Graphics card recommendation for NX

[JDub74]

Hey all,

My company is looking to purchase a new workstation or two and I'm looking for the best graphics card for NX. We're currently running NX9 but will be jumping to NX11 perhaps in the next 6 months or so. We design automotive tooling and the product we're dealing with in the last year has gotten really heavy/complex. The assemblies are getting so big that we're really bogging down our current equipment. I have to keep budget in mind. We'll probably be going with a Dell 7810.

So far I'm looking at the following choices:
Nvidia Quadro M4000 8GB
Nvidia Quadro M5000 8GB
Dual Nvidia Quadro M4000 8GB

Is it worth it to go to a dual card for NX?
Would I be better with a dual M4000 setup over a single M5000?

I'm open to other suggestions but I'd like to stay within the price range of a single M5000 or lower which is currently around $1500.
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[NutAce]

Not that much difference between the two.
M5000 uses more power and has more cores available.
Both are certified for NX by Siemens...I would go for cheaper M4000.
[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.nvidia.com/object/compare-quadro-gpus.html[/url]

Ronald van den Broek
Senior Application Engineer
Winterthur Gas & Diesel Ltd
NX9 / TC10.1.2
HPZ420 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 0 @ 3.60GHz, 32 Gb Win7 64B
Nvidea Quadro4000 2048MB DDR5

HP Zbook15
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4800MQ
CPU @ 2.70 GHz Win7 64b
Nvidia K1100M 2048 MB DDR5

 

[SDETERS]

Browse around this site. It has some results and data on benchmarks.

https://www.spec.org/gwpg/apc.data/specapc_nx10_summary.html

 

[IvanNX]

The only question that is relevant on this is how many 4K HD monitors you will use per station (as nutace said for normal use M4000 is quite ok). So if you have two, single card is enough if it support 4K dual, if you will have three you could prefer dual card setup (also with support for 4K HD dual monitor setup) as I did not heard about graphics card splitter that support multiple 4k HD screens. If you have only Full HD monitors then you do not have need for dual at all, as you can get graphic card splitter for up to 4 full HD monitors.

_____________________________
Enjoy your work and have fun!

 

[Xwheelguy]

Take the 2nd card out of the equation and throw that money towards more RAM and processing power.

Tim Flater
NX Designer
NX 9.0.2.5 Win7 Enterprise x64 SP1
Intel Core i7 2.5GHz 16GB RAM
4GB NVIDIA Quadro K3100M

 

[JDub74]

Thanks for all the responses and the link to spec.org. That may prove useful.

We aren't running any 4K monitors yet. Most workstations are running two 24" HD monitors of average decent build and maybe 2 years old. I don't really know of any real advantage in going to 4K monitors for design yet if clarity isn't an issue. Seems like they're a lot more taxing on the systems anyway and would likely hinder performance.

Are you saying there is no performance advantage in running dual graphics cards? I thought running dual cards would yield at least some performance advantage even with only one or two monitors. No?

I don't think RAM is an issue. Our 2 year old systems have 64 GB of RAM and anything new would have that or more.

I guess I should give you all a bit if a baseline.
Here are the specs on the current system:
Dell Precision T7810
2 x 16-Core 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon CPU E5-2630 v3 @ 2.40GHz
64 GB RAM
Nvidia K4200 4GB
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
NX 9.0.2.5

That's the system that's not quite cutting it. We're hoping to beat it for load times and shaded rotation.

 

[IvanNX]

Are you sure that upgrading windows would not actually make better option?
I am not sure that shaded rotation problems are GFX issue, but never dig in that problem so... maybe there are people who can give you better answer.
Loading issue can be connected to how CAD is done or NX setup, not just the computer speed.

_____________________________
Enjoy your work and have fun!

 

[SDETERS]

Do not forget about the hard drive. Solid State Drives and how they are mounted in the machine makes a vast improvement also.

 

[Rob_N]

depending on your how your files are stored, load times can me network dependent.
We just invested in a new, more powerful server and upgraded the network. more home runs, less switches and all of the switches are same now.
load times decreased greatly.

Shaded rotation isn't much of a priority for my like of work. I run 3 23" HD displays on a K2200