What card is best for CAD software?

[TheLeviathan]

Would it be a good 2D card like Matrox or a good 3D card like nVidea? Is it more important to have the good 2D visual quality or the 3D for modeling?

 

[PG]

3D would be more important, not 2D. Don't even think about Matrox.
Nvidia cards and drivers are the best for CAD, and right now the Geforce2 can outperform the Geforce3 in some CAD benchmarks, assuming you use soft quadro to hack the drivers.

I know from personal experience that the 32 MB Geforce2 GTS-V from Newegg running at only 175/286 outperforms a 64 MB Radeon 7500 at 270/460 in many CAD benchmarks. In other words, don't mess with anything but an Nvidia card, and get a Geforce2. Then just use soft quadro to hack the drivers, and you have a cheap but powerful card.

 

[Rand]

Well something from Evans & Sutherland, 3DLabs, FireGL, Elsa's Quadro etc. would certainly be the preferable option, but if your referring strictly to consumer level graphics cards then... nVidia GeForce1/2/3 are all reasonably capable CAD cards. As is ATi's Radeon 8500 (NOT the original Radeon!).

Matrox is not at all very good option for any professional level 3D design be it CAD, 3D Animation, 3D Modeling etc.

Pixel and texel fill rates matter little in the professional 3D realm, whereas they are of huge importance in gaming cards. An extremely powerful geometry engine is often essential.
Polygonal throughput is also a very important area.
Hardware lighting from multiple viewpoints can be important ins some areas of CAD, as can wireframe modeling which can be of considerable importance in some areas. Any texturing is primarily flat and gouraud shading in CAD, while 3D animation is generally smooth blinn shading, phong, etc.

There are many different areas in the professional level 3D rendering realm, and one's good for one may be very unsuited to another.

Typical gaming cards often make for extremely poor CAD cards with a few noteable exceptions.
Visual quality is also of primary importance, CAD cards need to be dead on accurate right done to pixel level details.
Massive amounts of DRAM can also be essential in some tasks.

If your looking for a recommendation for a certain task, then you'd be best telling us what CAD programs you will be running and what your price range is.

 

[TheLeviathan]

Thanks, I have been playing with a CAD program called Rhino and am using a Geforce 2 GTS. Will the Quadro hack do any damage as far as gaming?

 

[AA0]

The nvidia quadra, and ATI fire gls are the best. Normal 3d cards really aren't up to it, the drivers are not geared for it. Fire GL drivers are supposed to be top notch, from what I've heard nvidia drivers are pretty much the same as normal 3d cards with a hack.

They are pricy though.

 

[Rand]

<< Thanks, I have been playing with a CAD program called Rhino and am using a Geforce 2 GTS. Will the Quadro hack do any damage as far as gaming? >>



In most cases the Quadro hack will not cause any gaming performance differences, in a small handful of OpenGL games you may see performance drops of about 10% but that will be unusual.
In games that specifically try to detect the graphics card in use you may run into some compatibility issues as it will try to detect the Quadro as a GeForce and implement features improperly.... usually that will only cause a small performance loss but I've heard that there are some situations in which it might cause the game not to run at all... I havent personally seen any games in which it wouldnt run at all though.

In the vast majority of games it won't run any differently then an unhacked GeForce card will.

 

[Superwormy]

Just a note, Matrox IS DEFINITALLY a viable solution under many circumstances. Many progs like 3D Studio MAX are not even worth using OpenGL with, not sure on Rhino. I thought I ehard once that OpenGL did very little for Rhino too, cause Rhino is all based on NURBS and there are no cards with NURBS acceleration out. You'd need to check on that thought.

But anyway, about Matrox, many times OpenGL is pointless for 3D apps, and multiple monitors is the more preferable option. Go ask Pixar or PDI/Dreamworks, half their artists would take 2 monitors over super fast OpenGL acceration anyday

 

[Superwormy]

Oh and btw, not to bash Rhino or anything, but I would really reccomend you look at 3D Studio MAX, much more capable and a little easier to learn that Rhino too at least in my opinion. It's a little pricy though unless you find a er... um... 'dealer' I guess... that can give you a good bargain price... oh, and make sure you pay for it, don't go pirating it by asking others to hacked copies of it to you or trying to find copies on mirc channels...