Video Performance Slow in NX4

[ninerocket1]

I recently installed NX4, When working with large assemblies the response from the video slows to a crawl.
I am currently running 2 gig of memory with an Nvidia FX5200 video card (128 memory) Would upgrading the video card help the performance. If so, any suggestions to a card? Thanks

Jim Walker
Lorentson Tooling Inc

 

[Xwheelguy]

Do you have the card's preferred application setting set to Unigraphics?

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

Some people are like slinkies....they don't really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

 

[ninerocket1]

No I didn't....I just took a few minutes and added UG to this cards list of applications that use the custom settings.
Opened a file (32,555 K) Hard to tell if it helped, maybe a little. Could more memory, either in the video card or the computer help this problem? Thanks again

Jim Walker
Lorentson Tooling Inc

 

[Xwheelguy]

Your video card is not certified by UGS...that's a little bit of a concern. Yes, more is always better when it comes to RAM and video cards. I would think that your 2 GB of RAM is plenty.

If it were me, I'd get a certified video card. Other users may disagree, and that's their prerrogative. I don't like working on non-supported hardware in case I run into a situation like this. I can just call GTAC and have them do the problem solving.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

Some people are like slinkies....they don't really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, the GeForce FX5200 is described on the Nvidia site as a 'gaming/mainstream' card. While the prices of these cards are certainly attractive, they will not have the same level of performance as would those cards designed specifically for 'workstation' use, generally the Quadro line of cards. And I expereinced this myself once.

When I was still using my old portable MaxVision workstation (since replaced by a Dell M65 laptop which has an Nvidia Quadro FX350M graphics engine) I once 'lost' my graphics card while on the road and went into a local electronics store, like a Micro Center, and purchased what for them was the most powerfull AGP Open-GL graphics card, but it was still a gaming card. While it did work, performance was marginal, but it did get me through the bind I was in, but once I was back at the office, we replaced the card with a one that was fully supported and installed the certified driver.

So while gaming cards are attractive, pricewise, they usually fall short on performance for high-end CAD applications like NX and such.


John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
UGS NX Product Line
SIEMENS
UGS PLM Software
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/ugs

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[toniechang]

You 'game card' has in fact all the possibilities of a 'high end' one but hidden for $ reasons. You can turn it into what is needed for free :

http://www.guru3d.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

Now we do not recommend that you start 'hacking' your graphics driver or firmware on the board, because as far as our 'support' of your configuration, that's not going to help at all ;-)

Now that does not mean that we have not tried to at least provide, whenever possible, some minimal level of graphics supports for whatever display card that you're using, but to find out exactly what that level of support by NX is, there are a couple of things that you can do. First launch a session of NX and under Help select the 'NX Log File' option. Once you have the logfile displayed in the listing window, do a search for the word 'adaptor'. When you find it, note what's reported in the next several items. The first one to look at is 'Graphics device'. If it's reported as 'GDI Generic', then you know that you're probably not getting acceleration from the graphics card at all and it's in what's called, as it states, a 'generic' mode of operation. Or you might find something a little more descriptive like:

This is an unaccelerated graphics configuration. Unigraphics performs better on accelerated configurations. Perhaps the graphics device is unsupported or perhaps an incorrect device driver is installed.

Now if you see either of these notes, there's not a whole lot that you can do to help you if you're running on an uncertified graphics board or using a non-certified driver, but you should, at a minimum, run the 'Evaluate Graphics Performance' utility found on the Preferences -> Visualization Performance... dialog. This will run a series of tests on your graphics configuration and will give you a report of what it finds and some recommendations that you can do inside of NX to perhaps improve your performance.

I hope that this helps, but you're still better off getting an approved graphics divice and driver because at least in that situation, we might be able to provide more real support through the GTAC organization.



John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
UGS NX Product Line
SIEMENS
UGS PLM Software
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/ugs

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[J-C]

The 5200 is a fairly weak card...even where gaming is concerned. Not sure about UG....but my Geforce 6800gt runs Solidworks just fine. Its the same as a Quadro FX4000.......nvidia just charges more and tries to deactivate some stuff in the driver. Most of the hacks out there just tweak the driver so your card registers as the quadro version, no hardware tweaking.

Nvidia put an end to this in the 7000 and 8000 series cards by making hardware differences

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
UG NX4.01.0 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2007 SP3.1 on WinXP SP2

 

[ninerocket1]

Thanks to everyone for the input......sounds like a new card is the ticket, just need to find a pci card to go in my outdated mother board.....

Jim Walker
Lorentson Tooling Inc

 

[Dawson70]

If your motherboard doesn't even support AGP it's probably a good time to change that too. Finding a better PCI video card will probably prove hard.

Ron Dawson
Manufacturing Engineer
Ducommun AeroStructures-Parsons

http://www.ducommunaero.com/index.html