Revit and autocad only - vid card advice

[HawkPoint3D]

I have 17 various workstations at our office I have to upgrade video cards for 2014 suite.

Of course the boss has a tight budget, so it cant be $$. I am just looking to support 2 monitors on each machine and I want to be able to support hardware acceleration in REVIT.

Most machines are I5's.

Need cheap and solid performance.

[numerobis]

For acad:

2D: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-4.html

3D: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-6.html

 

but it's only for 2013 not 2014 - not sure if this makes a difference, but i don't think so.

Edited September 17, 2013 by numerobis

[AJLynn]

Depends on what you think of as "cheap" but I never had a problem with Radeon cards from the lower part of midrange. This one or this or this if you're feeling a bit more ambitious would all be good choices.

[Dimitris Tolios]

For acad:

2D: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-4.html

3D: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-6.html

 

but it's only for 2013 not 2014 - not sure if this makes a difference, but i don't think so.

 

Not sure I can trust CADalyst, giving the GTX 690 a better score than the GTX 680 in a program that afaik uses only the primary GPU core in the 690 (and any SLI or CFX configuration), which is otherwise a slower clocked 680... :confused:

 

For 2D cad any ~ $100-120 GTX or Radeon or a $150 K600 quadro should do great.

 

For Revit, I honestly don't know...it is Direct3D, like Max and ACAD, so in reality most decent "gaming" cards should do ok.

 

I wouldn't get anything fancy...GTX 650ti / some Radeon with 1GB and a single 6pin connector...the 660 and upwards or the 79xx or most 78xx will be sucking too much juice stressing all those PSUs for no real gains.

 

Been working on Revit 2013 on a range of machines, from Mobility Radeons, to mobile GTX to ancient Quadro FXs, to Quadro 4000 and GTX Titan and 6xxs...don't think i've ever had a "omg, how smooth" experience...all of them were workable though.

[AJLynn]

That's partly the CPU's (and rest of the system's) fault. Any manipulation in Revit is a big task.

 

Really, I wouldn't bother with a "workstation" card for this. I'd buy 17 of that first one I linked to and if your boss thinks it's to expensive tell him it uses only 5 watts when it's not being taxed, and maxes at 50 - making the most power-efficient option that's also affordable and fast enough to do well in Revit. So if you tried to save by getting something even cheaper it would be less efficient and even if you saved a couple hundred bucks you'd give it right back in electricity bills within the first couple of months.

[joelmcwilliam]

If you want to know how a gaming gpu performs, this link can give you a nice indication: http://lanoc.org/review/video-cards/6606-gtx-780-sli-results

 

For powerconsumption and noise you can look over here:

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/XFX/HD_7790_Black_Edition_OC/24.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/?category=Video+Cards&manufacturer=&pp=25&order=date

 

Maybe an idea to just buy one and see how it performs.

[Dimitris Tolios]

SLI is for gaming only. Afaik neither Revit nor AutoCAD cares about SLI. Viewport engine and drivers alike weren't written for it.

 

Benchmarks that indicate otherwise simply miss that "tiny" detail.

[AJLynn]

Unless they've changed something in very recent versions, that's correct - SLI is not useful for our purposes. Same with "Crossfire," "Trifire" and "Quadfire". Just skip past all those lines in charts like those.