Hardware recommendations
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That card would've been before the ATI/AMD merger, I think. I've heard that they're graphic line is much better since the merger.
I'm not such a fan of AMD but I imagine I'll be buying a system sometime in the next year and have been starting to look around to see what's out there.
Personally I think that CUDA looks amazing... I really hope that pick's up in the very near future. Intel's philosophy of continually adding more and more cores seems ridiculous -- much too brute force -- while GPU [through CUDA] seems a very elegant use of hardware we already have [to a much larger result that merely CPU].
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Regarding ATI/AMD it would be interesting to start hearing some feedback as to whether the 'old' issues still exist or not. However, at this point I think for SU users it's still risky to run out and buy an ATI card even if they're 'better.' You can buy a card w/ uber framerates and clockspeeds that'll make you dizzy but if you can't pick the face of a wall it's worthless.
-Brodie
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This can have real significance under SU:
http://www.geeks3d.com/?page_id=7
Where can we find info about OpenGL resources used by SU? Google people, anyone?
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Could well be, maybe if anyone is experiancing any GPU issues this may be an option ... any lab rats out there wanna give it a go?
Nice find Zilonex, you may have a cure for many distressed users.
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@unknownuser said:
You can buy a card w/ uber framerates and clockspeeds that'll make you dizzy
The usual card tests found in magazines etc are rather useless for choosing a card to use with SU, as they seldom test OpenGL performance. Magazine editors are almost exclusively interested in DirectX performance, that is irrelevant to SU and mostly applies to games.
I add one warning to notebook buyers. Driver upgrades to notebook graphics are almost exclusively available only through the notebook manufacturers, and most often than not the upgrades are few and long between. I was lucky in that the driver shipped with my Nvidia-equipped Acer luggable runs SU OK, as there has been no upgrade to that at all in four years. If you can, choose a graphics subsystem supported directly by the graphics manufacturer.
Anssi
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Anssi,
I was under the same impression for years regarding my nVidia Geforce Go7400 equipped laptop, but finally found a custom driver update solution on the laptopvideo2go website- it took a few tries of downloading supposedly compatible drivers, uninstalling old ones, running a registry cleaner and reinstalling new drivers before I found one that runs properly on my card, but FINALLY I have drivers just a few months old rather than the 3 yr old ones that were bundled with my laptop. The key is to remember to copy/paste the modified .inf file so that the driver installer will allow the modded drivers to be installed on your machine.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
Sadly they're only available for nvidia cards, but perhaps there's another site that specialises in ATI?
Hope this helps,
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Jackson is right.
The laptopvideo2go website is a MUST for laptop SU users. -
Hi Tommy and ALL,
Are there any news about the survey? I found this link ([http://www.tomshardware.com/de/GTX-280-260-GT200-Geforce-Nvidia,testberichte-240063-22.html](http://www.tomshardware.com/de/GTX-280-260-GT200-Geforce-Nvidia,testberichte-240063-22.html)), and this table ([http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/9/110961/original/062.gif](http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/9/110961/original/062.gif)) shows impressive data: under SPECViewPerf 10 benchmark, the 3870x2 score was about twice of the gtx280. I bought cg hardware for more than 15 years. So I like a lot the nv initiatives, like the future MentalRAY on hardware one - truly gold for cg professionals. But those numbers show very deceptive performance for the gtx280, and we all know that it is a card with a very impressive gpu. If anyone could post links or info to viewperf 10 and other benchmarks with the gtx280 I will be very glad of. What's the point? Well, nv could boost a lot their selling numbers if leave this professional versus gaming boards nonsense. Today, all the technological differences between the "gaming" and the "quadros" are vaporware - and we all know this. The results are clear: nv is losing a lot of key and loyal customers - I'm one of them. -
Hai everyone on this forum, I'm newbie in this useful forum,,,sorry for my english if it's not good,I'm from Indonesia,,,i just wanna ask you guys about product called WACOM TABLET,,,,is it usefull for using this product to draw the 3D things like SketchUp ? because there is a great sale for this product in my country,,,,i think thats a cool gadget for drawing,,,,,the point about my question , is this cool stuff can help increasing our performance for drawing in 3d, especially for SketchUp,? thanks guys,,,,once again, sorry for my english,,,,
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I use a wacom in SU, although i wouldnt say it increases the speed at which i model it is a more pleasant experience. They are also far superior for doing things in photoshop, which can often be a big part of making good models in SU.
Overall id say go for it. They take a bit of getting used to but they are very nice to use once you get used to it.
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Thanks remus for your opinion,,,,,what type of WACOM you have ? is it BAMBOO, BAMBOO FUN , GRAPHIRE, OR INTUOS ? OR WHICH ONE IS THE AS YOU KNOW,,,,I KNOW THERE IS A HIGH END TYPE FOR THIS GADGET, BUT ONLY A FEW TYPE ABOVE ENOUGH FOR MY BUDGET RIGHT NOW.....
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Ive got a bamboo. It works fine for me, although i imagine if your going to be doing a lot of drawing in photoshop then it would be orth forking out the extra cash for an intuos.
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Hi Tiger and welcome to the forum. There is a wacom tablet topic already, please, go on with this discussion there as this topic is dedicated to the performance of SU on different computers.
Thanks.
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@sketchup guide tommy said:
Hi Everyone,
I've created a survey that asks a few questions about your computer. Not to worry, this survey is totally anonymous. If SketchUp is screaming fast on your computer, we want to know. If SketchUp barely runs at all, we want to know that too. If you have a number of
computers, new and old, feel free to take the survey multiple times. To view the survey, please visit the following page:http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pdV8e-LldOEpQw6k3-ovifg
Once I have enough data, I'll post the results for everyone to see. With your help, this will be the most comprehensive collection of hardware feedback that's ever been gathered for SketchUp.
.Great Survey.. the final one is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pdV8e-LldOEpQw6k3-ovifg&hl=en
I'm looking at getting either a Geforce 8500GT Mg 512MB or upgrading to Geforce 9500GT Mg
512MB video card for a new PC (Core2 Quad, Asus P5 pro motherboard)... I'll be running Vista home premium.After looking at the results in the survey I kind of wonder if I am heading in a safe direction with the 9500 GT videocard. Has anyone had "excellent" results with one of these using Vista?
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Just a short note on processors and GPU's. Because SketchUp is not multi core aware but it is clock dependant, an inexpensive but high clock dual core CPU will actually give you faster results than a slower quad core cpu. I recommend a dual core so that the OS and other apps such as virus scans etc can run on the first core leaving you with an empty core for sketchup. This only applies to sketchup though, as soon as you use a good renderer like Indigo the quad core even with slightly slower clocks per core will vastly outrun the dual core. as for the graphics, I would look into linux game benchmarks to find out about OpenGL performance as this is the main api used by linux. oddly on an old ati rage 128 that I have in an old laptop, sketchup is actually usable under linux and wine but totally useless under win2k. That being said for a budget minded system for sketchup I would buy a fast AMD dual core cpu like an 5600X2 and the best video card I could afford (check out tomshardware vga lists for the current month and buy something recommended between $125 and $200) 4GB of ram and a fast HD. All of this should set you back between $450 and $600 (less in the US). for rendering you need something bigger or you could use a commercial render farm like ranch computing and save yourself a crapload of money while getting awesome performance (renders for as little as $10) I run a system similar to this and upgrade just behind the curve for cheap every 2 years. And I can make my own renders but would love to have a few quad cores sitting around to make into render pigs, running linux of course. Just my thoughts on the best bang for my limited pc bucks.
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I use Sketchup extensively, at work and home. At work I use Core2 6600 2.4GHz, 2G ram and Geforce 9600 GT.
At home, I got Quad Core Q6600 running 3.3 GHz OCed, 8G ram, and ATI EAH 3870. Comparing these two, work computer is faster in sketchup (didn’t make much difference in 32bit XP pro or Vista x64 home system. 4G Ram vs 8G Ram). So I updated the driver at home, but still slower. Then I knowticed something in Preferences OpenGL Capabilities box. Home system had only 1 True Color (# -4 Colors -True Color Precision –Medium Shadows –Yes Anti-Alias 0x) , while work had 3 True Color (# -16,28,40 Colors -True Color Precision –Medium Shadows –Yes Anti-Alias 0x,2x,4x) so I did some surching on the net and found this site: http://www.geeks3d.com/?page_id=7 This shows NVIDIA Forceware had more OpenGL extensions than ATI Catalyst. In my conclusion, Video Card driver Compatibility to OpenGL is most important for Sketchup. -
Hi, i have an HD 4870 (ATI GPU) card with the Catalyst 8.9 and a E6600 @ 3,4Ghz and it's not fast on Sketchup. However at work, a 7600GT (Nvidia GPU) works very well !
So i think like neocitra that the drivers are more important than the hardware configuration of the card...
But if somoene got something good to boost ATI performance on SU, i'll appreciate !!
Thanx
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My workplace just bought a spanking new Dell computer with Q9550 CPU @ 4x2.83GHz and Nvidia 8800 GT Graphics card. Now I can wiz through all the models that I struggled on with my 8600M GT laptop. I recommend it to anyone. You do however need to update the graphic driver has the default one with Dell gave some diplay glitches when using SU.
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I just upgraded my HD EAH 3870 video card to GTX 260 and here is my synopsis.
Comparing EAH3870, 9600GT and GTX260, I would Pick 9600GT. First of all unless ATI brings out more compatible driver for EAH 3870, it’s not worth it. (strictly speaking for SU purposes) SU bench mark for EAH3870 looks good as 9600GT but when you try to orbit or zoom, real-time motion is very jerky. GTX260 has best SU bench mark but BM doesn’t mean anything to me. Because real-time motion of model that is 30mg (which most of my model is) or over, box outline of the group starts to kick in and with this mode, speed is same for 9600GT and GTX260. With price tag that’s 1/2 as GTX260, I recommend 9600GT out of These three. -
I use Dual Core 2.0 GB, DDR II 2GB, Nvidia GE Force 256 but it still very slow to run a render Software such as Podium or VRay. Took about 20 minutes to render in 1024 x 786 pixel JPG. Could you help me to adjust my hardware, plz..??
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