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Completely OT but CAD graphics card thoughts?

Posts: 3 · 3 posts
chrislandy

Being a Structural Engineer I'm pretty graphics heavy on the graphics cards, so the time has come to upgrade the graphics card on my workstation. I know there are a few people who use 3D modelling on here so maybe I can tap the grey matter?

I've currently got an AMD Firepro V5700 which has been great until now. AMD no longer support it (it's 5ish+ years old), it doesn't support 4k monitors, win10 drivers are not available and it's no longer certified for the software I use, mainly AutoCAD 2016 and Revit 2016, it's likely that when I upgrade to 2017 in a couple of months that it will get a little worse.

So far I've really liked the AMD Firepro workstation cards and will probably stick with them but tech has moved on so much in 5 years that I don't know what I need to look at anymore.

Requirements will be:

Autodesk certified drivers for REVIT and AUTOCAD

Dual 4k monitors with possible upgrade to 3 later

Win 10pro compatible but Win7pro support (while I check all the other software I use is compatible! - some are WinXP but just about works on Win7pro)

Budget - not sure yet but prolly around £300ish/$400-500, less if possible as this is an unexpected upgrade, more if necessary.

Thoughts?

SHIF

I've always used Nvidia Quadro graphics in my workstations, both desktop and laptop. They were the first to have certified drivers for SolidWorks, but I think AMD has caught up lately.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro.html

-S

chrislandy

I've been guided towards the AMD W5100 and the NVIDIA GTX970 cards, the AMD is a certified workstation card but the other is a gaming card which gives me a little apprehension.

according to autodesk it now runs on directX-11 and shader 5.0 and have been told this is what the gaming cards run on so they don't need to be certified anymore? whereas they used to run on opengl ? and needed specialist W/S cards. I understand solidworks still needs certified cards to get the best out of it though - I don't use it very often now at all and mainly use autodesk products so I'm torn. I've always used W/S cards. This is my bread and butter so instability costs me money and time.