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What's the most recent opinion about nVidia vs ATI

Question asked by Mel Ivey on Jun 24, 2010
Latest reply on Jun 25, 2010 by Russell Falkena

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I am in the market for an entirely new entry-level-or-better computer to run SW 2010 on Win 7 64bit. I have built my own in the past, and can easily do so again if it's called for.

The work I have to do is occasional and modest, rather than every day with complex drawings.

What are the most recent recommendations about the graphics card? It seems as though nVidia and STI each has its advocates. The forums contain concerns about compatibility issues with the nVidia cards and SW 2008. Are those concerns now alleviated? Did nVidia fix things, or did the transition to SW 2010 do the job?

If someone has recommendations for specs and/or mfr/model re the motherboard, cpu, graphics card, memory and even display, I would enjoy and appreciate the input.

Grazi.

Jeff Mowry Jun 24, 2010 3:49 PM

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Mel, I think if you search this forum, you'll find some posts relating to this problem with the nVidia cards. Until two years ago when I built my first system, I'd always had nVidia cards in my older machines. My home-built system has an ATI FireGL V5600 (over two years old) and it works great with extremely complex geometry and assemblies up to nearly 1,000 parts (don't have any larger assemblies to test higher numbers with).

I'm running Windows 7 (x64) and the drivers seem to work just fine for v2009 and v2010. The splash screen for v2009 (when opening SW) sometimes blacks out or contains lots of noise, but the viewport while actually working on things has always been fine. (v2009 isn't "supported" for Windows 7.)

Check some online locations with tests/benchmarks for more technical detail--places like cadalyst.com and tomshardware.com often test and publish reviews of various new stuff as it is released.

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Jeff Mowry Jun 24, 2010 3:49 PM

Check some online locations with tests/benchmarks for more technical detail--places like cadalyst.com and tomshardware.com often test and publish reviews of various new stuff as it is released.

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Mel Ivey @ Jeff Mowry on Jun 24, 2010 4:14 PM

Thank you, Jeff.

I have spent quite a bit of time poring over the discussions, but it seems as though most of the negative comments about nVidia had to do with SW2008 or with experience that dated to that time. But I haven't seen any negatives about SW2010 with nVidia offerings, and SW2010 does appear to be "certified" for a number of nVidia products. Is the "certification" at all reliable? Does a product ever get de-certified or negatively noted if found to fail in some significant area, even if it had passed all the original tests?

I guess I have a lean toward nVidia because of the CUDA benefit re FAH during non-work hours. But if nVidia still deserves an unfavorable reputation, I would rather play it safe with an ATI card, say the FirePro V4800.

Any opinion about ddr2/3, core i7, motherboard, mushkins vs g.skill memory, et al?

Thx again.

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Jeff Mowry @ Mel Ivey on Jun 24, 2010 4:23 PM

Mel, from what I remember, all the issues faced with the nVidia stuff a couple of years ago were with certified cards AND drivers. So though they were certified, people were still getting lots of odd bugs in functionality. This is how nVidia got such a black eye. Not sure whether the fault lay with SolidWorks, nVidia, Windows or whatever, but the facts at the time were that the ATI cards lacked these issues.

As for the other components, there are two discussions on computer hardware right now that have lots of info. Here's one of them:

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/34557?tstart=0

Anna's posted quite a lot of info from benchmarks she's run in the recent past. Maybe check out her blog and recent posts?

http://www.solidmuse.com/

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Charles Culp @ Mel Ivey on Jun 24, 2010 4:27 PM

Mel,

My nVidia Quadro FX3450 has had serious driver problems. Those are all fixed now. Some people (a handful) have had issues with their FX1800. Generally, there are hundreds of people on this forum that are happy with their FX570 FX580 FX1700 and FX1800, and probably thousands out there that don't use the forums. They are the baseline of quality.

Recently (sometime in May), ATI released their new range of cards. The ATI FirePro V3800, V4800 through the V8800 cards. They are comparable with the FX.... cards (also ending in 80 and 800...). The new ATI's, however, are priced very significantly cheaper. The V4800 should be comparable or faster than an FX1800, yet is 25% cheaper. The V3800 is only $120, and is probably good enough for most SolidWorks users. I have not heard a report yet from anyone using either the V3800 or the V4800 (they are too new), but one user with the V8800 says it works great. So my preference for suggesting these new ATI cards comes down to price. I have also never heard any real gripes with the ATI cards in the past couple years, although they currently have a much smaller market share. With their new pricing, I have a feeling that will change!

Definitely get a 32-nm Core i7 for a good SolidWorks machine, and whichever memory is made for that motherboard/processor (which will answer your DDR3 question).

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Alain Ouellet Jun 24, 2010 3:55 PM

I have the NVidia Quattro FX1800 and quite pleased with it.

So far no problems at all in all my applications.

Window 7 64 bits Professional edition

Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 motherboard

AMD Phenom 965-X4 3.4G black edition CPU

Raid 10 with 4 Western Digital WD1001FALS Black 7,200 rpm

4 x 2 gigs Kingston DDR3 20000MHz

Quite a fast system.

Alain

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Russell Falkena Jun 24, 2010 6:46 PM

I'm running an I7 cpu on Win7 64x with a nVidai FX3700. It has 500 meg of ram on the card. I would have went for the FX3800 with 1 gig., but it was HDMI outputs only and I did not want replace you monitors. I paid about $730.00 for the card with 90 day return privileges, you could get it cheaper. I only run SW approved drivers.

I did call ATI and they told me that their high end workstation cards only supported OpenGL and I could forget about my second passion, On Line Gaming witch is all DirectX apps. The FX3700 is freaking awesome for work and play. My video setting for COD6, Battlefield Bad Company 2 are set to the max and the machine rocks. Something I couldn't do with ATI's work cards.

The 64 bit is not a better than 32bit mainly because SW is not a true 64 bit app. I have run both on my rig. I have try to load down the CPU and most I can bog it down to is 38% load. SW run at 4% to 13% max load.

The Build

Asus, Rampage 2 Gene Motherboard

6 gig ram

Intel i7-920 Quad-core

nVidai FX3700

2 - 1 tarabit drives.

The Rampage 2 MB is the most flexable ,tweekable, overclocking, board you can find. if your into that kinda stuff . like I said , cant get it to load over 38%

Just my 2 cents, Russ

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Anna Wood @ Russell Falkena on Jun 25, 2010 1:18 AM

Russell

The FX3800 does not have HDMI outputs. Those are DisplayPort connectors. You can get DisplayPort to DVI converters, just like the old DVI to VGA connectors on older monitors/boards. No need to buy new monitors.

Cheers,

Anna

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Russell Falkena @ Anna Wood on Jun 25, 2010 7:16 AM

Anna,

I was thing the same thing went my IP guy told me about the ports. HD something came to my head I made the post, But your right. I plan on building another machine soon and I will go for the the 1 gig card. The FX3700 has 2 DVI port. thanks again.

Russ, out

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8 Replies

Jeff Mowry Jun 24, 2010 3:49 PM
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Correct Answer
Mel, I think if you search this forum, you'll find some posts relating to this problem with the nVidia cards. Until two years ago when I built my first system, I'd always had nVidia cards in my older machines. My home-built system has an ATI FireGL V5600 (over two years old) and it works great with extremely complex geometry and assemblies up to nearly 1,000 parts (don't have any larger assemblies to test higher numbers with).

I'm running Windows 7 (x64) and the drivers seem to work just fine for v2009 and v2010. The splash screen for v2009 (when opening SW) sometimes blacks out or contains lots of noise, but the viewport while actually working on things has always been fine. (v2009 isn't "supported" for Windows 7.)

Check some online locations with tests/benchmarks for more technical detail--places like cadalyst.com and tomshardware.com often test and publish reviews of various new stuff as it is released.
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- Mel Ivey @ Jeff Mowry on Jun 24, 2010 4:14 PM
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  Correct Answer
  Thank you, Jeff.
  
  I have spent quite a bit of time poring over the discussions, but it seems as though most of the negative comments about nVidia had to do with SW2008 or with experience that dated to that time. But I haven't seen any negatives about SW2010 with nVidia offerings, and SW2010 does appear to be "certified" for a number of nVidia products. Is the "certification" at all reliable? Does a product ever get de-certified or negatively noted if found to fail in some significant area, even if it had passed all the original tests?
  
  I guess I have a lean toward nVidia because of the CUDA benefit re FAH during non-work hours. But if nVidia still deserves an unfavorable reputation, I would rather play it safe with an ATI card, say the FirePro V4800.
  
  Any opinion about ddr2/3, core i7, motherboard, mushkins vs g.skill memory, et al?
  
  Thx again.
  Like • Show 0 Likes0
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  - Jeff Mowry @ Mel Ivey on Jun 24, 2010 4:23 PM
    Mark Correct
    Correct Answer
    Mel, from what I remember, all the issues faced with the nVidia stuff a couple of years ago were with certified cards AND drivers. So though they were certified, people were still getting lots of odd bugs in functionality. This is how nVidia got such a black eye. Not sure whether the fault lay with SolidWorks, nVidia, Windows or whatever, but the facts at the time were that the ATI cards lacked these issues.
    
    As for the other components, there are two discussions on computer hardware right now that have lots of info. Here's one of them:
    https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/34557?tstart=0
    
    Anna's posted quite a lot of info from benchmarks she's run in the recent past. Maybe check out her blog and recent posts?
    http://www.solidmuse.com/
    Like • Show 0 Likes0
    Actions
  - Charles Culp @ Mel Ivey on Jun 24, 2010 4:27 PM
    Mark Correct
    Correct Answer
    Mel,
    
    My nVidia Quadro FX3450 has had serious driver problems. Those are all fixed now. Some people (a handful) have had issues with their FX1800. Generally, there are hundreds of people on this forum that are happy with their FX570 FX580 FX1700 and FX1800, and probably thousands out there that don't use the forums. They are the baseline of quality.
    
    Recently (sometime in May), ATI released their new range of cards. The ATI FirePro V3800, V4800 through the V8800 cards. They are comparable with the FX.... cards (also ending in 80 and 800...). The new ATI's, however, are priced very significantly cheaper. The V4800 should be comparable or faster than an FX1800, yet is 25% cheaper. The V3800 is only $120, and is probably good enough for most SolidWorks users. I have not heard a report yet from anyone using either the V3800 or the V4800 (they are too new), but one user with the V8800 says it works great. So my preference for suggesting these new ATI cards comes down to price. I have also never heard any real gripes with the ATI cards in the past couple years, although they currently have a much smaller market share. With their new pricing, I have a feeling that will change!
    
    Definitely get a 32-nm Core i7 for a good SolidWorks machine, and whichever memory is made for that motherboard/processor (which will answer your DDR3 question).
    Like • Show 0 Likes0
    Actions
Alain Ouellet Jun 24, 2010 3:55 PM
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I have the NVidia Quattro FX1800 and quite pleased with it.

So far no problems at all in all my applications.

Window 7 64 bits Professional edition
Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 motherboard
AMD Phenom 965-X4 3.4G black edition CPU
Raid 10 with 4 Western Digital WD1001FALS Black 7,200 rpm
4 x 2 gigs Kingston DDR3 20000MHz

Quite a fast system.

Alain
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Russell Falkena Jun 24, 2010 6:46 PM
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I'm running an I7 cpu on Win7 64x with a nVidai FX3700. It has 500 meg of ram on the card. I would have went for the FX3800 with 1 gig., but it was HDMI outputs only and I did not want replace you monitors.   I paid about $730.00 for the card with 90 day return privileges, you could get it cheaper.   I only run SW approved drivers.

I did call ATI and they told me that their high end workstation cards only supported OpenGL and I could forget about my second passion, On Line Gaming witch is all DirectX apps.   The FX3700 is freaking awesome for work and play. My video setting for COD6, Battlefield Bad Company 2 are set to the max and the machine rocks. Something I couldn't do with ATI's work cards.

The 64 bit is not a better than 32bit mainly because SW is not a true 64 bit app.   I have run both on my rig. I have try to load down the CPU and most I can bog it down to is 38% load. SW run at 4% to 13% max load.

The Build

Asus, Rampage 2 Gene Motherboard
6 gig ram
Intel i7-920 Quad-core
nVidai FX3700
2 - 1 tarabit drives.

The Rampage 2 MB is the most flexable ,tweekable, overclocking, board you can find. if your into that kinda stuff . like I said , cant get it to load over 38%

Just my 2 cents, Russ
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- Anna Wood @ Russell Falkena on Jun 25, 2010 1:18 AM
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  Russell
  
  The FX3800 does not have HDMI outputs. Those are DisplayPort connectors. You can get DisplayPort to DVI converters, just like the old DVI to VGA connectors on older monitors/boards. No need to buy new monitors.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Anna
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  - Russell Falkena @ Anna Wood on Jun 25, 2010 7:16 AM
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    Anna,
    
    I was thing the same thing went my IP guy told me about the ports. HD something came to my head I made the post, But your right. I plan on building another machine soon and I will go for the the 1 gig card. The FX3700 has 2 DVI port. thanks again.
    
    Russ, out
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What's the most recent opinion about nVidia vs ATI

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