Does an AMD Firepro W8100 work with Solidworks Visualize? If not, is support for Firepro anticipated in the future?
Does an AMD Firepro W8100 work with Solidworks Visualize? If not, is support for Firepro anticipated in the future?
Hi Robert.
SOLIDWORKS Visualize does not support non-NVIDIA graphics cards for rendering acceleration. Visualize will however default to use just the CPU in a machine with an non-NVIDIA graphics card. While it's not mandatory, I highly suggest an NVIDIA GPU (M4000) to insanely boost your render speeds!
No plans to support Firepro, however we will always make sure we have the best rendering technology for our users.
Thanks.
Hello Brian,
Thanks for the quick reply. We have been satisfied with our Firepro for other work and had just upgraded to a W8100 at the end of last year based on the Solidworks compatibility table. Please add this restriction to the Solidworks graphics board compatibility table to avoid additional costs for other users.
Thanks for your help!
Robert
Non support for AMD cards sucks. I run a Dell Precision M6800 with AMD card, rang Dell to double check but it's not possible to swap out for NVidia.
Visualize does not run AT ALL on CPU, just get a black screen where the model should be.
Been looking forward to having a play with Visualize for months!
Rob - this isn't the expected behavior...the renderer should run fine on CPU. Have you double checked to make sure window updates and drivers are up to date?
David. I'll make sure all my drivers are up to date today and report back.
Thanks.
Rob
Right. I've checked both my GFX card drivers (switchable Intel HD 4600 & AMD Firepro M6100) and both up to date.
Windows updated last night so that's also current.
This is what I see however:
And this is the results from the system analysis:
Even though that says Gfx driver is 6 months old, both the windows and Dell driver updates find no newer ones: (that optional one is for Dell backup)
Guess I'm just out of luck.
Rob - don't give up yet. i'm sure this is a solvable problem.
It might be an issue with DirectX (which is what our Preview renderer relies on)
Please search for and install Microsoft DirectX 9c (google it or search the microsoft site).
Also, what happens if you activate Fast mode or Accurate mode?
David - Thanks for the suggestions, neither of those have made any difference unfortunately.
I've also asked my SW Resellers and they've sent me a long list of things to try but too busy today so will have a go next week.
If I have any success I'll report the solution on here.
Cheers.
Any update by chance? I too have an AMD firepro card which means visualize forces me to use the CPU only. I also have just a black screen. Was wondering if you ever found a fix?
Hi Rob,
could you please share your log files with us directly after you had this black screen bug and closed the application? The logs are kept in:
%PROGRAMDATA%\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS Visualize\Log
Please zip up this whole folder and we may have a chance to understand what is happening on your end!
Thanks,
Bastian
Rob - I notice you're in preview mode (basically non-rendered mode). As David said, this seems like it would be a DirectX issue.
What happens if you turn on Fast mode?
Please reconsider! In my company we only have AMD Firepro cards.
You can't expect customers to buy new cards when OpenCL is also an option.
Yes it's not easy to change all the GPUs
But it could be the opposite too, because in some apps, using CUDA with AMD cards will be possible
As said, the advantage of NVIDIA cards today is to be able to run both CUDA and OpenCL... Sorry for AMD user
Hello Robert,
Maybe your Visualize is locked by default to GPU, instead of CPU...
But for the price of your AMD Firepro 8100and after resell it , I would advice you to buy an occasion GTX Titan X (12Gb Vram) or a new GTX980Ti (6Gb Vram). With this, you will have a first class render PC for every CUDA apps... and OpenCL too!
Hello Nicolas,
I am not having any problem with using the CPU with Visualize, unlike the case for Rob. My primary concern is that the Solidworks compatibility documentation was not updated to show the AMD incompatibility with Visualize due to required CUDA functionality. I am now of the opinion that Solidworks is dominantly compatible with Nvidia GPUs and that AMD cards are a waste of money in this regard. Hopefully, this post will help users recognize these limitations and make smarter purchases!
Yes in this case I understand :/
SW must explain this thing in Visualize documentation: CUDA only!
The advantage of nVIDIA cards is the compatibility with CUDA + OPENCL, especially the last Maxwell architecture, which allow us to have good perfomances in each computing language.
Can I recommend an alternative solution. Visualize supports network rendering. There is no reason to have a powerful Quadro on your local computer. You can use the Visualize queue which will fire up a network render. This will transparently render on one or more computers that have a powerful Quadro card as if you have a local card.
In fact I often do a GPU only render on my local Quadro video card so it doesn't bog down my computer and I can continue to work. It doesn't take up core memory and works a treat.
I suspect all our team members could use my Quadro card and I would not be the wiser (unless I am rendering as well)
I intend to test this out soon.
Try using a computer with a Firepro card and you'll see the difference.
Setting things up before even getting to the final render stage is waaaayyyyy slower on a Firepro or other non-CUDA card.
My computer was doing fine with it's builtin graphics card until I got Visualize, so something fishy is going on there for you.
(It is a latest i7 with 32GB of ram)
It might be possible to add a Quadro card on a free slot, even a cheap one. You could also consider using online Cuda based services.
Specs & Features of GRID Cloud Gaming GPUs | NVIDIA
Now that could be pretty cool :-)
How about the power of a $7K+ GPU at $0.7 per hour !!!
Hi Robert.
SOLIDWORKS Visualize does not support non-NVIDIA graphics cards for rendering acceleration. Visualize will however default to use just the CPU in a machine with an non-NVIDIA graphics card. While it's not mandatory, I highly suggest an NVIDIA GPU (M4000) to insanely boost your render speeds!
No plans to support Firepro, however we will always make sure we have the best rendering technology for our users.
Thanks.