I recently received an Nvidia Quadro FX 4400 video card but so far I am disappointed by the performance. We ran several benchmark tests and compared to some of our other lower end video cards and the 4400 came in about even with the lower end cards. We used the "solidworks" setting and did not change any of other settings and we are using driver 7.1.8.4. Are there any other settings that we can tweak to get better preformance from this video card?
Thanks, Sam
Sam,
Did you check to see if Software OpenGL was checked ???
Mark
Sam,
In recently talking with someone I know, that just did alot of testing, he found that SolidWorks users for some reason are not seeing any performance gains on any card higher that a Quadro FX 1400 unless you start using dual monitors and high resolution too.
KM
I cannot seem to find the Software OpenGL option, can you tell me where that option is located? And should that option be selected or not?
Sam
I'll watch this thread with great interest, often wondered if a "High end" graphic card would make any noticeable difference.
Way back when I first used SolidWorks 199? on a machine with a low end $300 NZ card Matrox Millennium G400. I upgraded to a $1,700 NZ ELSA Gloria 3 expecting huge improvements. I noticed absolutely no change in performance in any area, Large assemblies, complex parts, drawings or rendering times. In fact I was worse off the G400 could run two displays and the Gloria couldn't.
I came to two conclusions.
1/ A fool and their money are soon parted, me being the fool. 2/ I would in future always take a newer faster processor / more memory over a newer better graphics card.Current System (looking to upgrade within 6 months) Athlon 3200+
1.5 GB RAM Nvidia FX500 120GB RAID 0 for data and virtual MEM 80GB for OS
It should not be selected, if selected it will slow your machine considerably.
I would think that for the most part the internals of cad cards are just the same as gaming cards but with a few optimisations and more conservative tuned driver. Indeed the fact that older cards could be hacked readily to the same effect supports this.The main gains in the latest hardware are about improved frame rates at larger resolutions and 8-16x antialiasing, textures, real-time lighting and the like so I would think that it is true that for the most part a typical SW user who doesn't have a need for this stuff would not see much difference between a mid and high end card....perhaps in a rotate but then SW has its own detail removal strategy anyways ...as John says much better to spend the price difference on a faster processor...of course with Win Vista on the horizon a 256mb PCIexpress card would be a good investment.
Do you know what resolution that person was using? I may get a Quadro FX
4000, and I plan on running at least 1600x1200. Hopefully there is a performance gain there.
Hi Sam
Did you manage to resolve your Graphics Card issues? I am very interested to learn from your experience, as I intend to buy a new machine in the next few months.
John Layne
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