Compromise Video Card required - your assistance requested

First off, I know nothing about SolidWorks.

A friend has asked me to help him spec out and help him build a new PC for him and his wife to use at home. He uses SW at work and would like to use his site licence to be able to finish some work at home. He also wants to be able to do the odd bit of gaming (and I know him well enought to know it will be more gaming than work).

His wife is a teacher and her needs are basic office applications - no big deal other than storage.

I'm leaning towards these basic specs:

2.8C Intel, Asus or DFI 875P, 1 Gig Ram, 160 SATA HD, etc...(there is a budget to meet)

Obviously I have a problem...what video card to buy...

Is there a "reasonable" compromise card for general use? (if you need specifics on what features he uses in SW - I can get them)

Any and all suggestions or feedback are welcome and appreciated.

TIA

RS

Reply to
RS
Loading thread data ...

SolidWorks through their resellers are having a sale on nVidia cards. They all are excellent for SolidWorks. They actually have features built into the video cards that enhance the SolidWorks visual effects.

FX 500 has 128meg ram and is only $185. They have higher models, but for what you describe, that is all you need.

But call the reseller today, I think the sale ends today.

I hope this helps,

Dan B.

Reply to
Dan Bovinich (home)

I agree w/ Dan the best new value would be the QuadroFX-500. Newegg.com has it for $229 no tax, no shipping, if you can't get the reseller special in time.

If not that card try ebay and get any of the Quadro cards with model number Quadro4-750XGL or higher. You can go with a cheap cheap Quadro 700 or 900 model but it will not be AGP 8x and it won't be as fast for gaming. Remember that no gaming card will do as well in SWX as a true cad card and no cad card will do quite as well in games. BUT a cad card runs games better than a game card runs SWX.

I won't go deep into Softquadro or SoftFireGL hacks because you really need a drop in solution. I will just say that a good compromise can also be found in Geforce Ti4200 (or above) using hacked drivers to get it to perform like a Quadro4-750XGL. I have experience with this and I know that it works but you have to be able to only run a specific hacked driver. Once you update the driver (like Windows Update wants to suggest), your Quadro cad advantages are gone.

Go with the QuadroFX-500, new or ebay :)

- Eddy

Reply to
Eddy Hicks

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.