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Radeon 9800 (or 9700) use in Solidworks

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KiLLaK

KiLLaK

Mechanical
Feb 21, 2002
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Has anyone had any more recent (ref: post re: 9700 in April 03) experience with the Radeon 9800 or 9700. I was thinking of getting a 9800"All in Wonder" for my home system, but if it has marginal capabilities in SW...I will stick with an Nvidia card.
I curretnly use Ti 4600s both at work and at home...and they work quite well with SW( Currently using 2004B2). I would like to upgrade, though...and have read some articles describing less than complete DirectX9 compliance for the Nvid Fx5900.
Also, the 9800 seems to have somewhat better visuals.
I once bought an ATI 9500(for home) but with the drivers that came with the carc, SW would open up...but there would be nothing in the workspace...completely unusable!
I have since heard (and read) that the newer CATALYST Drivers have added CAD support. Although I have also read that ATI wants you to buy a Fire GL card for CAD!!!
Anyway, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks all.
Kelin
 
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PNY NVIDIA QUADRO4 FX500 GRAPHICS BOARD 128MB 8X $300-$350 I think these will enable RealView in SW 2004 but I would call and ask them to confirm
 
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Is the "realview" option worth it...as I stated, I have been using Ti4600s with great results....and for my home system, I also need to be able to run games (although I understand the Quadro does a great job with the games I play...UT2003, Q3, etc).
Well, thanks all for the help...I will check into the Quadros.
Kelin
 
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I think your best bet is to wait 3 months and see what everybody thinks of realview(if it slows down SW) and for the card prices to drop some more.
 
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I have the ATI 9700 Pro card at home. There is still nothing faster for games. (this might change next week!)
My home use of Solidworks is fairly light, but it does seem to work well there as well. Last December, this card was $360 retail.
 
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ATi's workstation equivalent of the Quadro is the FireGL. Its basically a 9700pro with different drivers, much like a Quadro is a Geforce4/FX with different drivers. I have heard of various dodgy methods of converting a 9700pro into a FireGL. If you want to take the risk. My home 9700pro can't run SolidWorks very well at all. I have to turn the hardware acceleration down to just about nothing :-(
 
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Once again, thanks all for the responses...one question to LoveAeris...was that a typo re: SW2003 being released soon...I have 2003SP4.0 and 2004B2 running....you might want to check the SW support if you are still on 2001+.
While I am still doing some homework on the subject...looks like my initial ideas have been supported by all of you.
To NathanN...I have read the same stuff re: changing the 9700 to a FireGL similarly to the SoftQuadro. While some have had success...I would rather not spend $400 and have to hack it.
I am also intrigued (sp?) by the "realview"....and whether it might be worth it to get a Quadro FX500 or so...either way, I am going to hang on a few weeks to do alittle more research...at $350-500 I would rather not make a mistake!!!
Thanks Again ALL....
Kelin
 
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KillaK,

I said "SW 2003 will be installed soon". I have to bring my PC to work and IT is going to install SW 2003.

I wouldn't recommend 9700 Pro for SolidWorks, but for 3D games. My PC at home is primary used for Online Game and Chat, not for work.

I believe the best video card for SW is WildCat. G400 is so so for SW and Game. GeForce4 is good for game and so so for SW. Each cards has own specialty, so define your needs first and pick right one.

However, it's interesting to see two opposite result on 9700 Pro. Well, it may not be opposite result and it could be caused by different expectation. "works well" and "doesn't work well" is not clearly defined. I was using previous driver on W2K, but I updated the driver to Catalyst 3.6 (released July 15). Of coerce I enable X8. I don't work at home frequently, but as far as I operate parts and small assemblies, SW runs without any problem.

By the way, I get over 5500 points by FF11 official Benchmark and FF11 was a main focus when I bought 9700 Pro.
 
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Keep tellin' ya...... now it's public. SW2004 was baselined on Quadro (any Quadro). Seems to me it makes sense to try and eliminate as much doubt as possible even if you are not going to use RealView.

3/4 of all the Spam produced goes to Hawaii - shame that's not true of SPAM also.......
 
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I brought my home PC to work yesterday and IT installed SW2003. I run a benchmark program of "SolidWorks 2003 Workstation Benchmark" on both PCs.


This is the result of "Test Average for 5 tests" of Graphic.

Radeon 9700 Pro (home): 37 sec
Wildcat VP760 (work): 105 sec

I first run on my home PC and I immediately noticed when I run on work PC that test was going very slow. My home PC has faster CPU, RAM and Hard Drive than work PC and I am not sure how they affect the graphic test, but I am really happy with the result that my video card is about 3 times faster :)

Now I am confident to work at home with my PC.
 
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SBaugh,

Sure I did. I love my batch file I posted.

thread559-65220 SW crashed, I run the program and I did it right before running the benchmark and made sure no application was running and I didn't even move the mouse following Readme.

The test was not to compare video cards. I just wanted to make sure Radeon 9700 Pro runs SW2003 well and it does without any problem while the benchmark test. I still don't recommend Radeon 9700 Pro for SW though. It's a best gaming card and I would say good enough for SW2003 at home.
 
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I forgot you made that batch file [lol] I guess I was getting some [sleeping] since my loooong day today, of answering Tech support SW questions, as well as answering SW questions here. [lol]

You might try doing a fresh install of SW on the work machine. I new computer without a lot of apps on it or just the plain fact hasn't bee running that long. IMO would get better performance than a old one would.

[idea]

Even better yet reinstall the OS [rofl2] i wouldn't do it just for a test but if you want accurate results I would consider it.

Best Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP[wiggle][alien]
3DVision Technologies
faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help
 
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I was looking on ebay for video cards, and it seems like there's quite a price disparity. If you do a search for wildcat in video cards, you'll find cards from $1 to over $1000. There are some II's for under $100. And, there's a wildcat 4000 G2 for $1! Should I go for one of em? Is there something else I should know?

PS I'm currently running AMD 1.2Ghz, 512 RAM, and Gforce 2 MX 32MB All 2 years old before I did too much heavy CAD work. I may buy another 512 RAM too, it's pretty cheap. But, I bought my board about week before the XP chips came out, so 1.4 is as fast as my board will ever support so no processor upgrade for now.
 
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