Consumer or Pro graphics card for Catia/solidworks

[ClownBaby]

Title says it all. I've been asked to put together a system for a user who works in Solid Works and Catia. I don't have an exact budget, but it would be very beneficial if a consumer grade card could fit the bill. The system is going to most likely be on an 1155 platform with a 3770k processor and 16gb memory (as that is what was requested). So it's a strong system, but certainly not top end.

So, will a consumer grade card perform well enough? I don't think a top end pro grade card will be in the budget, so the options will be a lower end pro card, or a mid to high end consumer card.

Also, ATI or Nvidia? Since both programs use opengl, I would tend to assume ATI, but I'm not a 3d guy (I'm an adobe user).

Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

 

[chimaxi83]

The main difference between consumer/gaming cards and the professional cards is the software support. That's the biggest part of the cost of the cards. The hardware itself is nearly identical. Tom's Hardware has a full professional card benchmark suite. The results are most likely comparable to what you'd get with consumer level cards.

I believe Geforce cards can be flashed with a specific BIOS, or a hack installed, so that the system recognizes it as a Quadro, which lets you install the Quadro drivers. This won't get you Quadro customer support, obviously, but it doesn't limit the modeling software like a Geforce card would. I'm not sure if the same can be done with AMD FirePro cards.

 

[lopri]

Read the reviews from real pros.

http://www.cgchannel.com/2011/10/review-professional-gpus-nvidia-vs-amd-2011/
http://gfxspeak.com/2011/09/01/review-amd-cayman-generation-firepro-v7900-and-firepro-v5900/

Firepro 5900 is the best bang for the buck all around. (~$400) It's based on Cayman (1/3 of HD 6970), and competes with Quadro 4000 (~$800, 1/2 of GTX 480). A $400 card from NV is Quadro 2000, which basically is GTS 450, and it has only 1GB of memory. Astoundingly Firepro 5900's TDP is 75W so it doesn't even need an extra 6-pin power connector for that much horsepower.

 

[Arkadrel]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/workstation-graphics-2012/06-Solidworks-0-x-AA,3120.html

^ solid works benchmark.

It looks like a "AMD Firepro 5900" (costs ~400$) matches a "Nvidia Quadro 4000" (costs ~800$) ,
in terms of performance (more or less), but costs half as much (uses half as much power as the 4000 too).

So in general it looks like for this program, you get alot more "bang for the buck" with a AMD card.

 

[lopri]

You can take a chance with a gaming card, and if the choice is between a $300 gaming card v. $4,000 professional card then it's probably worth trying a $300 card whether the app your friend uses for work. But there are decent cards for reasonable prices in professional graphics market these days. You can always check out used products, too.

 

[Sparko]

I'll just chime in quickly. I happen to be running Solidworks 2012 and have tried it with a consumer card that I felt would be perfectly adequate. It's not.

I've done some hunting and I'd completely agree with Arkadrel and go with an AMD Firepro. I personally just ordered the V3900 based on Tom's Hardware info showing very passable performance.