New drivers released in the past few days.  I installed them last night and so far all my problems have disappeared, just wanted to report to let everyone know if having similar problems....   Now I love my FirePro w5000!      Can't beat the Dollars to Performance ratio.  Is is fast and performs well.  The drivers were the only issue I was having

Charles,

I noticed you already answered a question in regards to a laptop and I understand your logic there, so I thought I would shoot you an additional question to get your oppinion.  I am looking for a new laptop for an employee and I keep running into dead ends and hoped you could help me out.  In my compnay I have been working with a computer consulting company for my servers and I try to go by their recomendations for hardware along with my Solid Works resellers' support tech groups recomendations.

Computer guys say Dell which the M6800 uses the AMD FirePro M6100 w/2GB GDDR5 as standard.  Unfortunatly, that card is not on the solid works website as tested.  Solid works only shows the QUADRO K3100M, K4100M and the K5100M being tested with the Dell.

Now when I contacted Dell they apparently do offer these cards but their system is down and cannot quote?????  It has been two weeks and its still down???   You can make your own call on that.  I hope their system does not run on Dell....

Then when I called the Solid Works reseller they said the old AMD M6000 was tested by Solid Works so the AMD M6100 probably will and would be fine.  They also really pushed any NIVIDIA over AMD...  Sounded like a preference type thing where I instead really appriciated your data and comments here leaning me towards AMD.  If this were a desk top after reading your posts I would be all over the V4900 and want to ask what is the equivelant in a laptop, but I know the answer.  It does not work that way...

To sum up, if I go Dell I will have to get the untested AMD card and risk Solid Works claiming that is why I am having crashes.  If I want to go NIVIDIA...well I cant Dell wont quote so I am going to have to start over looking into other suppliers like the HP ZBOOK or the @XI you refer too and that is all kinds of new questions. 

Basically so I can end this post and let you go back to your life, if this was you what would you do?  Would you trust the untested NIVIDIA or get something other than the Dell and If you were getting a laptop where would you look? @XI?

Thanks In advance,

Kurt   

Update:

So for the laptop, we ended up going with a Dell Precision M4800 , 16GB RAM , Intel Core i7-4930MX CPU @ 3.00GHz 3.20 GHZ , 64-bit OS, and the NVIDIA Quadro K2100M

This is working perfectly so far - all of the issues from before have disappeared.

Thank you Charles

Hi everyone, I know this is an older thread but it has a lot of good info and seems like the best place for my question. The company I work for is getting us new computers and I hate to say it but the person in charge of purchasing them does not really understand the requirements needed to run programs like SolidWorks and the new computers only have the on-board graphics. In the past we have tried to get add on graphics cards, but again unfortunately the person in charge does not understand what is needed and does not want to spend the money to get a Quadro or Firepro graphics card because they are too expensive.

To hopefully find a happy medium I was looking at some GeForce video cards, which are cheaper than the Quadro or Firepro. I know SolidWorks wants the better cards, but will the GeForce be acceptable or at least better than the on-board graphics? I should add our company does not do anything very complicated with SolidWorks. We are a structural steel fabricator and typically use SolidWorks for flat pattern developments of bent or rolled sheet metal components or to design the occasional fixture. Our assemblies or weldments are never very large, the largest files only run 100MB at most with typical flat patterns running under 1MB.

Charles is correct.

What you need to do is:-

1: Print off a copy of Solidwork's "Hardware Requirements" page.

2: Thrust it under your buyer's nose.

3: Say "This is what is NECESSARY to do my job!".

Hi Vince,

If the Graphics card is not on the Solidworks approved list, you should also forget about paying for Solidworks support, that will save some cash also.

If the person in charge of getting your PC's does not understand the requirements of Solidworks, maybe they are in the wrong job as their lack of expertise or failure to seek expert advice BEFORE buying the PC's will only cost in the long run.

If you want to enter a race, get a racing car, a Ford Mondeo will throw a few pistons at the sort of rpm's that racing cars use.

Go to ebay, they sell some really cheap second hand Quadros and Firepro's, but check the approved list on the Solidworks site first.

If cash is tight.

Good luck and welcome!

For what it's worth, my boss has a new Surface Pro that has a 4th gen I5 processor and as far as we can tell on board graphics and it seems to run SW14 with small assemblies a (up to 500 parts) just fine. He uses it primarily for presentations and to review our departments designs but when he opens up the assembly models they seem to zoom and rotate on screen well with no lag or stutter. But with that said, our workstations use either the Firepro W5000 or an Nividia Quadro K2000. Just curious, what does your buyer think a decent cad video card should cost?

Hello all,

I asked some questions a while back on this thread regrding video cards in regards to my IT people trying to do a virtual set up on a server.  Long story short it did not work.  Threfore, I am the proud owner of a Nvidia Quatro 4000 graphics card that I would like to off load.  I am not sure if this is the right place to try to sell it.  Is it or do you know of a good place to sell somthing like this?  I know I can try Craig's list.

Thanks,

Kurt

I eventually got an i7 3.5 Ghz Computer.

16 GB RAM

V4900 Firepro Video.

It took MONTHS to get approval, first from the IT manager then my engineering manager, then the Managing Director.

We got two of these machines, because I explained to them that our new Engineer was taking 40 mintues to run a pressure simulation on an old Core2Duo 2.66 GHz with 4 GB RAM. - The IT Guy said that was plenty. <facepalm>

The engineer now runs simulations in under 5 mins flat.

I have came around this issue too.

Several years ago I have read an article on this subject...

The difference betweengaming and quadro or firepro videocards is RealView for one instance.

The other is hardcore renderring. And no, I am not talking about PhotoView.

Say you have a really complex model that you want to run throught some analysis, like airflow or any other liquid. Or particle stuff...

If  you run the ''project'' on your normal card and it takes a huge amount of time your normal gaming card will just burn out while the SolidWorks approved card will get the job done.

The article I have read (sorry, can't remember the link.), stated, that runing the same project on the same system with different video cards had ended with following results:

Currently the top gaming video card burned out after 25 hours of running at 100%. It just couldn't keep up.

Currently top graphics card ran for 47 hrs on 100% and gave me the desired results.

It is not the performance you pay for, it is the durability.

Charles, by chance did you ever run any of the SPEC benchmarks on these (www.spec.org/benchmarks.htm)? Would be interesting to see how your tests compare to a generic industry test. They have a SW13 test and results; http://www.spec.org/gwpg/apc.static/sw2013info.html

SPECwpf is a good comprehensive workstation test, but you can look at SPECviewperf which is a graphics direct benchmark.

Also, the OCUS benchmark (proesite.com/OCUSB6/ocusb6.htm) is a good example of a user led real world test. Different program, but still a good indicator of relative card performance.

Finally, what about the built in SW performance test?

Thanks for doing and posting, always good info.