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New Rig...CAD vs. gaming cards

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APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: 30 days

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Solidworks, SWTOR

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: On the table...

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: AMD FX chips or Intel chips undecided.

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United States
PARTS PREFERENCES: None...I have no brand preferences, only results preferences

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe

MONITOR RESOLUTION: undetermined



I'm looking to assemble a new rig, since I'm having multiple problems with the existing compy. I have about $1200 to spend, maybe a little more, no more than the cost of the Quadro 2000 on the video card for sure. I am mostly focused on running SOLIDWORKS well, but plan on doing video editing with Final Cut and playing SWTOR or Alice: Madness Returns or any other random game I choose to blow off steam or just relax.

After a lot of forum reading (which can be all over the place and very situationally dependent, I've decided to to give my own thread a try.
I understand that CAD "workstation" cards such as the Quadro series are different than an ATI gaming card...so I'm looking for the best of both worlds. I would love to be able to have a game recommend I turn everything to HIGH, but don't think that's gonna happen with a quadro 600 or 2000.
I keep seeing this FirePro V4800 as well, and was wondering if anyone has had experience with both and could offer some insight.

I have not yet decided on my processor (AMD FX vs. i7) or anything else, since I feel this rig will need to built around the video components.

My primary concerns OTHER than graphics are overall system speed and reliability. I want a fast tank that handles graphics well for $1200-$1500.

Experiences?

Thanks,

Chad

More about : rig cad gaming cards

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Graphics card Master

From my experience SolidWorks does not like non-professional graphics cards (or maybe it was SolidEdge, I don't recall exactly)

There are actually very few physical differences between workstation cards and consumer graphics cards. Most of the differences lay in the driver and firmware optimizations which are custom tailored towards professional graphics rather than gaming. A quick example comes to mind is that consumer cards will approximate a scene whereas professional ones will render it entirely. A lot of professional applications will work just fine on consumer cards, but some will simply refuse to run without one due to the lack of specific optimizations in the non-professional drivers.

As a rule of thumb, it's not advisable to use the same computer for professional graphics and gaming. Sometimes it is doable but there can be consequences.
Graphics card Authority

Pinhedd said:
From my experience SolidWorks does not like non-professional graphics cards (or maybe it was SolidEdge, I don't recall exactly)

There are actually very few physical differences between workstation cards and consumer graphics cards. Most of the differences lay in the driver and firmware optimizations which are custom tailored towards professional graphics rather than gaming. A quick example comes to mind is that consumer cards will approximate a scene whereas professional ones will render it entirely. A lot of professional applications will work just fine on consumer cards, but some will simply refuse to run without one due to the lack of specific optimizations in the non-professional drivers.

As a rule of thumb, it's not advisable to use the same computer for professional graphics and gaming. Sometimes it is doable but there can be consequences.


Agreed. Work and play should be separate in this particular case. Solidworks (like Autocad) is somewhat picky about the graphics card it uses.
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Solidworks site shows compatible and certified drivers for the v4900, and since I'm putting together an AMD FX chip and board in it now, I am looking to go with the v4900 over the quadro, just to keep the brands together if nothing else. An i7 setup is just out of my league right now. I know they are faster than the AMD FX series, but are they so much faster that I'm going to be aggravated with the AMD setup?

Considering my current setup is an asus a8n-sli deluxe with the one dual-core chip it could run from AMD (socket 939), 4GB ram, and a Radeon 67XX on a 32 bit OS, I'm pretty confident this new setup will be leaps and bounds faster, especially if I end up doing the ssd OS hardrive with 4 1T 7200 rpm hdds in RAID 10.

I would like to hear from anyone who has actually used the V4900 card with solidworks and can compare that experience to SW on a Quadro 600 or 2000. Any of the quadros above 2000 are WAY out of my price range right now and as such, data concerning them is irrelevant.

Thank you all for your guidance.

-Chad
Graphics card Authority

ckassem said:
Solidworks site shows compatible and certified drivers for the v4900, and since I'm putting together an AMD FX chip and board in it now, I am looking to go with the v4900 over the quadro, just to keep the brands together if nothing else. An i7 setup is just out of my league right now. I know they are faster than the AMD FX series, but are they so much faster that I'm going to be aggravated with the AMD setup?

Considering my current setup is an asus a8n-sli deluxe with the one dual-core chip it could run from AMD (socket 939), 4GB ram, and a Radeon 67XX on a 32 bit OS, I'm pretty confident this new setup will be leaps and bounds faster, especially if I end up doing the ssd OS hardrive with 4 1T 7200 rpm hdds in RAID 10.

I would like to hear from anyone who has actually used the V4900 card with solidworks and can compare that experience to SW on a Quadro 600 or 2000. Any of the quadros above 2000 are WAY out of my price range right now and as such, data concerning them is irrelevant.

Thank you all for your guidance.

-Chad



Quite possibly. The fastest AMD is almost twice as slow as the fastest Intel (if not more), albeit the AMD is also a fraction of the price. A new right will indeed be much faster than what you have at the moment. I can tell you that the Quadro is relatively smooth for zooming, but bottlenecks a bit on large layouts. I can't tell you how the V4900 stacks up.

Alright, so I've made some amendments based on your input. I started thinking that if the i7 was so much faster than the FX, then maybe I should look at the i5 line-up.

I've switched the AMD FX chip to a core i5 2400 (Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor). I can't afford the i7, and the i5 seems to perform better than the AMD FX as long as there isn't too much multitasking going on.

Can anyone confirm the idea that a 4 core i5 will run SW better than the AMD fx?

The rest is 64 bit OS, 16GB RAM, PNY Quadro 2000, and nixed the Raid 10 setup in favor of keeping the single 120GB Intel SSD and a single 7200rpm 1T hdd.

I guess one of my final questions is how multitasking intensive is SW? That seems to be the deciding factor at this point. Can it utilize more than 4 cores for anything? If not, then I don't see the advantage of the AMD FX.

According to the SW website FAQ:
"Only certain functions of SolidWorks can actually utilize multi-thread technology. Running simulation analysis, rendering images, file opening and user interface activities (redraw, dialog boxes) can take advantage of multiple cores as there are multiple calculations that can be determined simultaneously."

and

"In general, rebuild times depend on the speed of the CPU, simulation analysis and image rendering depends on having more cores and RAM, and file opening mainly depends on the hard drive speed."

That is good info, it just doesn't give me any indication of the software limit to how many cores it can utilize. I feel like I'm good with 4 cores. Any actual experience is totally welcome.

Thanks again! Almost there.... :) 
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