Video Card Recommendations Please

RipV · Dec 17, 2004

Hello,
Our company has just purchase us 5 new computers for our cad stations. We run Solidworks 2003 SP0. We are experiencing problems which we suspect is video related. Lines in sketches &/or dimensions disappear. Confirmation corner in sketches sometimes disappears. Frenquent SW crashes.Other weird things graphically too. I did look at the ATI Video Card Controls in control panel/display and saw that there was an option for Direct3D or OpenGL. Direct3D is checked. Would OpenGL be better?

Our system is as follows:
Processor=P4 3.0 GHz
Ram=varies 1.0 to 1.5 GB (I have 1.5)
Hard Drive= 80 GB
OS=Win XP Pro SP2
Video= ATI Radeon 9200 Pro AGP/128MB memory

I have done several searches & printed out results. Seems the Nvidia Quattro 500FX is recommended a lot. I do know that some of the posts were quite old. What is the recommended card currently? They will get us new cards but we want to be sure that there will be an improvement. We're thinking about buying just one and trying it first, then get 4 more.

Thanks,
Ken

Theophilus · Dec 17, 2004

This depends on what you're doing the most.

For large assemblies of over 200 parts, consider something with a little more power than the FX 500. Same goes for a part with many features (through your screen ten times or so).

Otherwise, it's a great card and I use it every day. If you need more, read up on some reviews for such cards in Cadalyst and other such publications. I believe you'll find the best value in such cards with the FX 1100 or so, but you should double-check me.

Always make sure the card you consider will meet the requirements on the SW hardware list at the SW web site.

Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

SBaugh · Dec 17, 2004

Your card doesn't exactly show up in the tested video cards. So I would say the problem is you video card.

Try this:

1) Open SW (Close all SW files) Only have SW the app running.
2) Tools\options\System Options\Performace\ - Toggle Software OpenGL on
3) test your files now

If everything is better then it's your card.

On other thing to try if the above doesn't work:

1) RMB your Desktop - Click Properties
2) Settings
3) Advanced
4) Troubleshooting Tab
5) Pull the Hardware Acceleration to "None"
6) test your files once again.

If that helps it's your video card.

Look at the Quadro FX series cards

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