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Best graphics card for VW12?


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I'm interested in speeding up VW if possible, and want to know what is the best, most tuned graphics card to accelerate VW on a PC. Does anyone know out there if there are specific nvidia/ati chipsets and driver versions that are better than others? Should I invest in a ATI FireGL card or nVidia Quadro version? SPECIFIC know-how in this area is appreciated...

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I'm currently using a 3d Labs Realizm 100 with great success with vectorworks. I've used a quadro as well but am more impressed with the 3d labs card. In general I believe ATI has better drivers for their cards than does Nvidia. The 3d Labs card is very stable and quick, I would buy another.

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I could find a lot of other ways to spend the extra $350 a high end card like that would cost. In my experience, I have tried ATI, Quadro (NVidia) etc, and now buy NVidia in the $100 range w/256MB of memory. The only benefit VW would have in a high end card is OpenGL rendering, every other operation is screen redraw only.

As I don't use OpenGL much this is only my 2 cents.

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I had been using a Evga 7800 GTX for awhile but the 3D labs card still feels smoother and looks a little nicer in my opinion. The amount of texture memory doesn't really matter unless you do alot of rendering. If you plan on doing any sort of gaming stick with the nvidia or ati solutions as the 3d labs cards are horrible for that.

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this was discussed in another forum where renderings were the issue.

it was concluded that more RAM rather than a video card

upgrade is what was best suited for VW12 -

that said the video card should also have something like 512mb to start with.

if you want the best dollar value get a card that has dual DVI outputs and run 2 17" LCD monitors

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I think that NNA needs to create a topic in the FAQ section of this board to address these issues.

This topic, of how the various computer componets affect VW, is a common one. All too often the answers are guesses from users and not facts from NNA software engineers.

The FAQ should address how CPU speed, number of CPU's, RAM, Video Cards, and Hard Drives affect the performance of Vectorworks and Renderworks.

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Amen to Kevin's suggestion! Thank you all for the input - I truly love VW but am often frustrated at how slow it can be even on a top-end computer. I design in detail and love the artistic abilities within VW and therefore my designs become slooooow to work with. And yes, I keep layers off that are complex most of the time - but you still have to work on those layers... still have to create viewports... still have see how things look together. I've got a dual-core opteron at 2.0 ghz each (smoken by the way), 2 gig of DDR400 memory, a SATA raid0 setup as my primary drive, and an nVidia Geforce 6800 GTX with 256 meg of video memory and dual DVI ports connected to dual 19" lcd monitors. The system is three months old now and I love it, not a single system-wide crash the whole time (wish I could say the same for VW). Yet, I don't see a HUGE difference between this machine and my other two year old machine with an AMD Athlon 2400XP with one gig of ram and a two year old ATI radeon 9000 card. Now in other apps I see huge differences like photoshop and inDesign - but not in VW. I have been wondering if the video was the bottleneck but it seems not as I don't use VW for any opengl rendering and such - just very intricate, detailed landscape designs that really rival hand drawn stuff. Thanks again for your input...

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I think you are way off with your advise regarding getting a card with "512mb to start with"

Most cards are 128, or 256 mb memory cards. 512mb cards are becoming available but are very expensive and not what is generally stocked or supplied. Just take a look at any computer manufacturers site to see what size the cards memory is.

256mb would be more than adequate for VW needs.

Please show me a link to graphic cards with more than 512 mb on as you regard this as a "starting point" I'd be interested to see them and if they exist their prices.

Alan

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