Best video card for pro engineer

[DickBurns]

I am setting up some computers for a college student group and we use pro engineer (3d modeling/drafting software) a lot and we need some pretty powerful 3d capabilities. There are a lot of workstation 3d cards for $1k plus but we don't have the budget for something like that. I am thinking of a geforce 3 ti 200 or radeon 8500, but these are gaming cards and I don't know to what advantage they would be for us. Would either of these two cards be that great for what we are doing, is one better than the other or does anyone know of a good workstation 3d card for >$250? Thanks for the input.

 

[rbV5]

Take a look at the Oxygen VX1.

 

[Zach]

Some sort of Quadro2 maybe? Check NVidia.com for info.

 

[Ausm]

<< Take a look at the Oxygen VX1. >>



I have to agree with this comment also

ROFLMAO at your nick "dickburns"

Ausm

 

[DickBurns]

Pricewatch shows oxygen vx1 for $105 and a synergy 2000 quadro 2 for $156. These are both less than either a geforce 3 ti 200 or a radeon 8500, would they be better for what we are doing. Is there anything better than a oxygen or quadro 2 less than our budgeted price (hey if you got the money why not spend it?)

Thanks for the quick input.

 

[crypticlogin]

<< Pricewatch shows oxygen vx1 for $105 and a synergy 2000 quadro 2 for $156. These are both less than either a geforce 3 ti 200 or a radeon 8500, would they be better for what we are doing. Is there anything better than a oxygen or quadro 2 less than our budgeted price (hey if you got the money why not spend it?)

Thanks for the quick input. >>



I wouldn't be put off by the price difference. The two cards were obviously geared for different segments of the 3D market and I'd believe all of the features and hoopla of the Radeon or Ti200 wouldn't be used by pro engineer.



<< (hey if you got the money why not spend it?) >>



Why pay for what you won't use? I know that your unused funds would disappear the next time upgrades come by but what about throwing the savings towards other parts of the workstation? Larger displays? More RAM?

 

[DickBurns]

Thanks Tenchim good point. Are there any other good workstation cards? The Synergy III looks nice but it is twice as much at $300, what does this card have that is worth the added expense over the Synergy II? How does a 3dlabs card compare. Their website did not load and that makes me a little worried.

 

[rbV5]

Hey, I forgot about this guy on the highend forum, he has 3 wildcat 4105's for sale $300 each or $700 for all three! If its legit, could be a score for some great workstation class cards, perfect for Pro Engineer. Linked

 

[dullard]

Prices are from pricewatch on Dec. 4, 2001. Here is what CAD users at Cadalyst found (higher test results are better):

3dLabs Wildcat II 5110: Best performance of any card currently available at $1836,
ATI Fire GL2, test result: 52.6 at $749,
ELSA GLoria III, test result: 38.4 at $728,
Oxygen GVX420, test result: 29.1 at $1189,
Oxygen GVX210, test result: 28.2 at $869,
3dLabs Wildcat 4110, test result: 26.7 at $1495,
ELSA GLoria II, test result: 24.9 at $636,
ATI Fire GL1, test result: 23.8 at $149,
E&S Tornado 3000, test result: 19.2,
ATI Radeon32, test result: 17.9 at $44,
Matrox G400, test result: 15.6 at $38.

Some notes: A GeForce2 GTS is about the speed of the 3dLabs Wildcat 4110, while the Quadro 2 Pro is just above the Oxygen GVX420 (Tom's Hardware). If we assume a 50% speed boost from the GeForce2 GTS to the GeForce3, then a GeForce3 will be right around the ELSA Gloria III in that list. The GeForce3 Ti500 is a bit faster and the GeForce3 Ti200 is a bit slower than the GeForce3.

Sorry it doesn't include all the workstation cards, but this is a good place to start. For example, on the Oxygen website you should be able to tell the speed difference between various Oxygen models. Same goes with ELSA, etc...

Basically you can see that going from a $50 card to a $300 card will give you about 2.5 times the speed.

Edit: I updated the prices.

 

[PG]

A Geforce2 GTS or better card from Nvidia would do a great job and be relatively cheap. A 64 MB card would be better in the long run vs. a 32 MB card.

Those low end Oxygen cards are old and slow. They aren't much faster than a TNT2. Don't waste your money on those.
See these benchmarks courtesy of Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1144&p=16
Keep in mind that those are original Quadro cards, meaning Geforce, not even Geforce2 class.

Nvidia Geforce cards have a T&L engine that is a huge boost for CAD apps, and Nvidia has great opengl drivers. ATI's drivers suck for professional apps like Pro/E.

Overall, you can't beat a Nvidia card when you consider how well they perform and how little they cost compared to the fancy professional cards.

 

[Bozo Galora]

High end cards are for professionals, who get paid to produce. Time is money.
High end cards are juice suckers - gonna get you in trouble.
You cant beat a Geforce2 Ultra ($250), or a GF3Ti200 ($180)(4ns or less mem) for a classroom environment.
Students arent making a 500 piece assembly in AutoDesk Explorer 4.0
The most important things are to have a networked environment to keep the students out of playing
with the settings (no control panel access). And do not use Win 98 under any circumstance. Win 2K only.
ONLY!
You must use latest drivers for latest programs.
SolidWorks 2000/2001 would give "invisible windows" (actually tiling one window on top of another) until
I loaded computers in class with DirX 8.1 official, VIA 4.35 official, and Official nvidia 21.81.
Theres also a trick to loading ProE that they dont tell you about, or you may screw up the install.

3dMAX and Maya and FormZ etc. are a totally different story.

 

[DickBurns]

Thanks for the tips Bozo,

I am planning on loading windows 2k server to keep people from messing with the settings, but what is this trick to loading Proe? I have done it several times and I have run into trouble before.

 

[Yossarian]

I bought some Dell workstations earlier this year for Pro/E. Just for kicks I ran Pro with the OEM 64 mb Geforce2 GTS's before installing the ELSA Gloria cards, it worked pretty well. I do injection molded part design & assemblies.

 

[sciencewhiz]

In the article that dullard linked from Tom's, there is one paragraph that explains the difference between professional 3d cards and consumer 3d cards


<< A look at the FireGL2 specs is disappointing at first, as fill rates are rather low compared to those of the Quadro2 Pro. Still, there's quite a competitive polygon rate. We interviewed several different companies that use professional OpenGL applications on a daily basis. During talks, we noticed a certain trend: While working on a graphics project, rendering of large textures is much less important than in 3D games, where it has become most essential. However, the modeling of objects requires very high polygon rates. As long as objects and scenes are still "under construction", most designers are handling them as wire frame models. Even looking at single views or scenes is done with simple shading models during production phase. Only at the final stage of a project the designer requires some kind of high rendering performance and thus fill rate. It shows that the user profile of a construction designer is completely different from that of a 3D-gamer. This explains why Diamond put little effort into the rasterizer. But even lay(wo)men can appreciate the connection between a wire frame model and the modeling process. Many of you might have seen Spielberg's dinosaur-movies. In "The Making of" you get a look behind the scenes and developers explain how the dinosaur-models were developed. You can spot it right away that the animations were exclusively done using wire frame models. Way towards the end after the scene sequence has been determined, finally the wire frame dinosaurs are 'dressed up' with complex textures and included into the movie.
>>


looking at Anand's 8500 review: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1544&p=6, the 8500 kills every other consumer card in triangle rate.

 

[SpecialEd]

I work for an Consulting Engineering firm that does alot of drafting. I just built two identical computers only one uses the Ledteak GF3 Ti 500 and the other uses the Elsa Synergy III Quad 2. Both cards go for around 300 dollars. Personally, I couldn't really see a difference. I loaded some big dwgs in AutoCAD 2002 and they handled them about the same. You basically get what you pay for, the more money you put in, the better card you going to get.