Wildfire2 recomended Graphics Hardware 1

[tighthead]

We are currently on Pro/E 2001 and will be going to Wildfire 2 sometime soon.
We have Dell Presision 530 Workstations
P4 1.7G Xeon 1 Gig RDRam, FireGL2 64Meg Graphics cards.
The graphics are slow slow slow.
If we went for Graphics only upgrade what would be recomended?

What would be recomended for Hardware esp Graphics Gard, without going over the top cost wise?
Looking at HP P4 3.6 Gig 2Gig Ram.
Nvidia Quadro ?
Will be leased so no thought about Upgrade path to PCI Express.
Any advantage with PCI Express now.

Anywhere with good reviews especially to Wildfire. Most reviews are based on SW.

Who's got a modern graphics card they are happy with/unhappy with.

Is there any befinifit in going for a 64 bit system.

Anythoughts most welcome.

Rgds Tighthead

 

[HDS]

thread554-107031

there are los of threads on here about 64 bits. Basicly 64 bits is slower but lets you access over 4 gigs of ram. The AMD 64 bit systems are faster because they are AMDs not because they are 64 bits.

I like the Quadro cards because of the good drivers. There is no advantage to PCI express.

look at this FAQ for more info. on systems and benchamrks.

http://www.whitelightdesign.com/servicestips.htm

 

[Guest0527211403]

Be careful if you are upgrading to a 64-bit architecture.

Take a look at this PTC Techincal Point of Interest article, if you have the chance.

http://www.ptc.com/cs/tpi/110304.htm

If you can't get to it, essentially it states that there are some concerns about running Pro/E on these systems. It mentions that there is a 5-20% performance loss when moving from 32 to 64 bits. They also state that you should avoid having to use swap-space if you are using this configuration. To paraphrase them, if you have an assembly that requires 4.2 Gb of memory, you should have at least that much RAM installed so as to avoid having to use virtual memory. This may actually be why your computer is performing poorly, if your assemblies surpass 1 GB. Using Simplified Reps may alleviate that temporarily.

Another concern is the fact that Windows tops off at 2 GB of RAM, so I'm hoping you run Pro/E on Unix/Linux.

And I agree with HDS about the NVidia Quadros. Mine has a custom setting for Pro/E and it runds great (on a laptop).

 

[Hora]

Take a look at the 3D LABS products too.

-Hora