Graphics Upgrade. Single Quadro 3700 or dual 1500

[overkill4]

Hi All,

Anybody have any thoughts or experience running SW 09 with dual quadro cards? I've got about $1000 CDN for an upgrade and was wondering if it's better to get a single Quadro 3700 or dual 1500's.

I noticed the 1500 isn't PCIe 2.0. Would the extra memory offset this?

Thanks



60% of the time, it works every time.

 

[EEnd]

I do not know if / how well SolidWorks works with video cards in a SLI configuration.

As far as memory goes, I think that the point where more is no longer better is lower than what most people expect. Gaming cards can make use of 512MB and up because games contain high detail bitmaps that are painted onto all of the surfaces in large virtual worlds. CAD models are generally not that large and do not make such extensive use of surface maps.

Furthermore, if you are using a 32bit OS, the video RAM counts in the 4GB limit, so additional video RAM can decrease the amount of RAM available to SolidWorks.

Eric

 

[overkill4]

I'll be running it in a 64 bit environment as well. I have seen some good FireGL benchmarks as well. Anybody running those cards?

60% of the time, it works every time.

 

[sldwkmin]

Overkill4,

My experience has been that the Nvidia cards have much more stable drivers and less issues. I would stay with Nvidia.

Cole M
CSWP, CSWST, CSWI, CPDM
Certified DriveWorks AE
HP XW4300, 3.4g proc, 2.5g RAM, ATI Fire GL 3100
Dell M90, Core 2 Duo, 4g RAM, Nvidia Quadra FX2500M
Equus (custom), P4, 3.4g proc, 3g RAM, Nvidia Quadro FX3400

 

[MikeHalloran]

I've got some kind of borderline magical Nvidia twin-head video card and two 20" flatscreen monitors, which I usually keep arranged as one landscape (for CAD), one portrait (for reading documents and stupidly formatted webpages).

Spreading the CAD display across both monitors drove me crazy with the 'bar' in the middle always where I want to study the image, so I stopped doing it.

I'd much rather have just one of the monster monitors that the IT guys have.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[overkill4]

My plan was to basically have a dual monitor setup with the second monitor used for all programs other than SWorks. That center bar would definitely get annoying.

As it stands I'm planning on getting the samsung t240 and the quadro 1700

60% of the time, it works every time.