My friend is building a pc and he needs it for modeling software:

NX http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/e ... ndex.shtml
Soliworks http://www.solidworks.com/sw/3d-cad-design-software.htm
Pro/ENGINEER http://www.ptc.com/products/proengineer/
Catia http://www.3ds.com/products/catia/welcome/

He is gonna use Ci3 530 cpu, 4gb of ram but he's stuck on the GPU. Can anybody recommend any? Is any of these softwares hardware GPU accelerated?

You will be able to get away with a 5770 or similar

My 4870 is fine for Lightwave/Maya 3dsMax but a pro card will cost an arm and a leg

If he's going to use Catia properly then he'll need the most monster Quadro he can afford

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=337736&CatId=0

I was thinking 5770 myself. Will it be pushed to its limits? How demanding are these programs on GPU?

The reason he needs these programes is that he is a student and he will be examined on the use of the modeling software I mentioned. So those 1k cards are a bit OTT

Either one of the nVidia Quadros or an ATi FireGL. They are crap for gaming, but they leave the consumer cards in the dust, when it comes to openGL performance.

Think of the consumer 3D graphics cards as a Top Fuel dragster and the Quadro and FireGL as a Formula 1. The Top Fuel will beat the F1 in a straight line (gaming), but put it onto Silverstone's twisty circuit (CAD/modelling) and the F1 will run rings round it.

Thank you big_D but it needs to be a consumer level card, ATI 5770 is the limit due to budget restrictions. As I mentioned, it won't be my friends livelihood, it needs to be good enough to cope so he can learn to use the software, that's all.

Will getting 5770 rather than Nvidia GX260 make a difference? Will any of those cards work hard at all? Can he get away with Ci3 530's on-chip graphics?

I've seen people try and do Autocad with integrated gfx and it takes ages to render any changes onscreen.
Personally I'd go Nvidia as Cuda seems to work better on consumer cards than ATi's effort.

An excellent analogy!

The consumer GPUs aim to heave through as many pixels as they can because when you're throwing 30FPS at a screen jagglies and other artefacts don't matter; when you're modelling a building or a protein it does!

Somewhat innacurate analysis there, with respect...
It would depend on what Workstation card you are talking about, some are very 'unpowerful' like the Nvidia Quadro FX 380 LP which is based on the 9400gt. Something as simple as a 9500GT would destroy it in Open GL.

They are often similar (to the non workstation cards they are based on) for gaming, or slightly worse. Certainly not crap, unless the card they are based on is crap anyway.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/MidRang ... t/?page=11

My Dell Precision runs one of these, also its Dell branded but it cost nothing like that, originally it had the cheapest Nvidia Quadro which was based on the 8500GT or something and was not very good at all.

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/pr ... 3824506180

They are made by Sapphire and based on the GDDR4 3870. I paid £180 secondhand, use it for Solidworks, Autocad and also it does GPU acceleration in Photoshop.

That is a also a somewhat innacurate take on the cards too, the Quadro FX 5800 is based on the 9800GX2 and was in fact better at playing Crysis as it had more memory.

You can also use Quadro drivers on 'normal' Nvidia cards, Guru3d forums are sometimes awash with modified Quadro drivers that actually optimised the performance of normal cards like the GTX260.

Some of the Quadro and Fire cards use better quality components and can run full bore 24/7 unlike most desktop cards though.

Why not ask the people who wrote the software? It doesn't take long to fire off an e-mail giving them the cost constraints and the end use. They may be able to recommend something that works with their software.

Or the people running the course?

If you go on the websites of the software firms, they have an approved and recommended GPU list usually.


Such as :

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/hc ... ID=9240618