Upgrade Video Card Reccommendations

rhankc · 17 Dec 2007, 19:55

I am running a Pent4 with 2G ram, and a 3.o processor. My VC is a GeForce 7300 LE. From what I can tell this is a gamers card w/ open GL.
Performance gets painful when pushing (zoom and rotate) bigger files around (some are just 7mg, and others are up to 40mg,) especially when there are many large components on in the model. I think i want to up my VC, and consider SU the beneficiary to this upgrade. I know very little about the VCs available and would like to know what would be a reasonably priced (under $200) recommendation to get better performance? Thanks

dylan · 17 Dec 2007, 20:42

If on a budget, I would personally go for the Nvidia Gforce 8800 GT.
A very powerful card at a good price.

On your budget you may even have enough to go for a 8800 GTX 768mb.
Not sure of the prices across the water!

Bear in mind, these cards require a pretty hefty PSU and usually take up two slots on your pc.

Anssi · 17 Dec 2007, 22:20

I am repeating myself, but I think that your present card is very much already a "decent" card for SU, and that you maybe might not get very much bang for your buck. Large models tax the processor very much too

Anssi

rhankc · 17 Dec 2007, 23:17

I have good ability to navigate my model if I turn off some of the extraneous programs, like spyware protection... and outlook and whatever else isn't necessary. At that point I can have my PF usage down around 600-700 with Su and acad running. I do know the internet protection is a processor hog. I was thinking the lag between the mouse movement and the model catching up was a VC issue. I have a notebook that remains snappy with the same systems running, that was had me thinking the card needed some work.

toxicvoxel · 19 Dec 2007, 21:30

For a long time I used gaming grade cards with SU and I never new any better. Recently I have been using a Nvidia Quadro FX 1600 (laptop card) which blows the socks off any workstations I have used with SU.

For a workstation card have a look at Quadro FX 2500 or 3500. If you have the dough you could consider the new FX 4600.

pmiller · 20 Dec 2007, 05:02

I would tend to agree with Anssi -- processor speed is of primary importance for large models. Note also that a 7 meg file size represents what is saved on disk only. If you have multiple component instances the actual file size when you are working in SU could be much larger since all the components are in memory. Check model info/statistics to see the true number of faces and edges. When you are working keep shadows and textures off - that is what taxes the VC.

rhankc · 20 Dec 2007, 07:43

I have a house fully dimensioned, and each set is a component. These components are on their own layer, when the dimension layer is on performance suffers. Guess I'll have to test the same set of dimensions with another font. Are some standard fonts known to be heavier than others? I could imagine the 3D font is hefty, but I dont use that much. Dimensions seem to have a more noticeable performance effect than materials.

rhankc · 24 Dec 2007, 16:44

I Did some disk cleaning this weekend, I found my C partition had only 3% left before full. I thought I kept a cleaner house. I backed up and sent the stagnant files to another storage place, loosening up %42 percent of my space. I will admit the machine feels so much more responsive. I thought I had recently done system maintaince, Point is dont overlookk the obvious to keep performance up.