Graphics card upgrade or change of settings

[IanH]

When scrolling/panning Vectorworks designs across the screen, the movement, for want of a better description, chugs. By the sound of it, it is possible to get pretty much a smooth operation in Vectorworks.

I have a Dell PC with a GeForce 8600GT 256MB graphics card and was thinking about upgrading it. The bus is PCI Express x 16.

Does anyone have any experience of updating their graphics card? What benefits did you feel when running Vectorworks? I'm constantly zooming and panning around a drawing.

My concerns are physical size, cooling/fan noise and power consumption. It would appear that the 8600GT was somewhat compromised, although on paper has a relatively low power consumption. How feasible is retro fitting an upgraded graphics card to an existing machine?

I would like to stick with NVidia. I was thinking about something like the 9600GT. There seems to be many different varieties of the same chipset - what do I look out for as all on paper mostly seem identical whilst having a large variation in price even though the card is the same manufacturer.

Or maybe there are simply some settings in the NVidia control panel what will make my existing card more responsive?

Edited May 22, 2009 by IanH

[HP Sauce]

Swapping out the graphics card with a new one is no problem. I would exhaust all the options you have with your current card before upgrading, though, such as updating the drivers to the latest revision and checking your VW settings such as GDI imaging, VectorCaching, Zoom Line Thickness, Animations, etc etc all of which affect speed.

I'm using a relatively old x1550 and never encounter any navigation problems, with all the fluff turned on.

PS "I have a Dell PC with a GeForce 9600GT 256MB graphics card and was thinking about upgrading it. The bus is PCI Express x 16." shouldn't that be 8600GT?

[Thom]

If I understand the way VW works, it probably has more to do with your processor speed.

[brudgers]

I'd roll back quicktime to the version vectorworks shiped with first.

If the card shipped with your Dell, I would definately recommend using the latest driver from them rather than from Nvidia's site.

Nvidia doesn't actually manufacture most cards, they make the GPU and another company packages it. Often they will customize the functions, timings, memory, etc. I suspect, this can create issues with the generic drivers from Nvidia.

The main issue with upgrading your card (besides cost) is power. Make sure you have the required connectors for your graphic card. More powerful cards connect directly to the power supply, unlike your current card which draws power through the bus.

I sincerely doubt it's your CPU. Two cores running at 3.0g is more than many Vectorworks platforms provide.

[Thom]

VW only accesses one core, Renderworks will access two.

[brudgers]

VW only accesses one core, Renderworks will access two.

Actually, renderworks will use at least eight.

Multiple cores mean that Vectorworks and other applications share a greater pool of resources and therefore typically overall system performance is better.

[IanH]

I'd roll back quicktime to the version vectorworks shiped with first.

If the card shipped with your Dell, I would definately recommend using the latest driver from them rather than from Nvidia's site.

...

The main issue with upgrading your card (besides cost) is power. Make sure you have the required connectors for your graphic card. More powerful cards connect directly to the power supply, unlike your current card which draws power through the bus.

I sincerely doubt it's your CPU. Two cores running at 3.0g is more than many Vectorworks platforms provide.

I don't think that quicktime gets involve in the graphics rendering. Animation stuff yes, but not stuff that is handled by GDI and OpenGL.

Intersting comment about using Dell supplied drivers. I had assumed that the NVidia ones would be best as they would have the latest fixes - would the Dell ones not be lagging behind? I actually updated from 182.06 yesterday in the hope of fixing a blank screen when I some times resume.

The power is the issue that I am concerned with. I don;t really want to get into having to swap power supplies as I have a maintenance deal with Dell - swapping a card is OK as I can just swap that back, but a PSU swap is a bigger step forward than I would like to take. How do I find out if my power supply will support a bigger card? Will it be marked somehow of have some spare flying leads?

I don't believe that my CPU is the cause of the problem either.

I'm not saying that performance is poor, its just not instant. I have checked my settings as suggested before and all were as expected - however, i'm not sure what half the settings on the card itself will have. What I suffer from is for instance panning and gradient fills, I can pan a fairly large drawing across the screen and stop, but it carries on moving for a number of seconds. It is this that I want to make more responsive.

[brudgers]

My understanding is that (nearly?) all of Vectorworks graphics calls are made through quicktime.

Quicktime can be used for crossplatform development and NNA has availed themselves of it.

On the windows side, the application calls quicktime and quicktime communicates with the display driver.

You can read about this approach on the Apple developer network. Writing about it now I suspect it's somewhat analogous to Autocad's HEIDI approach.

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Drivers for your Dell are probably available on Dell's site.

I had problems with the latest NVIDIA drivers for my Quadro FX card. I think the Dell drivers for it are specific versions not available off Nvidia.com

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Graphics card power connectors are 6 pin and 75 watts or 8 pins 150 watts.

There are adpaters to fit traditional 4 pin connectors.

You might try this power supply calculator:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2077&p_created=1181854748&p_sid=7v3K6yyj&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzEsMzEmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz01NyZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PTEuNTcmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXBvd2Vy&p_li=&p_topview=1

[jimmymise]

Did you ever get this resolved? I just started VW 2010 and I have the same problem. It's not terrible but it does give me a headache. The movement of the mouse and scroll bars are not quite smooth. I tried turning off every visual cue but it hasn't helped.

I go back to VW 11.5 and everything is fine.

[Ray Libby]

I'm not sure there is anything to be resolved, older computers and underpowered graphics cards are going to have this behavior. If you would list your computer specs we may be able to help.