Best system (video) upgrade option?

[Brendan Gray]

I'm running VW2011 and mostly working with entertainment related drawings with decent numbers of PIO's including lighting instruments, as well as furniture and drape scenic elements. I also use Landru Design's VideoScreen and SoftGoods tools extensively.

I'm looking to get more performance out of my system (specs in my sig). Rendering times are acceptable as long as I use a mode that supports multiple CPU cores. Redraws are sluggish, so I'm guessing that a video card upgrade is the way to go.

Will I see a significant difference if I upgrade my primary display card from an nvidia 8800GT to a Quadro 4000?

I run my primary 30" display off of 1 8800GT and 2x20" displays off of another. The 20's are used for stuff like mail and chat, and some VW palettes.

Thanks

[nick kourtides]

Brendan,

I use the same machine as you, with a bit less RAM, but a Radeon 5770. I've upgraded the video cards in this machine several times since it was new. From what I'm seeing, Renderworks will use the machine's core processors, Open GL will use the GPU, anything else is stuck on a single core. Which for us in entertainment, where line renders are a must, is a huge disappointment. Even wireframe refreshes when panning or zooming a document with imported symbols is a train wreck.

I would say save your money until NVW updates the code to actually use the cores and the gpus, because right now, it does not.

Nick

[Brendan Gray]

Nick-

Thanks for the reply. I am in agreement with you that the limited support for multiple CPU cores in VW is a huge disappointment. I use a little utility called 'iStat menus' to monitor CPU core usage in the menu bar, and watching how little the CPU cores get used is depressing. I will not be upgrading CPU's anytime soon for this reason.

Panning/zooming, etc in wireframe mode is where I would like to see any improvement. When you upgraded video cards did you see any improvement in that area?

Brendan

[nick kourtides]

Brendan,

I've seen barely an improvement - except, I think in Open GL renders. My reasons for upgrading the cards had much to do with moving quickly past the capabilities of the stock GPUs, and evolving connector technologies. I use 2 24" LED displays, and had been driving them DVI through Atlona adapters. It worked fine, but not well integrated, and upgrading yet again to the 5770 solved 2 problems, 2 onboard MDPs and slight acceleration.

[NTZeek]

I recently upgraded from a Radeon 3870 (similar to 8800) to a GTX460. I saw a small improvement, maybe 15% in 2D and 3D draws and refreshes.

I too am very disappointed in the lack of multi core support. You may want to post in this thread: http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=152843#Post152843

Below is a link to single thread CPU benchmarks. They probably do not directly correlate to VW, but might give an indication of what to expect.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Cinebench-11.5-Single-threaded,2406.html