PCIe graphic cards for WF2.0

[ksboo79]

recently i bought a dell dimension for my office, and i'm planning to upgrade the graphics to run WF2.0... currently i'm running proe2001 on a X300 graphic card, it's slowing down when i open an assembly of about 100 objects, needless to say on how it is going to perform on WF... this system meets all the requirements except for the graphics...


anybody has any hints onany economic card that i can use? since that there's still no PCIe cards listed in the PTC platform support pages... i'm wondering ifsomething of the geforce fx class card will do the job?


thanks in advance... ksboo

 

[rgs1]

I am currently looking for a new graphics card also. I found the Pro-E site listing certified and/or supported cards. I am currently checking prices and they range from $150.00 to $15,000.00 depending on what you need. How does anyone know which is the best card for the right amount of $$$$$$. I work with rather large assemblies and am having problems with the screen repainting anywhere from 5x to it never stopping. As ksboo79 is asking above, can someone recommend a card?


http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/proewf2.pdf

 

[skraba]

nVidia Quadro anything above FX1300 with 128MB+ VRAM would be a good choice.

 

[crichard]

I agree with that. We're running Quadro 3400's here with 256mb of ram. NICE cards.

 

[ksboo79]

actually, i'm looking for something lower level than the quadro
cards... it really will cost me big... normally i'm working with
assemblies with about 300 to 500 parts... it would be good enough for
me if wildfire can perform on this card as of proe2001 on a geforce
fx5200...

 

[ksboo79]

recently i was told that it was impossible that a pcie card is slower than the agp cards. that computer seller said that the problem is with the hard disk's buffer space... any one has any explanination on this? i'm running on a SATA hard disk which i think is not a problem...


one more thing... how does the PCIe card X300, X600 and X800 compare to the AGP cards in terms of performance? i'm still in doubt...


thanks in advance...

 

[skraba]

pcie should be theoretically faster because of greater throughput and smaller CPU workload

 

[puppet]

the quadro is prolly the best seiers of cards to get.



i am running a good old gamers card. gforce chipset. and have no
problems with 300 odd component assemblies, but i am also using 2g of
ram.I've know lots of people to use gamers cards to there complete
satisfaction.



what you will notice is with the quadro cards. is more smoothness in pan/zoom/rotate.





( which is think is a wierd thing to say, as part complexity
should really be addressed when saying that, i mean 300 little 1x1x1
squares would be heaps easier for the pc to handle vs 300 helical
sweeps.)

 

[tunnel]

I have PCI/E GeFOrce 6600 GT...Works perfect with Wildfire , even with large assemblies (>1000 parts), but i have only one f...ing problem...On HIDE command it take an eternity to complete the command...Can someone explain this to me..?


Quadro series are too expensive for me...I heard they are the best...but not really the best in price/performance ratio...My old card was Geforce 2...worked perfectlly - not a single problem...

 

[rgs1]

I (or management decided for cost reasons) bought an ATI Fire GL T2-128 for $275.00........works great. I would have bought a 256mb instead of the 128mb management stipulated (again for cost) but the card works. Solved all my problems.........for now. Next few releases of Pro-E will tell if it will hold up under the pressure of ever increasing graphics and Pro-E.

 

[ksboo79]

i've just ordered a quadro fx 540 it almost at the end of the series... guess it'll be okay for my application... at least for few years... i'll update when i've got the card and tested it out... thanks for everyone's input anyway...

 

[phoxeoy]

I'm running Wildfire 2.0 on my Commendor 64 and works great, The only problem I have is when it comes up it looks totally different than 2001.

 

[NielsC]

Hi


Just my comment - running quadro fx500 at work at it sucks rotating is irritating slow at relative simple models -less than 30 parts and not that complicted.


My FX5600 at home almost performs better


BR Niels

 

[pat rae]

The card I use isn't on this list, and has been pretty unreliable. I use a 3D Labs Oxygen DVX Pro 1, with the OpenGL set to Pro/E. I've found that the card will get stuck in "infinate loops", especially while in sketcher mode, and crash my whole system.


I want to get a new card, and will be taking your feedback into consideration. Does anyoneknow a good card for rendering, orto use withother software like Photoshop?

 

[ksboo79]

i've been using FX540 on Proe2001for some time... i've been working with assemblies of up to 500 objects without problem... italso work well for photoshopCStoo, handling files which size up to about 90MB...


pat rae, i'd suggest you look into the platform support in the PTC's website and the graphic card manufacturer's web site for more infobefore getting a new card... normally these cards gets certification to run certain applications such as proe and photoshop...


ksboo

 

[tomh]

I am running a FX500 with 3g of ram on XP. The only issue I have is regen time on large assemblies. This is an issue due to the onlyfiles I work on now are large assemblies. So, I have ordered an FX4000 because my board will not except a PCI card. But, from working on stations at our other location I would recommend a PCI card over an AGP card, if your board will except it.

 

[MartinH]

I think there are a few things that should be clarified since there is such a wide range of advice in this thread.

- There are three types of card interfaces that often get mixed up. PCI cards have been around for years and are still used modems, sound cards, and some lower performance graphics cards. AGP replaced PCI for graphics cards a few years ago, though almost all systems still have PCI slots for other cards. PCIe (PCI Express) is a new slot that is supposed to eventually replace everything else, but right now it is mainly used for the graphics card in some new systems.

- While PCIe is theoretically faster than AGP, there is no noticeable difference in performance between them. Most newer systems use PCIe now, so you normally can't choose between them anyway.

- Most people don't notice a difference between the "professional" graphics cards (FireGL/Quadro) and normal cards (Radeon/Geforce). In fact the hardware is almost identical, for example between an ATI FireGL T2-128 (~$250) and an ATI Radeon 9600 (~$75). The first main differences is that only the FireGL is officially supported by ATI and PTC to work with Pro/E, so if you have problems and call for support, they'll only help you if you have one of those cards. Secondly, the drivers for the FireGL/Quadro are optimized for modelling software instead of games, so they can draw lines and such faster than normal cards. While the difference is significant, most normal cards already perform adequately.

- Most of speed of doing things in Pro/E has nothing to do with the graphics card. The graphics card only affects how smooth it looks (ie, how many frames per second it can draw) when you can move around and spin the model, either in wireframe or rendered. It does not affect regeneration times or constructing geometry.

- While I haven't seen any Pro/E benchmarks to prove it, I believe the amount of memory on the graphics card is usually not important. Even modern PC games, which have many times more objects and textures, are very rarely using all the memory available on modern cards. You probably can't buy anything with less than 128MB, and I'd be surprised if Pro/E ever uses that much. More memory won't make the card faster.
Edited by: MartinH

 

[mcdond5227]

I will agree with most of what MartinH said above with oneexception. More memory on the card will help you out if you routinely open a lot of windows of those large assemblies and keep them all shaded.


On another note: Regarding ATI-FireGL and Nvidia-Quadro cards and, from what I can tell, pretty much all the PTC approved cards, the have two main things in common. They all support OpenGL and all support Hardware Overlay Planes; levels of memory vary, but more is better. This last one, hardware overlayplanes,seems the most important. This make is easier for the computer to display stacked windows of 3D intensive objects, such as a shaded Pro/E part or assembly. The Quadro FX3000 (AGP not PCIE) in the IBM Intellistation we recently purchased will open the full complement of Pro/E windows (15 I think) and doesn't bog down.


For the sake of 3D design (ignoring gaming) just buy the best card that supports "hardware overlay planes" that you can buy. Armed with this new found knowledge, Ibought a Firegl card for my home computer off of eBay with 64MB of ram for $24 bucks.(You can buy one from an online computer parts store for less than $80 if youdon't like to gamble on eBay.) Good deal andProE is pretty cooperative with the card.


Good luck!

 

[hrj0]

I plan to upgrade my OS to Windows XP Pro x64 edition. It appears that most of the PCIe versions of Quadro FX series are not supported yet by the recent driver


[url]http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/77.72/77.72_ForceWare_Rel ease_Notes.pdf[/url]


see pages 36-38 pdf doc (pages 30-32 manual)


any inside info

 

[Isair]

We have tested one computer, with AMD 64 3000+, 1Gb of RAM, Quadro 3400 (pci express), on win xp 64. This machine has got worse results then P4, 3.4 Ghz, 2 Gb of RAM, and 3DLabs WildCat Realizam 100 with 256 Mb.This was weird, and I think that this is either because of bad drivers, or because of pci express.We also got one machine with ATi Radeon x600 pro (pci express) and it works fine but then sometime I got feeling that is slower then regular AGP gaming card.


From my opinion I would say that not to buy any pci express card, either buy good gaming nvidia graphic card (well nvidia cards are easily to tweak), or profession 3DLabs (because of very good performance and low price, compeering to quadro or firegl cards).