SolidWorks 2006 Graphic Cards

[jkalinowsky]

All,
I am building a home PC for home computing and gaming, and want to be able to run SolidWorks 2006 without too much trouble. I was wondering if anybody is running a eVGA 6800GT graphics card, and how it is working? I'll be using and AMD 3700 (939) processor, with the option to upgrade to 2x6900GT cards in the future. I know this isn't on the SolidWorks supported cards list, but as CAD is not the primary use of my PC I don't want to purchase a graphics card geared mainly towards CAD. I'll most likely only be working with relatively simple medium/larger sized assemblies (100 parts with 5-10 features each at most). Very little complex lofting, lighting, COSMOS, photoworks etc.

If anybody can offer any advice on the card, or suggest another gaming card (in the $300 range) that will handle simple solidworks, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
John

 

[Luca83]

Based on the spec's of that card, and what you'll be doing you should be just fine.

 

[J-C]

Can't remember what brand card I have, but I am running the nvidia 6800GT and it seems to work fine with assemblies larger than what you will be working on. Think I paid a little over $300 for it.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2005 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2
SolidWorks 2006 SP1.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[jkalinowsky]

Thanks for the replies...I think I should be OK. I know the recommended cards are different than gaming cards, but that's the extent of my knowledge. Guess I'll go for it and see get what I get.

John

 

[crjones]

As a side note I have read that SolidWorks does like Windows XP Home, you need XP Pro.

 

[Heckler]

John,

I don't think SolidWorks and Gaming mix well kind of like oil and water. Here are some links to SWx system requirements. It's a toss up you build a gaming machine and you will be limited by the graphics card with SWx or you build a MCAD machine and your gaming abilities will be limited.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/SystemRequirements.html

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardtesting.html

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford

 

[jkalinowsky]

Heckler,
I know I can't have the best of both worlds, but I find it hard to believe that it is absolutely necessary to have one of the SW recommended cards, given all the cards out there. If I was only interested in CAD, I would definately go for one of the quadros, but I'm reasonably confident that any decent graphics card will keep up with solidworks for basic modeling. I could be wrong though. I just want to build something that'll keep up with what I have at work, which is a Dell 370 with an ATI FireGL V3100 (128mb).

Thanks again!,
John

 

[grunt58]

I'm interested in doing the same thing. What non MCAD cards that can do simple SW parts and Ass'ys do people recomend? How would a dedicated card say the Quadro 540 handle gaming? Personaly I'm not caring about to much detail on either end just a card that can play most games and run SW decently.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

You may be able to install 2 video cards & set up two hardware configurations on your computer with each being set for diffferent video driver needs ... one for gaming, one for SW.

You would need to re-start the computer when switching from one to the other ... & switch the monitor cable also.




Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of faq559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions faq559-1091

 

[jkalinowsky]

CorBlimeyLimey,
I hear that an SLI setup doesn't like two different cards, and it might not take advantage of the SLI itself. But I think you mean using two non-SLI cards, which I know nothing about. This crossed my mine, but it seemed like it would lead to more problems than it is worth (for me, anyway). Being this is my first build, I'm gonna steer clear of this for now. Anybody ever try this?

John

 

[Heckler]

John,

This topic gets its fair share of wind around here...but again you will have to completely define what you want to do with your home system. When I built mine I knew from the beginning I would hardly if ever play games but would use the system to do work at home. So SWx performance was my main interest. I sounds like to me that gaming is your which is fine. You will just have to realize you will run into limitations.

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford

 

[jkalinowsky]

Heckler,
You're right, I guess CAD is not my main goal...I don't want to do too much work at home, but it is a good excuse to spend money on a decent upgrade! It's hard to justify spending so much $$ to play games.

I'm hoping the limitations of the gaming system won't be too apparent for the CAD work I do. When I got this idea, I thought that gaming systems lead the technology wave and that they would handle CAD work without trouble, but apparently I was mistaken.

John

 

[pdybeck]

Has anyone succesfully applied the famous "Quadro Hack" to the nvidia 6800GT? Jason? I am also building a pc for use at home and like the price of a 6800GT vs. a quadro FX 1400. If I could hack the 6800GT succesfully, I think it might outperform (or have similar performance) the quadro 1400 for less price. I'm thinking the 6800GT is better from a price/performance standpoint. Plus, I read Vista will perform better with 256 MB of Video RAM and I would like to somewhat future proof this pc.

Pete

 

[engAlright]

jkalinowsky -

As Heckler mentions, the video card topic does get a lot of wind around here.

The requirements for a home system are much less rigourous than those for a CAD workstation. Also keep in mind that your video card is just one piece of the puzzle for decent performance, albeit an important piece, but one piece nevertheless.

From personal experience, I work on a Thinkpad laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon, 16MB and I get by just fine. I'm not routinely working with anything larger than 500 parts and a bunch of complex surfaces, but when I do as long as I have only a couple of SW windows open everything goes along pretty smoothly.

Certainly if you only want to work on assemblies of a hundred parts or less, and those assemblies don't have much detail, you can get by with most any mid-range gaming card.

 

[J-C]

I haven't tried hacking the card yet but plan to soon.

And performance wise, this card performs beautifully with no problems, both 2005 & 2006. And plays a mean game of Doom 3.



Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2005 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2
SolidWorks 2006 SP1.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[pdybeck]

Thanks Jason,

I think the 6800GT is my card. I will let you know how the hack goes when I try it after I build my new pc. The forums at 3Dguru seem to indicate the 6800GT appears as a quadro 4000 when hacked correctly. Quite a bargain after the hack at roughly $289.

Pete

 

[J-C]

I've tried hacking the card but haven't had any luck. The old how to in these forums is a bit out of date though mostly correct.

Tried the certified driver 71.84 and the latest with no luck.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2005 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2
SolidWorks 2006 SP1.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[neilc78]

Hi - I have SW2006 Pre Release installed on my pc at home. I have 1GB of RAM and a Radeon x800xt card with 256MB RAM. This is running no problem for me. When I look up my card on the SW website it says there will be a problem if I open more than 'x' windows at a time. I have never tried to disprove this, but I can say in general use the pc at home performs just the same as one of the heavy duty Quaddro cards here at work. However, I don't doubt the Radeon card has limitations so don't buy it if you intend heavily using the system at home.

 

[dogarila]

I just got a 6800GT PCI with 256MB video RAM. Works fine so far with driver version 6.14.0010.7801. If anyone finds a way to hacking it to a Quadro please let me know. What is SLI?

 

[pdybeck]

SLI = Scalable Link Interface.

Its a way to connect two graphics cards to share in the video processing. If software apps are writtent to take advantage of it, it apparently can have quite an increase in video performace.