Video cards?

Sounds like a pretty decent machine for Solidworks stuff, unless it's seriously large assemblies he's working on - check the Nvidia drivers are the latest reccomended for Solidworks (there's a table at and all the downloads required). Have a look at the task manager when it's slowing down - it's probably the main processor grinding away if it's trying to solve mates, so a new card won't help - more memory and a faster processor would though. Solidworks doesn't like "gamer" cards - there's certain stuff on the quadro cards it uses - you can try a package called "softquadro" to mod a geforce card to suite, do search on this newsgroup for it - there's heaps of info. Can't imagine you'd need a high end card - you'd definitely be better getting a faster processor and more memory first - I've got a Nvidia 980XGL (older, but similar spec to a FX500 I think) and never had problems with the graphics side, but yes, it can grind to a halt when rebuilding - have a look at for a programme called "redlight" - gives you more control over when the rebuilds occur and should save a stack of time. Hope it helps Deri
jb wrote:

See the 'options' settings - in 'performance' you can disable mate animation - check out some of the other things there like 'level of detail' and also disable animation in 'view rotation'. Maybe these will help if indeed it is the video that's struggling. Possibly you could add another 1gb of ram. There is no substitute for calculation HP. A new AMD will be about 2.5 x faster. Failing that work smarter with sub assemblies, light weight etc.HTH neil

Dynabits has been gone for some time now. Tragically, Phillipe couldn't make enough money at it.
I agree that the video card is not the problem. If the slowdown happens in assemblies with a lot of mates, then the mates are the problem. This is not at all unusual. One of the primary purposes of aggressively using subassemblies is to minimize the number of mates in the top level assemblies.
The user needs to review the best practices guides on the subscription support pages. I won't say it's the user's fault, but there are some things to know in order to deal with inherent speed limitations, and not creating more. Also, the user should look at the rules of thumb at:
Neil said "work smarter" but that to me is a buzzword meaning "we're too cheap to give you any more resources." I know what he means, that phrase just bugs me. Like Neil said, the only hardware that can address this is CPU and RAM. I don't knwo about 2.5x faster, but the AMD chips are faster than any Intel in SW.
Bottom line: any hardware can be overcome by SW. The user _must_ learn the techniques that help the hardware out.

Shame - good guys - gave me a heap of info when I was possibly looking to move to Switzerland which was very much appreciated. To the OP - the Matt Lombard stuff is really good - I learned a heap about making Solidworks run faster, also search this news group for stuff like "assembly optimisation", "using sub assemblies" etc - there's a stack of good tips hidden away in here. I've managed to cut design times by about 50-70% from when I started doing Solidworks stuff by optimising sub assemblies and moving up to a faster machine (P4 - 1.6Ghz with 1.5Gb RAM to a Opteron 248 with 2Gb RAM). If your company can afford it - buy the CAD dude a decent AMD machine (good fast processor, 2Gb min of fast RAM, fast hard drives (RAID SATA ??) and an FX1300 card) - it'll save them a stack of money in the long run! As a manager it's heart breaking to see someone going for a ciggy/ coffee break every 15 minutes as the PC whirts through another rebuild. Cheers Deri
Dale Dunn wrote:

We run nothing but Nvidia after performance issues with the GeForce series. The big difference is the software vs. hardware open GL. There is a good article at Nvidia about the differences between the two. The bottom line is that gaming cards are good for gaming and the CAD cards are good for CAD. A common mistake is to assume a gaming card is good for CAD because it operates well for directX games. We have found value in high end cards. We run Nvidia Quadro 3000FX and 4000FX. A good solid lower-end card is the 500. I agree with everyone else about the techniques, which are key to keeping alive in large assy's, as well as the better computer. The AMD is universally reported as a good processor, although we just run the lates Intel chip, gobs of RAM and a fast video card. Dual processors don't buy you much at all, especially for the price.

Thanks for the input so far. I have got the design engineer following this and other threads from Google. Didn't get down the hall to the I.T. office to pass this along yet. Maybe the D.E. will walk down and pass it along. :) hint, hint R Dual core. MMMMMM for the day when the software catches up.. that will be nice..
Any other comments out there? How does the ATI fireGL series play against the Nvidia's?
jb..

I think you'll find a consensus that Nvidia Quadros are the way to go. They seem to be much more robust and less prone to problems with SW. Check out the discussion forum under SW website, the "performance" discussion. There's lots of discussion and benchmarking to support that claim. Always though, make sure to visit the video card reports from SW and see which drivers they recommend. You'll find many cards are not recommended for SW, and many that have known issues. If this new computer is to run SW primarily, it is well worth your time (and for the sake of hair retention of both your DE and IT people) to comply with the recommendations.
We have learned the hard way (many problems with 40+ engineers running GeForce and ATI cards), but have had no problems after running the Quadros and recommended drivers. Hope this helps!

I have been running a FireGL card for some time now with no problems that I can attribute to the card. I like it.
WT