COMPUTER HARDWARE 1

[SS22]

I have a Dell Dimension 4550
Windows XP pro
768 MB RAM
32MB ATI Rage 128 Video Card
Does anyone have experience running on this system? It doesn't take long for the screen to get choppy. We design Furniture, desks, chairs etc... Var will only support Solidworks on systems listed on Solidworks web site.

 

[MadMango]

It's your graphics card... see: faq559-936

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[Arlin]

The issue is your ATI Rage 128 Video Card. Not only is it relatively old and slow, but it is a card designed for 3d games, not 3d CAD.

I would recommend a Nvidia QuadroFX or ATI FireGL. There are many variations of these cards available depending on how much you are willing to spend and your desired performance.

See these reviews:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040816/index.html

for pci express cards

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040323/index.html

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030916/index.html

for AGP cards

 

[MadMango]

I just found this through my VAR, looks like good info.

Light user- Assemblies contain only a few parts (2-20) without many complex features.
Moderate user- Assemblies contain many parts (100-500) without many complex features.
Heavy user- Assemblies contain thousands of parts or contain many parts with complex features.

Note: With any of the above categories, we recommend you buy as fast a processor as your budget allows. This will benefit any user – regardless of his design requirements.

Light user
RAM: 256MB min, 384MB or more recommended
Graphics Card: 32MB or more, OpenGL support (Nvidia Quadro4 700 XGL, Quadro FX500)
OS: Win98 (*will no longer be supported by Microsoft after 2003), WinNT 4.0 (SP 6 or greater), Win2000 or Win XP Professional
Hard drive speed is not critical

Moderate user
RAM: 512MB or more
Graphics Card: 64MB or more, OpenGL support (Nvidia Quadro4 750 XGL, Quadro FX500)
OS: Win2000 or Win XP Professional
Hard drive speed is important

Heavy user
RAM: 1GB or more
Graphics Card: 64MB or more, OpenGL support (Nvidia Quadro FX1000, FX2000 or FX3000)
OS: Win2000 or Win XP Professional
Hard drive speed is crucial

Graphics Cards
The following graphics cards are recommended and support RealView Graphics display for SolidWorks 2004 & 2005.

3Dlabs: (RealView support with SW2004, SP2.1 and above)
Wildcat VP560
Wildcat VP760
Wildcat VP870
Wildcat VP970
Wildcat VP880 Pro
Wildcat VP990 Pro

…and all the new 3Dlabs WildCat boards released from now on.

ATI: (RealView support with SW2004, SP3 and above)
Fire GL T2
Fire GL X2
Fire GL X1
Fire GL Z1
Mobility Fire GL T2 (in HP and IBM’s laptops)

…and all the new ATI Fire GL boards released from now on.

PNY/NVIDIA: (RealView support with SW2004 and above)
All the Quadro FX models
Quadro4 980 XGL
Quadro4 900 XGL
Quadro4 750 XGL
Quadro4 700 XGL
Quadro4 700 GoGL (in Dell’s laptops)

…and all the new PNY/NVIDIA Quadro boards released from now on.

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Looks perfect for an FAQ

 

[SS22]

I guess I would qualify as a moderate user.
Anyone have experience using these cards on a non workstation machine?

 

[SBaugh]

Which card? I have a Quadro FX 500 and 1100 and the 500 is on an old Dell workstation and the 1100 is on just a run of the mill, high performance, non workstation type PC.

I'm a high end user but I use Moderate cards.

And it Runs great!

Get a Quadro 500 or 1100 FX you won't regrest it.


MM

One thing you need to add to that FAQ if you write is the new PCI-Express cards. Those are going to make a monster difference when that technology becomes more avail.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

Merry Christmas
faq731-376
faq559-716 - SW Fora Users

 

[Theophilus]

I've got a Quadro FX-500 card. It does a good job for what I do. Lately, I've been getting into larger (much larger) assemblies and plan to go to the FX-1100 or something of that sort for my next machine. But so far, this card is great and I've had no card-related crashes.

XP Pro, two 80 GB SATA 7200 HDD, 64-bit AMD Opteron, 1 GB RAM

I just read an article somewhere that said the reason some people cannot access all of their RAM is because they have graphics cards with lots of RAM--that the cards were sucking up some of the RAM, so you'd never see your RAM accessed in the task manager unless it was page-filed. For what that's worth.

With these large assemblies (hundreds of discrete parts), I'm only just now starting to see some bogging down for some operations--but the system is still very quick. Expecially for $2,000 (Xi Computer).

Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

 

[MadMango]

I'll create an FAQ for this, but I have some questions about PCI Express if people want it added. I found this article:

PCI Express

PCI Express is the new interconnect between devices and the motherboard. It's been adopted by graphics card vendors as it provides enhanced performance over AGP 8x but can be used by many different devices. PCI Express is not the same technology as PCI and is not interchangeable.

PCI Express gives greater bandwidth by having 16 channels with a serial connection on each channel. The parallel nature of AGP limited the maximum throughput and had especially slow transfer from the GPU to the motherboard. This [red]isn't that important for CAD[/red] in the most part except for the top end cards but video is the real beneficiary today along with special applications that use the graphic card registers to do the calculations.

The problem is most major manufactures are swapping over to PCI Express but the premium is only about 10% so for future proofing you might as well bite the bullet if you are thinking of getting a new workstation in the next few months. PCI Express also offers greater power to be supplied over the bus. Most PCI Express cards don't need extra power connectors or increased power supplies.

So is it beneficial or not concerning SW?

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[ctopher]

We recently purchased some Dell pc's and some Nvidia cards separate to use with SolidWorks. At the time there was not any Nvidia cards available to fit the new PCI cards that now come with Dell. IT bought a different video card brand (don't remember what it was), but IMO is not as good as Nvidia. Just my 2 cents.

 

[SBaugh]

It's benefical by far. I just read a great article on these cards from my suscription of Desktop Engineering. Lots of good information about how they work and the benfits from having one. Only one problem right now. There are only 3 motherboards that support them.

http://www.deskeng.com/articles/feature/pci_express_101/

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

Merry Christmas
faq731-376
faq559-716 - SW Fora Users