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StefanHamminga
Mechanical
- Jul 18, 2005
- 354
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:
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
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:
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
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