New videocard for mostly CAD workstation...

[Hazdaz]

... I am starting a new job soon and I am going to recommend them what a decent CAD system should be. I know they already have a PC there, but honestly don't know what it is. SO I wanna send them off a list of "recomended" specs.

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I know this question gets asked more than just about any other hardware question, but I am going to ask anyways.

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What Nvidia-based video card do you recommend?

Doesn't have to be a Quadro card (I have an older Quadro card, and I think it was sort of a waste of money). I am thinking more just a higher-end gaming card - like the geforce 7800 gtx or something along those lines.

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I have been out of the PC building world for a while, so honestly don't know how good or bad the 7800 GTX is, but it seems to be the top Nvidia gaming card now.

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Any particular recomendations?

I would like to stick with Nvidia - their drivers for MAX and AutoCAD have always been way better than ATi cards, but that might have changed.

By the way, I am doing my own searching online for this answer, but pretty much all tests run on these cards are for games - almost no one compares them when running actual real applications. And that is why I have ended up here.

[lambros]

I use Nvidias and ATIs. I bought a FireGL 7100 for about 800 euros about 10 months ago, and have not needed to buy a new one since. Hope it will last for 1-2 years more! As a matter of fact, ATIs have specific max/viz drivers as Quadros do. On the other hand, a recent top of the line gaming card would perform very well too. That will cost 200 euros cheaper, so its a viable option. Quadros seem too expensive for what they offer. It all goes down on what you intend to use a VGA for. If your usual scenes have more than 3-4 millions of polys, a Quadro would be necessary. For CAD work, you would be overpowered, and a decent gaming card would be more than enough.

[Hazdaz]

Yea, see this particular jobs is probably gonna be mostly CAD work - but I plan on getting to do more of their renderings too eventually.

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AutoCAD has NEVER responded well to graphic cards - seems like doesn't matter which card you pick, it was never very fast in it's viewports (and none too surprising MAX isn't much different). Both of those situations have improved a bit recently, but still they aren't exactly fast programs.

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Ofcourse there is also the possibility of branching out into alternative CAD programs too, so having a fast videocard would be nice for that.

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I read on another board that the Nvidia 6800 is soft-moddable to a Quadro FX4400 card. If that is correct, that would be one hell of a deal - getting a +/-$200 card, that is essentially as fast as a $2000 card. I need to do more research on that before I go that route though.

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Your choice of a FireGL7100 is probably overkill for this particular job.

[TheAllusionisst]

Strong 'OpenGL' performance is probably the biggest for CAD if you are comparing comparable cards, go with the one with stronger OpenGL support/performance. FWIW

[pailhead]

And don't think in the lines of a moddable card, i own one system that has a 6800GT and i've tried modding it. The soft mod makes no difference when running d3d and ogl benchmarks in MAX, and as far as maxtreme are concerned, they work, they're fast, but they bug. Somewhere they crash, in my case, they were stable but i could not see the object edges.

[lambros]

I have modded a Geforce 5950 Ultra into a Quadro3000, plus my notebooks Gforce 5700go into a Quadro 7xxsomething. The only gain I witnessed was fast antialising which was not really needed. Benchmarks gave some more speed, but nothing noticeable while working.

[Hazdaz]

^^^ good to know. I think either way, a 6800 has to be faster than my aging Quadro FX1000 card.

So for this work computer, as long as it's faster than that, then I would probably be happy.

[pailhead]

Well, i think that a reliable video card with which maxtreme can work is well worth the money. For a cad workstation i'd get one of those great deal qfx 3400 on ebay, over a 7800gtx.