What is the best budget video card for CAD work?

[joinT]

Does it need to be something special/unique ? Or have video cards/CAD software advanced enough that you just need a certain amount of power.

I've been out of the video card scene for a while & don't know anything. I was thinking if there's nothing special required, that an ATI 9000 128mb would be more than sufficient.

Any help is appreciated.

TIA

 

[Mingon]

Dont get an non-professional ATI card for cad - ever. they are so slow its untrue. I have used both a softmodded 9700 and an mx440 pci in autocad 2002 with a smallish 3d picture of a football pitch - the mx440 was faster. A ti4200 is an excellent card for CAD and will be able to handle quite large images with fluidity

 

[kylebisme]

ti4200 is the way to go.

 

[joinT]

First off, thanks for the tips guys.

2nd. Am I going to HAVE to mod the card for CAD. I remember when I modded my GF2MX for CAD, but since I didn't use it, I just sold it off. I was kinda hoping that some normal inexpensive video card can handle it.

So a ti4200 unmodded would work well ? If so, if you guys could just confirm I wouldn't have to mod anything, that would be great.

TIA

 

[43st]

AutoCAD out of the box does all it's rendering in software. So for all it matters you could get a TNT card for it. Unless you're using one of the AutoCAD development mods you're not going to see much, if any, difference in graphic cards.

That being said... ATI has had more problems in there drivers with regard to AutoCAD than Nvidia. I'd suggest you get the cheapest GF line card you can find. A GF 2/3 would work very well.

 

[Mingon]

The problem comes when you are using the gourad shaded views, as I said the softmodded 9700 was very slow, a ti4200 is excellent

 

[Schadenfroh]

matrox cards would be the ideal ones for CAD

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
matrox cards would be the ideal ones for CAD

can anyone verify this statement? i am going to spend thousands of dollars at work in a few days and i need to know what graphics cards will improve autocad 2002 the most. right now we are running mx400's and some g2 GTS's...


any help would be great...thanks

 

[Mingon]

If you spending lots get quadro cards or firegl. But if its budget go for ti4200. Do you have lcd's or crt's ? DVI driven lcd's negate any potential problems with 2D.

Here is something I done as part of my teaching degree, midway down the page are some screen dumps of a football / soccer freekick which was done in Acad 2002 (I was a Mech Engineer for 9yrs). I tend to use the gourad/flat shaded views quite often as it allows me to visualise what I am doing. An ATI 9700 was very slow rendering these, but a ti4200 / 128mb was miles ahead on the same system.

 

[Sunny129]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
matrox cards would be the ideal ones for CAD

can anyone verify this statement? i am going to spend thousands of dollars at work in a few days and i need to know what graphics cards will improve autocad 2002 the most. right now we are running mx400's and some g2 GTS's...


any help would be great...thanks

if you are going to play 3D games on your system, then Matrox is not ideal, in fact it sucks. However, it seems like you need it for 2D professional applications. in that case, Matrox cards produce the highest quality 2D images, so Matrox might be of some interest to you.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Sunny129

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
matrox cards would be the ideal ones for CAD

can anyone verify this statement? i am going to spend thousands of dollars at work in a few days and i need to know what graphics cards will improve autocad 2002 the most. right now we are running mx400's and some g2 GTS's...


any help would be great...thanks

if you are going to play 3D games on your system, then Matrox is not ideal, in fact it sucks. However, it seems like you need it for 2D professional applications. in that case, Matrox cards produce the highest quality 2D images, so Matrox might be of some interest to you.

its not so much image quality that i am worried about...but rendering speed. i need autocad to render a hell of a lot faster. when we scroll around it takes a while for it to redraw the image and it is choppy. it needs to be really smooth and consistant. when you look around in a game like half-life, there is no choppy movement...i need the same thing for autocad and geforce2's and geforce4 MX's and even the ti4200 just arent cutting it. they are all look slow and painfully frustrating.

any ideas?

 

[Mingon]

Whats the rest of the system specs?