×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Bringing some science to selecting the proper videocard
2

Bringing some science to selecting the proper videocard

Bringing some science to selecting the proper videocard

2
(OP)
Getting the proper videocard for your solidworks needs can be a bit of a guess (since most of us who do not have a couple laying around to test), so here a little bit that might help:

When playing around a bit with rivatuner in my coffee break I found out there is a really nice monitor tool hidden in there. It tracks the amount of video ram in use.

Some explanation on the importance of video ram:
In Solidworks, when you open your model it loads the geometry data in the video ram. That is, if it will fit! The video ram is being used in the same way as windows uses the main system ram & swap file:

When a program requests memory (like SW, when doing FEA work) windows will first use the fast ram and if that is full it wil use the much slower page file on the hard drive to store the data.
The video card & driver work in the same way: when the geometry data is to much to store in the very fast video ram it gets send over the pcie bus, to be stored in the much slower local system ram.
As you can guess by now is that when you have a large assembly, the advantage of storing all data in video ram is 2 folded, you save valuable system ram and your system doesn't have to move huge datasets around (slowing your system to a crawl).

Now to see if your pc would even benefit of a different video adapter:
1. download RivaTuner 2.0 RC16:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/downloadget.php?id=163&file=4&evp=9e6676bbd5624492315b7f8cd1ad28fa

2. After installing & starting RivaTuner click on this icon:



3. Click on "Hardware monitoring", a window with graphs will pop up.

4. To include the video memory usage graphs, click setup.

5. Check the 3 videomemory usage entries, as shown:



6. Click the "Allways on top" button

7. Start Solidworks and pick a representative assembly, make note of the total amount of video ram used while working on it and you have your mimimum video ram requirement for smooth working!

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

RE: Bringing some science to selecting the proper videocard

Interesting... I will try it out here at work.  I have used Rivatuner at home for over 2 years, but have never used that feature you are talking about.
thread559-87811

Flores
SW06 SP4.1

RE: Bringing some science to selecting the proper videocard

Thanks, Stephan!  (Star)

Looks like good material for the FAQs!

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Bringing some science to selecting the proper videocard


Stephan ... I'm runnning the FX500 with 128MB RAM, but the three "Videomemory usage" options you recommend selecting are not available. Any idea why?

cheers
Helpful SW websites  FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions  FAQ559-1091

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources