Graphics card upgrade for 3D CAD application (Archicad)

lennoxboyd

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Oct 16, 2014
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Hi

im looking to upgrade the graphics on one of my pc's . (3 year old). Windows 7

I need to run Archicad 18 which is an openGL based application needing a 1gb minimum card spec.

The processor is good , its an i5 2500k.
My RAM is ok at 8gb - Id be happy to increase this to 12gb
My graphics card is intel HD3000 integrated - hence the reason to upgrade this.

Im a bit worried about the power supply as its has a 450 watt supply.

Im happy with a gaming card as I dont want to spend more than £80-£100 (UK sterling)

Any suggestions?
 
Solution
PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 are inter-compatible and there's no difference performance wise, so rest assured in that dept. Also, GTX 750 Ti is a 60W card and will run with ease even on a 300W PSU. It's a 5A (ampere) card, since power=voltage*amps.

It'd be a good card to ArchiCAD with :)
You can literally use just about any GPU for autocad depending on what you are using it for.
Unless you are building incredibly complex 3d models that make use of hardware rendering (open CL render engine for AMD, Nvidia for the rest) then you won't want anything past an AMD 260(X) or Nvidia GTX 750 (Ti).


If precision of your line ends is important in autocad for engineering quality drawings of small mechanical bits etc, then definitely you will want a workstation card. An AMD Firepro V3900 is a great card for an autocad workstation, allowing you to display on multiple screens with great accuracy and precision.
 

lennoxboyd

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Oct 16, 2014
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thanks for the reply. although its archicad and not autocad - but it very similar! It utilises Open GL 2
Forgot to say that my motherboard is a GIGABYTE H67M-UD2H-B3, and its got PCI express 2 slots rather than the newer 3.
Someone has mentioned that some graphics cards whilst not drawing over 450 watts, it would draw too may amps at a constant rate. Would this be the case with a GTX 750 Ti card?




 
PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 are inter-compatible and there's no difference performance wise, so rest assured in that dept. Also, GTX 750 Ti is a 60W card and will run with ease even on a 300W PSU. It's a 5A (ampere) card, since power=voltage*amps.

It'd be a good card to ArchiCAD with :)
 
Solution

lennoxboyd

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Oct 16, 2014
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thanks for your answer- that has put me at ease. Looking at the GTX750 ti based cards now. Would you recommend the GTX750 card - it seems to have a slightly smaller power requirement and slightly cheaper with most of the performance of the GTX750 Ti.

 
Power requirement is about the same, 6W difference isn't worth noticing, and performance wise it's quite better and more core speeds equate to faster performance, and it has much more cores (512 vs 640 CUDA cores). I'd go for Ti unless it's really out of budget, the 20 Quids difference is worth it IMO, for the performance it gives. But well, either 750 or Ti, MSI/ Asus/ GB/ EVGA/ Palit are good brands, make sure to choose 2GB version of either card.
 

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