mine dies on me soon so that i get a new comp .
hence the question that started this thread.
I would like to get the quadro fx cards in but going on past history , of the company I work for , they will get elcheapos and pay the price through lack of reliability and down time through crashed swx (graphics and other conflicts)
i would like to hear more problems that people have come across related to graphics and the solutions that they came up with . sothat i can see a prob and know where I can go to get the answer.
thanks brett