Best card for two 4K monitors for CAD usage

[Mr_Spock]

Looking for advice on the right graphics card. My work is engineering CAD, not gaming. Mostly PCB layout, simulation graphing, and spreadsheets. My PC is a Dell OptiPlex 920 (4th gen i7 with Q87 MB, 24GB of RAM, SSD, PCIe x16 (one full height slot), Windows 8.1 (will jump to W10 when its out), and 300W power supply).

I currently have one 4k monitor (Sharp PN-K321 via display port) and two HD monitors running off the built-in Intel HD4600. While problem free its quite slow and jerky when moving parts around on a PCB. Ideally I'd like to add another Sharp 4k. So the ideal card will support two 4k monitors via DP with the two HD monitors using the internal HD4600. Again, this is NOT for gaming use.

I'd like to spend less than $500 if possible. The GTX 970 seems like it might do the job, but not sure.

So my questions are:
1) What card would you recommend? If you think there is nothing on the market yet, that's an ok answer. Some guidance on when this might be available would help.
2) Can I get by with my 300W power supply? I really don't want to change this out. Again, no gaming.
3) Are there versions of the GTX 970 (or whatever) with 2 display port connectors?
4) How noisy will this card be in my usage scenario? I have a very quiet room, so fan noise is undesirable.

Thanks.

 

[kanewolf]

For CAD use I would recommend a Quadro card. Maybe a K4200. It has two display ports, will do 4K resolution on display port.
http://international.download.nvidia.com/quadro/product-literature/data-sheets/DS-NV-Quadro-K4200-JUL24-US-NV-r-HR.pdf

 

[Mr_Spock]

That Quadro K4200 costs $780, but appears exactly what I'm looking for.

Is that fact that it only uses PCIe 2.0 (vs. 3.0) an issue?

 

[kanewolf]

That Quadro K4200 costs $780, but appears exactly what I'm looking for.

Is that fact that it only uses PCIe 2.0 (vs. 3.0) an issue?

No, it will work fine. The speed of the interface bus won't impact CAD usage.

 

[kanewolf]

That Quadro K4200 costs $780, but appears exactly what I'm looking for.

Is that fact that it only uses PCIe 2.0 (vs. 3.0) an issue?

You will get much better CAD performance with a Quadro rather than a gaming card. The drivers are optimized for CAD usage.

 

[Eximo]

That would be a little questionable on a 300W power supply. PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 doesn't matter, more then enough bandwidth for a single GPU either way.

 

[Eximo]

Pop open the chassis and see if you have an available 6-pin PCIe connector. If you don't, then I would say drop down to the K2200. Huge drop in performance, but it will run solely off the available slot.

 

[Mr_Spock]

Pop open the chassis and see if you have an available 6-pin PCIe connector. ...

Are you referring to a separate power connector to power the video card? I know I have extra/available hard driver power cables. And I have a PCIe x16 slot that powered a previous crappy video card.

 

[Mr_Spock]

Ok, figured out the power connector. I just need to use the hard drive to PCIe power adaptor cable that comes with the Quadro card.

Follow up question on the drivers. Some of the CAD software I run is a very specialized/obscure microwave simulation program. I seriously doubt anyone would write acceleration drivers for it.

Without acceleration drivers is there much of a difference between this card and other Kepler based (gaming) cards?

 

[kanewolf]

Ok, figured out the power connector. I just need to use the hard drive to PCIe power adaptor cable that comes with the Quadro card.

Follow up question on the drivers. Some of the CAD software I run is a very specialized/obscure microwave simulation program. I seriously doubt anyone would write acceleration drivers for it.

Without acceleration drivers is there much of a difference between this card and other Kepler based (gaming) cards?

The Quadro drivers are more optimized for OpenGL than a gaming card. I would think that the simulation software would use OpenGL and it is possible it will even use CUDA. That would be a question for the manufacturer of the software.

 

[Eximo]

It is not recommended to use adapters to power video cards. You can easily exceed the rating of that supply doing so.

 

[eidolon171]

I have a Firepro W7000 and in Solidworks rendering and simulation it outperformed the Quadro k5000 by 34%,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxHyqQEjLv4

Also, I only paid $620 for my Firepro, depending on whether you are going to be running Windows or Linux (Firepro has better drivers for Linux than it does for Windows), and depending on what CAD-based software you are running (Solidworks, Creo Parametric, and ProE I know run better on the W7000 than the k4200) the Firepro is my recommendation.