APE Design Ctr Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Hi all, I was thinking of doing a hardware upgrade, but one of the biggest issues is slow refresh in wireframe mode if I have complex 3D geometry. Instead of upgrading the machine, what about spending some money on a great video card. In your opinion, will a new, more high performance video card effect performance in: 1. Open GL Rendering (Speed, and Quality). 2. Wireframe refresh Or are these issues processor dependent? I currently have an ATI Radeon 9600 XT, standard in the Dual G5 2.5 Thanks! Quote Link to comment
grant_PD Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 I upgraded my video card on the new box and noticed that in open gl, the model renders faster and stays rendered during walkthroughs and movements. I find that the wireframe does act a little more snappy with a better card too. Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 Several versions ago I did a test and found the the biggest slowdown in redraw as drawing the selection handles. If I grouped a few thousand object together, then the redraw was much faster. I guess I should repeat the test in 2008. Pat Quote Link to comment
APE Design Ctr Posted January 31, 2008 Author Share Posted January 31, 2008 Thanks guys Quote Link to comment
bonus Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 I just asked an Apple technician: It used to be the processor that did all or almost all the rendering. The video card wasn't essential. Nowadays most cad applications(Archicad the 2 latest versions - VW - no idea) uses the video card to do a big part of the job. Therefore they recommend video cards with 1Gb memory now available if you want to be on top...Not cheap but fun. Whether it applies to VW he couldn't tell. Quote Link to comment
brudgers Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 My understanding: The video card does all opengl rendering for the screen and printing. The CPU does all other Vectorworks tasks. Renderworks utliizes multiple CPU's/core. All other parts of Vectorworks currently utilize a single core. If you don't use opengl, then the video card won't impact speed much. If you don't use renderworks the benefits of multiple cores will be at the operating system level, not from the Vectorworks application. Quote Link to comment
bonus Posted February 1, 2008 Share Posted February 1, 2008 APE, I see you're on VW11.5. If you want better speed in renderings - upgrade to VW2008! A significant difference. I use a 256Mb video card and in OpenGL the rendered objects stay rendered while rotated. Quote Link to comment
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