VGA for Revit Architecture

i'm using Revit Architedture, and i want to buy a graphic card. i don't know how to chose, Can you show me ? 4850 or 4870 or other. , my system : intel Q9450, biostar Tpower I45, Ram 4Gb, XP 64bit, samsung 80Gb SATAII, Western 250Gb, 650w coolermaster real pro and VGA card ????

Autodesk has a PDF on hardware recommendations for 2009, I'd link it but I found it in the subscription center. (as an aside the note links to toms CPU chars for 3D studio ) You may want to ask your reseller for a copy as they should be able to provide it.

The basic req for a video card is "hardware support for OpenGL 1.3 or later and DirectX 9 or later" To be honest you'll be fine with a 4850, the video card isn't a large factor, if you want to be really safe buy a cheap FireGL or Quadro as Yuka said. To summarize another point in the tech note... cheap cards may perform as well or better than expensive cards, 128 MB of video ram is more than sufficient.

Here's what I've learned form our experience (we have a 4 seat network license + 11 seats for autocad, based on 2009 version):

Get the fastest quad core you can for rendering. Revit maxes out at 4 cores, and will take forever to render with 4 if you are not careful. Do research on what you can do to optimize renderings (get a hold of that tech note I referred to, it has roughly 20 pages on rendering optimization). Also recommended for the processor is a large L2 cache.

4 GB of RAM is strongly recommended (use /3GB switch if using 32-bit OS). You may not need it for design, but rendering should use it.

Get a fast HDD, 10K would probably be a good idea.

Hopefully this helps... rendering has been our big bottleneck, design work itself is fine on a 2.4 Core2 with 2GB RAM, and random video cards.

kamel5547 made a very good post for you to read. Very enlighting indeed.

If you're only going to part time game and part time render things on 'pro' software, then yeah. The 4850 is very good deal indeed.

Now, u might want to check nVidia's offering too (8800GT, 9800GTX, 9800GX2, lol), since they have very good cards and your PSU seems to be able to handle almost every single card out there. If you're fixed on getting an ATi, then it's not an issue and get your 4850.

Now, the XFire thingy... I don't know... Your PSU will run tight with 2 4850's. Maybe getting a 4870 now and a PSU+4870 later is a better deal. And i tell you again, check nVidias offering too if u're planning on going to the 4870 price range.

Esop!

EDIT: Added PSU thingy

This is a good summarized review that shows a lot of cards from both companies:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=20

And this one shows Tom's Hardware best offerings in price ranges:

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2011.html

Now it's up to you and your pocket to get the best offering out there.

Esop!