Graphics Cards and Sketchup

fuzzion

@anssi said:

Nvidia (just like ATI, too)licenses it's products for different manufacturers - apart from the brand name there should be no difference whatsoever between the ones with the same chipset (VRAM amount, perhaps).Anssi

Yes, I know that many manufacturers use the same Nvidia chipset. When I asked for more specifics, I was asking which particular model he was referring to, and the reason I asked that is, for example, on TigerDirect, where I get most of my hardware, there are about 50 different Geoforce GTX 460 graphics cards, varying in price from about 150 to 300 dollars. Underneath the meaningless "gee whiz" physical appearance they are not just carbon copies of one model, each maker uses tweaks and tricks to try to make their model stand out from the crowd, and while these differences are all built around the same Nvidia chipset, they could have an impact on how well it plays with SU. That was the reason for my original post, I wanted to know which particular cards SU users have had good luck with, or have had problems with.
While I have been building my own computers for a long time, I know that you don't have to be a computer genius to build one, and I don't want to come across like I know all the internal workings of each component. I'm far from that . I'm just trying to maximize my chances of choosing a card that I can live with. If you say that I can choose from any of these cards and get the same results, I guess I'll just roll the dice and hope for the best.
I really appreciate your help and advice.

Some succinct points. Someone high up from the google team needs to email Tom's Hardware to get them to make a special SU only benchmark with a very wide test-range of cards.

Edit : Some of their benchmarks do include Blender, so why not SU?

AdamB

You're over analysing it. You want to choose a card that has lots of cores, and high fillrate within your budget.

As part of LightUp I see a lot of data points from users with different cards. Based on that, I'd always go for Nvidia over AMD/ATI as they consistently have less problems with their drivers wrt OpenGL. I know a few people who work at AMD who swear blind the ATI/AMD & OpenGL support with patchy drivers is a thing of the past etc, but I consistently see problems with AMD/ATI cards relating to hit'n'miss OpenGL support.

Certainly these monster GTX cards are not going to give you a performance bottleneck with SketchUp - ie any performance ceiling isn't going to be the GPU.

And I know I keep going on about it, but looking carefully at your workflow is more likely to accelerate your work rate than new hardware. But you know that already.

Adam

sketch3d.de

the main differences are:
• clock rate / overclocking capability
• amount of vram
• speed of vram
• access to vram

you can, more or less, ignore all of them, go for an Asus or Gigabyte or PNY with the faster 256bit memory interface.

and keep in mind that these cards do require roughly 150-160W in peak, therefore your power supply unit should be capable in delivering this, i.e. at least ~300W in total.

hth,
Norbert

AdamB

@sketch3d.de said:

and keep in mind that these cards do require roughly 150-160W in peak, therefore your power supply unit should be capable in delivering this, i.e. at least ~300W in total.

Now that is a really good point.
Do check your power supply can handle these very hot running graphics cards. Many domestic PCs skimp on the power supply unit (PSU) to reduce costs.

thomthom

And investigate how much noise they generate. Some have sub-standard fans which cause annoying noise when you push it.
I've had to buy third party GPU fans to reduce noise in my systems.

Krisidious

I have Win 7 64 Ultimate and (2) GTS 250 1 Gigabyte Video Cards running SLi

dylan

I always advise Nvidia cards, but I do happen to have an ATI that came fitted to my current computer thats works very well with SU.

ATI Radeon HD 5750
1GB

Krisidious

Dylan, I just noticed that you joined SketchUcation 11 minutes before I did...

sketch3d.de

@unknownuser said:

...thats works very well with SU.

seems that OpenGL maturity of the ATI Catalyst driver iss getting better since several revisions now...

...and hardware delivers more GPU power as well as less power consumption than a GeForce in the same price range.

Norbert

dylan

@krisidious said:

Dylan, I just noticed that you joined SketchUcation 11 minutes before I did...

I guess we must have been looking at the old @Last forum at the same time when Coen announced he was opening this place up

Gaieus

Don't forget guys that this is the second SCF board already.

hellnbak

Just ordered my new card - I went with the EVGA 01G-P3-1373-AR GeForce GTX 460 SuperClocked Video Card - 1024MB GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0, Dual DVI, Mini HDMI, SLI, DirectX 11, Fermi. Here's hoping.
Thanks for all your help and advice.