NVidea Quadro 4 for Solidworks

[Adrian2]

Dear Folks;

Our company recently purchased an NVidea Quadro 4 750 XGL graphics card for our SW 2003, Dell P4 2.4, 1 gig RAM computer. Unfortunately performance has not been noticeably better that with the old Nvidea geforce card.

I am thinking that something else must be wrong because I have followed installation instructions to the letter. These have included installing the latest SW service pack 2.1 and downloading Nvideas latest XP driver for solidworks.

My system crashes often when creating sections and also when dragging parts into drawings. The view rotations are quite slow. When clicking on the XP task manager I noticed that the processor is max'ed out at 100 % during these part rotations.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve things ? I have called my VAR whose 16 year old tech support person was somewhat less than useful. The Nvidea website absolves themselves of any responsibility by passing me off to the computer supplier.

My Solidoesntworks

Adrian D.

 

[badboggs]

Your problem is sw2003 my friend. To convince yourself re-install 2001+ and play around. Big difference. We are all having the same problems you are speaking of.

 

[JNR]

#1. Read the "SW2003 performance" thread.

#2. It ain't SolidWorks 2003. My old 1.4 GHz with TNT graphics board at home runs at least as fast with 2003 as it did with 2001+ - which is not bad by the way and it is on XP Pro SP1 (SP1 is important).

#3. You can't just reload 2001+ - sorry, Badboggs, but that was a dumb comment. You have already comverted your database and it is not backward compatible.

#4. Figure out the real problem - which sounds a bit glib, but is meant sincerely and may not be easy.

#5. Some obvious things to look for: Check your OpenGL settings - both in SolidWorks and the driver settings. If you are pegging your CPU doing graphics work, it sounds like you have Software OpenGL Acceleration functioning. Contrary to popular belief in some quaters, that is not a good thing and is very slow unless you have a museum piece system. Just because Solidworks says it is not doing software accel. does not mean a whole lot. There are other factors. Right Click your desktop and open the graphics driver settings. Check that your hardware accel. slider bar is not set a zero. (And by the way you might want to try different settings later on.) Also under your graphics driver's own Quadro tab, make sure you have set it to "SolidWorks" configuration. That may be obvious to you but apparently some people have missed this. If the tab does not exist you have the wrong driver - which is not as dumb as it sounds - see #1 above and look at my post today. Also check that Software accel. is not turned on IN THE DRIVER SETTINGS.

#6 Disconnect and unistall your SpaceBall if you have one until the manufacturer fixes their speed problems.

#7 If you have the luxury of a spare disk, load up a Win 2000 system and check it is not an XP issue.

#8 Turn off all the fancy XP graphics stuff like "cursor shadows", "smooth text fonts", etc. (that's in system props).

 

[DetroitPickles]

While SW 2003 is not without some problems that make the software go bye bye, I agree with JNR that you have other issues.

You have the latest driver from nVidia, but is it newer than is "approved" by SW or Dell (in this case)? I would definetly check the Software OpenGl settings in SW and the nVidia Properties page in the OS. With NO doc open in SW, look at the System Options and you can see the OpenGL setting under Performance.

I don't think that 2003 is much worse than 2001-Plus, but I can get 2003 to crash when I want it to, and I strongly believe it is graphic card related, as I have never upgraded my driver.


Mr. Pickles

 

[SeanF]

JNR,
This is a bit over the top...

>#6 Disconnect and unistall your SpaceBall if you have one >until the manufacturer fixes their speed problems.

I see nothing of the sort. Everything is just fine here. Far as my box goes 3Dconnexion is doing just fine. First, this "issue" you mention. Is by NO means as occurring as the basic graphics performance issues are. In fact of the 2 groups I follow this is the first mention I have seen of it. Second, you will not see the performance of a mouse when rotating with a spaceball. This is probably due to the fact that the spaceball will be performing more than one motion at a time. Something a mouse can't do. As well as something I suspect would be much more intense graphics related. Yes, I will not disagree that hidden line performance can get slow with a lot of models on screen. However, my shaded performance is fine. It has been from 2001+ thru until now. All the driver versions along the way from 3Dconnexion have been fine. With the exception of one. The problem with that driver was a sketch related crash. Not a performance issue. Have you have truly taken the time to do some testing with the spaceball? Meaning, have you have locked it into 2D mode and compared the performance to your mouse? On my box my 2D spaceball performance is the SAME as what my mouse performance is. Yes, I am slower hidden lines, than shaded but, this applies to BOTH the mouse and the spaceball.

Just because you can't move with the spaceball as fast as you can with the mouse does not "clear" the G card as the root problem. If your card can't keep up with the spaceball, then your card is still the problem. Not trying to start a pissing match, however, one must really be sure EVERYONE is having problems before one goes off making rash "these things are all FUBAR" statements. You having a problem does not mean "we" are having a problem (the rest of the SldWks/Spaceball users).

Regards,
No flame, or offense intended.

Sean F
Mechanical Engineer
seanf@newing-halll.com
1 2 many l's in e-mail

 

[SBaugh]

Try this to see if its the card causing you the problem.

1) Restart your computer in VGA mode and see if the crashing stops.

2) If so then the problem is in your Graphics Card (GC).

3) Try using either the newer drivers or even try some older drivers. (On my home desktop I use version 29 of the detenator drivers, because of a the performance that I get out of it).

4) Try turning the color down(from True to High) once your back into your normal login.

5) Try using the Alternative method as a last result (I have seen this work for a lot of people though, but no guarantees)

Best Regards, Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.3dmca.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[Theophilus]

For what it's worth. ..is anyone who is experiencing these problems using a 3D Labs Oxygen card (take your pick which revision)?

I am running SW 2003 on a five-year old machine w/dual chips and a five-year old card. I'm also running the same on a 2.5-year old machine with a 2.5-year old card. Both are Oxygen cards (different revisions). I have few crashes on either machine.

Old machine is NT, new one is 2000 Pro, but I wonder if the stodgy Oxygen architecture helps to stabilize things a bit?


Jeff Mowry
DesignHaus Industrial Design

http://www.designhaus-i-d.com