Graphic Card for this System and Memory Page File 1

[SDO]

Hi,

1.
Can anyone recommend a graphic card for this specific system?:
SW2004 SP1.0 on:
Computer: Dell desktop
Freq: 2.4 GHz
RAM: 528 MB
HDD: 40GB (30GB free space)
Graphic Card: Intel 82865G - 64MB
OS: Windows 2000

I have seen the Dell recommended cards on the SW official website and shown them to my IT. He said they are Graphic Stations cards and not PC cards(Precision cards = GStation cards apparently), hence, SW is designed not to be run on PC's but stations!
Anyone can comment and clear this up for me (and my IT) a little more? I know the topic has been discussed a lot, sorry for bringing it up again.
2.
I keep getting these messages from SW:
"SolidWorks has detected that you are running low on memory.... Please close some applications (just Outlook running)... You can then start the System options in Control Panel and choose the Virtual Memory button to create an additional paging file or to increase the size of your current paging file."
When I checked I had:
Total virtual memory: 1246 MB
Available virtual memory 2MB !!!
And I was only working with parts 1.2 MB, just one loaded at a time.
Initially, after loading just SW I had:
Total Physical memory: 528 MB
Available Physical memory: 303 MB
Total virtual memory: 2 GB
Available virtual memory: 1.5 GB
Page File Space: 1.5 GB

Thank you,
Sorin

 

[SBaugh]

Quadro FX cards - size depends on the type of files you make and the size of your assemblies

There is also the ATI T2, WildCat cards.

best thing to do is make sure the card you decide is on the SW website in green

Regards

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Regarding question 2:
Check what is running in your "Startup" folder also what services are running in "Task Manager". Sometimes many services or programs are started "in the background" to supposedly make the actual program activation faster...at the expense of available resources.
If you manually set your VM, make sure your setting is divisible by 8. Apparently it makes a difference??? So if you want to use the max 2GB (supposedly the max windows recognizes)then enter 2048, not 2000.
Other threads in this forum have covered other stuff like switching off the fancy crap (menu fades, pointer shadows, etc) so do a search for them to get more ideas.

Good Luck.



CorBlimeyLimey, Barrie, Ontario.
Sign on a Barrie restaurant reads, "We serve Molsons, but we only smoke Ribs"
faq559-863

 

[aamoroso]

I have ATI FireGL T2 and run with Windows 2000 SP4, AMD Athlon XP3000+, 1,048,048 RAM and seldom have any problems. I don't work locally for storage so HD is pretty much irrelevant (40gb on 2 partitions C=5gb d=35gb) although partioning the HD can, and does, speed up the operating system slightly. I have my virtual mem initial and max set at 3072.

Don't know if this helps at all, but I thought I would share, this is the most successful setup I have with Solidworks over last 5 years of tinkering.

CLEAN OUT YOUR TEMP FOLDER OFTEN!!!!!!!!!!!!! It works wonders when you are working local especially.

 

[SDO]

Thank you all for the info.
I will choose one of the recommended cards and see what the differences is. I also checked the VM settings and the background running apps.

Thanks again,
Sorin

 

[JimSym]

You may have a Dell desktop computer with a "small form factor" case. If so, most of the recommended graphics cards won't fit in your system.

The only "low profile" professional cards I know are the Quadro4 550XGL and Quadro4 580XGL. They are not speed demons and don't support "RealView" graphics, but they are certified and stable.

 

[SDO]

Thanks Jim, very important tip. I will check for the size factor.
Sorin