Hardware recommendations

thomthom · 6 Jan 2011, 20:21

nVidia Quadro 3800

brodie · 6 Jan 2011, 20:33

Thom, i think he may have meant which ati card did you get that gave you troubles

-Brodie

Whaat · 7 Jan 2011, 19:45

Has anyone used a GTX 460M (Notebook) card with SU? How does it perform? I am considering getting this but I concerned about openGL performance. Would a quadro notebook be worth the money for SU?

d12dozr · 8 Jan 2011, 05:04

Dale, I got this this machine a few weeks ago: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=298556#p298556 ...I use it with SU and Vue(even more demanding than SU on openGL) and no problems so far.

Whaat · 8 Jan 2011, 05:25

@d12dozr said:

Dale, I got this this machine a few weeks ago: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=298556#p298556 ...I use it with SU and Vue(even more demanding than SU on openGL) and no problems so far.

That's the exact notebook I'm thinking of getting. How is it for handling massive scenes in SketchUp? Have you tried any scenes in the 100MB range?

d12dozr · 8 Jan 2011, 10:36

I haven't tried anything above 20MB yet. I did try the "How many Susans" challenge and got up to 100,000 Susans. SU broke a sweat at 10K copies, but was fine if I just added 10K at a time...from 90K to 100K took about 3 mins, the save took ~7 mins. I tried to go from 10K to 100K, but shut the program down after 30 mins of it cussing at me

pep75 · 13 Jan 2011, 12:39

Hi All!

...I'm using a I7 with a QuadroFX1800, but I'm not so happy with the fx1800 in programmes like Photoshop(it's glitchy). After I read this article http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=4960 , I'm really going to doubt If I should buy the GTX 480! Look at those scores for SU! Is this article wrong or what? Does someone has any experience between these two cards?

brodie · 13 Jan 2011, 15:10

There are 2 tests on there. I'm not sure what the numbers are referring to on the first test so I can't comment on that one. But on the second test the 480 seems to do pretty well. The comments at the end of the article are useful as well. He basically says that the results are really quite similar between all the cards and recommends not using SU as your primary benchmark when purchasing a graphics card.

I saw that same article some time ago and if it taught me anything it's that graphics cards are really unpredictable when it comes to viewports. You can buy a high end card that would run the best fps on the market or do great in a cinebench test, but lags behind a mid range card in viewports. Very weird.

-Brodie

pep75 · 13 Jan 2011, 18:19

It's strange and it's a bit confusing, but I think the Fermi architecture play a very important role in this. But nevertheless, the numbers, in the Sketchup test, are strange. I thought I've bought a high-end card that would blow away all those Geforce game rubbish....not....

Anssi · 13 Jan 2011, 21:23

@pep75 said:

It's strange and it's a bit confusing, but I think the Fermi architecture play a very important role in this. But nevertheless, the numbers, in the Sketchup test, are strange. I thought I've bought a high-end card that would blow away all those Geforce game rubbish....not....

It does not go quite like that. Gaming cards have definitely more bang for the buck than the QuadroFX models. What you get with a Quadro is some more reliability and better drivers optimized for 3D content creation.

I have been happy with my FX1800/i7/Win7-64 combination, also with Photoshop. Are your drivers up to date?

I am not sure about the situation today, but some years ago Photoshop and DTP professionals used to prefer Matrox cards, and definitely they gave the best looking screen image on CRT monitors. You have to forget about SU, though - I once tested, and got a BSOD...

Anssi

pep75 · 13 Jan 2011, 22:20

My drivers are up to date...and I think/know CS5 is working "crappy"...and I don't notice spectacular differences with my fx1800 card...that's why I'm wondering what I should do!

Well....

dsarchs · 17 Jan 2011, 20:36

This might be a little late of a response but maybe it will help someone or at least be a useful reference.

I just built a system around an i5-2500k and an AMD HD6950. I've played with it all weekend (although not exhaustively yet or even had a chance to benchmark anything) and have had absolutely no problems with sketchup or any other program. I'm not sure if it's the processor or the GPU but performance is (subjectively) very impressive.
From my point-of-view the ATI (now AMD) su errors are a thing of the past. If I do come across any problems after I have a chance to use it a bit more I'll let people know.

pep75 · 18 Jan 2011, 19:57

Dennis_n · 21 Jan 2011, 06:48

Alright, got my new toy!

403 Forbidden

(www.sonystyle.com.cn)

a really good looking thing

it is Sony Vaio EB4
i-5 560 2.6 Ghz turbo to 3.2 Ghz.
RAM 4 Gb, GPU - ATI Mobility Radeon HD5650 1Gb
nice full keyboard and 1920x1080p screen.
Performs nice and smooth. No issues with ATI card.
(I did have to purchase the mate film for the screen, so I can kill the glossy effect the laptop came with. It was $50 extra - but it works rather well. Also I upgraded to 4Gb RAM right away (original system had 2Gb) + Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit) so I can change the System original language to English.

The only serious compromise was the backlit keyboard. This model doesn't have it

Total demage $1260 (in Shanghai, here the hardware is a bit more pricey than back in US)

However, the funny part is that on the SU hardware speed test
(http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=20076&p=302554&hilit=speed+test#p302554)
it performs about the same as my 5 year old Dell laptop (2.13 Ghz pentium, 4Gb, nVidia...512Mb) 60+ f/s

but the old thing is clunky and does't have full keyboard and weighs a ton.
Well, by this I can sort of justify the money spent.

I guess after all the research I did and actually getting the thing it is fare to say that Vaio EB4 is the best value for the money for an architect designer. (considering that SU is your bread and butter. where PhotoShop, Gaming, video editing and Revit are supplementary)

FIRFIRIKIS · 31 Jan 2011, 21:22

pls pls pls

i7 2600 3.40 + 16gb + nvidia GeForce GT430 = lot of problems with textures/shadows working on my big projects.
What is the best GPU for my sketchup-workstation? should i go for a fx series?

thomthom · 1 Feb 2011, 07:18

@firfirikis said:

pls pls pls

i7 2600 3.40 + 16gb + nvidia GeForce GT430 = lot of problems with textures/shadows working on my big projects.
What is the best GPU for my sketchup-workstation? should i go for a fx series?

Have you updated the drivers? They can often make a big difference.
Also, what problems? (Just so that people don't recommend hardware for something hardware can't fix.)

FIRFIRIKIS · 1 Feb 2011, 12:25

yeap, the drivers are the latest ones!
the probs are that when i orbit the project i have the texture-lag (textures appear 2-3 secs later). You can imagine what happens with shadows ''on'''... what can i do??? will that problem be fixed with a GPU with opengl hardware?

thomthom · 1 Feb 2011, 13:02

How large are your textures?
How large is your model? (number of faces and edges?)

The effect you see is a feature in SketchUp in order to maintain performance when orbiting, textures edges effects and shadows will be progressively turned of - eventually geometry will be displayed by their bounding box.

Note that edge effects takes at least as much toll on your hardware as shadows.

FIRFIRIKIS · 1 Feb 2011, 14:48

faces:50701
edges:16302
the size of textures? what does it means?

Gaieus · 1 Feb 2011, 14:56

By pixels. Like extremely large texture files (thousands of pixels) can drive SU crazy when there are a lot of them and max texture size is checked.

The poly count does no seem to be large IF you also checked "show nested components" on the top of the statistics window.