new video cards

The consumer level Geforce 7 series cards perform just as well or better than an equivalent Quadro in SWX. You can even use the partner certified drivers if you're really worried about compatibility. Also, larger amounts of RAM amount to 'diddly-squat' for CAD applications. The most important components are overall system throughput (bus size), GPU "pipelines" (texel operations), and GPU clock speed.

Not really, try having 10 or 12 parts or assemblieis open at the same time. This is pretty common for me when working with large assemblies with lots of subs

applications.

Where did you get this information ?? And what do yo call "large amounts". SW loads all parts and assemblies into RAM when you open them. When it runs out, it writes to the page file slowing down your system. In this case, bus width don't mean diddly squat because you're limited by the hard drive speed.

If you're going to do "real" work, you should install as much RAM as you can afford, up to the usable limits of the system. That would be 3GB for XP, or

2GB for Win2000. If you have XP64, you should install as much as you need to eliminate paging for your typical work.

Mark

If you re-read his information, its specifically for the video card. His comments in that regard as far as ram ect... are correct.

I'm thinking the larger amount of video ram will help with quicker rendering and shading for the rpg's, not as critical with my SW usage, as I don't do SW rendering.

Most of my SW assy's are under 100 parts, mostly sheet metal and hardware, and have limited motion. (Think road paving parts and store pos displays.) At work I have a Quadro FX 500/600 and 1gb of system ram, and with a half dozen parts and assemblies open, especially with drawings open, things slow down noticably. If I'm careful as to what is lightweight I get by ok, but it's still a pita sometimes.

Hopefully most work will stay at work and home use will be more rpg oriented.

Thanks for the input. Diego

Brian wrote:

One more non-performance thing to consider if you are planning on a laptop. Dual 7900 cards is going to be a power hungry solution. You'll either need a 10lb battery, or to stay very close to an outlet.

It may wind up being less expensive, and give better performance, to build a higher end gaming PC, and a mid-range cad station, than to try and stuff both identities into a laptop.

So, you've been talking to my wife again? Money, money, money!

Seriously, I appreciate your > One more non-performance thing to consider if you are planning on a

I have almost the same setup as you do and have about the same size assemblies. My system slows down slightly when these assemblies are loaded, but not a tremendous amount. The one thing that may be different is that I was careful to get a mother board with a higher backplane speed. As I remember some of the Pentium 4 boards had a pretty small bottle neck at the back plane. (this has been a while so some of the details are not 100% clear). But, there were some fellows that doubled their RAM and their CPU speed and saw only about a 10% improvement. Even better graphics cards didn't always help a tremedous amount.

Just something to consider.

Ed