Quadro worth: How/where performance can be seen?

Hello guys,

I've long been very puzzled by as to how Quadro GPUs prove its worth in 3D CAD and modeling. How do I know my investment of Quadro M5000M is bringing me more advantages in terms of work efficiency and accuracy as compared to the relatively consumer-grade GeForce PCs?

Using GPU-Z as a result there we see readings of the clocks and GPU load - is there any other method that's
'substantial' and so we can say 'this Quadro workstation PC is great running AutoCAD and that is why I need a Quadro workstation'?

Another way to look at it, what are the most GPU-demanding tasks in AutoCAD that can prove the worth of a Quadro?

I'm after a straightforward way of knowing 'a Quadro workstation PC is worth the money running AutoCAD' without the need for a smack-down with a GeForce PC.

Ideas guys?

Thank you very much indeed.

 

Autocad is basically a processor hungry application. On the graphics side, it used to be openGL in the past but now it is almost entirely directx based. So Quadro will not likely give you any better performance. The only scenario that might show any improvement could be heavy rendering and raytracing. (even though i feel that also will not be much).

If you really want to to showcase your Quadro, you will need to choose an application that is not directx based.

Or if you just wanna brag about it, you can go to the performance tune up and see all the features "officially" supported by Autodesk. Only quadro/FirePro cards are "officially" certified. But that doesnt mean others dont work.

But please note that this is just my experience, YMMV.

 

Hello PrimeTimeAction,

Very surprising for me indeed to know that AutoCAD is mostly CPU-intensive...

But then again, why Nvidia has seen to promote Quadro advantages with AutoCAD like always?

How about 3dsMAX?
I heard that some renderers are now supporting GPU rendering such as 'Vray RT', and so GPU has become a real deal maker again.
Quadro (OpenGL) outweighs GeForce (DirectX) rendering with Vray RT really?

Thanks guys for your invaluable insights.

Regards

 

The thing is that Autodesk has not done any real updates to Autocad besides superficial GUi changes and rendering engine. This is the reason why most of the Autocad is only single threaded as only few functions support multi threading. So if you have to choose between higher clock speed and more core count, choose clock speed.

Quadro advantage is that these are certified. It means that these cards are actually tested and confirmed to be working. For other cards if something doesnt work, nobody (Autodesk or Nvidia) cannot be held responsible. Also support will be very limited.

Actually Nvidia used to have special drives for Autocad (called "Autocad performance drivers") for Quadro up until Autocad 2011. But from Autocad 2012 they even discontinued that saying that these feature are embedded in normal drives.
To be honest if you ask me, this is just another cash grab technique Nvidia/Autodesk have employed.

I dont have much experiance with presentation side of Autocad so i cannot advice regarding 3dMax but i would guess that Quadro will have an advantage there.

But having said all this, I dont think that having a Qudro card is useless because chances are that if you are using Autocad you will also be using other design/presentation softwares that actually use openGL. And with the industry pushing BIM concept, its even more relevant then before.

 

This it definitely doesn't, wherever we need to use GPU accelerated rendering we go for GeForce Cards, specially for engine like VrayRT and Octane.

 

Hi,
Sager NP9870-S Notebook
- 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6700K Processor ( 8MB Smart Cache, 4.0GHz)
- 17.3" Full HD IPS Matte Display with G-SYNC Technology (1920 x 1080)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPU with 8GB GDDR5 Video Memory [VR Ready]
- IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- Windows® 10 Pro 64-Bit Edition Preinstalled [+$50.00]
- 16GB DDR4 SDRAM at 2400MHz - 1 X 16GB [+$15.00]
- 512GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD - as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C) [+$275.00]
- 1TB 7200rpm SATA2 Hard Drive
- Killer™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1535 M.2 AC Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module

I use it for cad drawings mostly, i use "Siemens NX and Solidworks".
If i buy M3000M or M5000M, will it worth for it?
Are there anyone who experienced it?

 

Performance depends on many things. That video has pretty good comparisons how 980M is sometimes as fast as K5100M, few times wins but also loses a lot. It depends on software used and also what kind of model is handled.

 

THIS!
99% People ignore the toolset that is going to be used. For the majority of the people using non CAD/CAM apps like Maya, 3DS Max, Houdini, Blender, Softimage, Cinema 4D , etc. Quadros are a waste.

Anything else, and you cant do any heavy work without them.

 

I was talking about GTX980 for notebooks, not GTX980M.

I currently use Quadro K5000M for solidworks and siemens nx. I'll give you results when i use them.