SU on CrossFireX™ Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Mobility

fuzzion · 5 Feb 2011, 17:11

My laptop got stolen And i need a replacement.

I heard SU does not do well with ATI. Is that true?. And what about ATI crossfirex? ...is this GPU an overkill ?

I have never used an ATI in my life.

fuzzion · 6 Feb 2011, 14:02

And another question, What about Nvidia SLI. Good or problematic

EscapeArtist · 6 Feb 2011, 14:08

Have SU running on 9800GTX+ x 2 in SLi and have zero problems. I'd say that any good video card will work fine, but I'd invest in the best processor as this is currently the bottleneck that slows me down the most, SU cannot take advantage of multi-core architecture.

fuzzion · 6 Feb 2011, 16:01

@escapeartist said:

Have SU running on 9800GTX+ x 2 in SLi and have zero problems. I'd say that any good video card will work fine, but I'd invest in the best processor as this is currently the bottleneck that slows me down the most, SU cannot take advantage of multi-core architecture.

Thanks for that.

Arbitrarily assuming, i would take it that Nvidia SLI runs fine.

I believe the CPU in SU is used for calculations,plugins ,etc right? and the GPU is used to display the models. So both should be on par right? Or it it common knowledge that i am missing that the CPU is the bottleneck here when trying to avoid a Sketchup slideshow ???

I use Old vray so one thing is for sure, the CPU is gonna be an i7. Im just stuck on the Video card part. Unless i am missing something, previous posts on these issues were not conclusive

EscapeArtist · 7 Feb 2011, 03:37

You are correct. The card will determine what levels of anti-aliasing, etc. you'll be able to use effectively in SU. The CPU does the work of calculating plugins, shadows, styles and the like. For me the CPU is absolutely the bottleneck, when you maneuver in a scene all the style elements need to be recalculated, this gives me a slideshow. Currently the only way I know of to prevent this is to separate your model into layers and work on one with the others turned off. Works quite well actually. The render engine you prefer would be helpful in determining what vid card to get as some systems like Thea will support GPU rendering. Personally I'm partial to Nvidia cards as I've generally had issues with ATI's catalyst drivers as have several friends, they've wound up rolling back drivers on occasion. That doesn't mean that the current generation hasn't improved or the issues have not been corrected, someone with current ATI experience could comment on that.

dsarchs · 7 Feb 2011, 18:48

I just built a system with an AMD 6950 and have had no problems at all. Turning on shadows/AA doesn't slow it down at all -- although I haven't tried any ridiculously large files. This is barely comparable, but I have a 9800 GT (nvidia) at work which works fine, but is very noticeably slower than the AMD card at home.

The main reason I got this card, though was for its 2gb memory for extra head-room with GPU rendering. That said -- and as satisfied as I am with it -- the GTX560 looks like a capable alternative (supports CUDA which AMD doesn't but only has 1gb).

fuzzion · 8 Feb 2011, 09:32

Cheers for that So when seeking seamlessly smooth frames
per second , SU is bottlenecked at the CPU at a far greater level than at
the GPU level. And that ATI has now improved. Btw, I ended up getting a i7-950
and 460m nvidia sli workstation laptop.