can gaming card do CAD or can workstation card game?

I will be taking CAD courses soon in my 2nd year of mechanical engineering. (thus needing a better computer, havent decided between a laptop or desktop yet) but the question with respect of video card has to be answered first. I cannot afford to have 2 computers (or 2 cards for that matter) and I will not give up gaming as is the only thing that keeps me going (I dont like math very much and girls dont exist in engineering, so gaming is all I got) so can gaming card do CAD or can workstation card game? thanks for your inputs

btw: autoCAD 2009 is what I will be using

 

Gaming cards CAN CAD, but they are not built for it. Workstation cards can game aswell, but I'm not sure what the performance differences between the two would be.

 

I know gaming cards can CAD, but how well? I dont want my new 9800m gt to be owned by a low range quadro in CAD. nor if I buy a $800 dollar workstation card that only games as well as a 8400 gs. I just need to know how much of a sacrifice I need to make going from one or the other

 

I'd say to go for a gaming card and do the CAD. The gaming card is more versatile. It is meant for gaming, and can also do CAD okay. It is also very cheap. The workstation card is very expensive, won't do games very well, and can do CAD good. So, its your choice, but if I were you, I would get the regular graphics card. The 9800GT is the 2nd best gaming graphics card money can buy subsequent to the 9800GTX. Get it.

 

My 8800m GTS does CAD very well. also if you get a workstationcard, you can just switch it to the equavilant gaming cards drivers and it will perform just like that card.

 

For what you do in school even integrated graphics will be fine for cad. Now, if they teach you soldworks or something different (ususally the 2nd design course is not cad but something else) then it is a different story because those are demanding programs. CAD has this falasy surrounding it that you MUST have a powerful computer to use it.

When i took cad I used a pentium m 1.2ghz with integrated graphics and it ran fine. What you do is not very demanding.

 

thanks for the reply, If I build a desktop with a q6600 and a 9800gtx+, it should serve my needs right? or maybe the sager np8660 for that matter if I decides to go with a laptop

 

You will be fine. I run AutoDesk Architectural Desktop, LightWave, and Softimage on my lappy (see sig) and a self-built Quadcore desktop with a pair of Radeon HD3870XT's in Crossfire mode (moot for CAD work, tho') and everything is fine. I also have a 'real' CAD workstation that has a lowly P4 2.8GHz processor with a Quadro FX3000 and dual LCDs that is still capable of playing games moderately well.

 

I've done school AutoCAD (v. 2007) assignments on an 3 years old laptop, with an integrated graphics card and it still ran pretty well. No matter what gamer card you buy, it will run fine.

 

Well, a Quadro FX3700 performs roughly equivalent to a, what, 8800GT or GTS? But costs 3-4 times as much. How much of an edge can it possibly give you in CAD

 

I don't know the exact specifics but I'm sure the Quadro series is more expensive than their gaming counterpart for a reason, there's just no other reason why nVidia would make 2 of the same card and slap different labels on each of them.

 

Oh you would be surprised. Just ask Japan; toss an Infinity, Acura or Lexus badging on an economy car and toss in leather seats and you just made an extra $10,000-$20,000 over calling it a Honda/Toyota.

Nvidia can sell a gaming GPU to us for $350 and then take the same card with some "workstation grade drivers" and make $4,000 per graphics card from a company like Boeing.

 

get a hd4850 instead of that 9800gtx+

 

why is that? the hd 4850 performs no better and it cost slightly more. remember the 9800gtx+ can be had for 170 bucks, its no longer the 300 dollar card it once were

 

I just finished my NX6 course and my 7600 worked great. I also run ProE at my co-op and that works just as great. A integrated laptop will work fine it really doesnt matter. Should be worrying about the monitor though. I 15 in to a 24 in widescreen is an amazing jump.

 

just how big are these cad files?

 

I believe most workstation cards can run well as a gaming machine with the appropriate drivers. But again, as everyone else is saying, workstation cards are more expensive, and unless you're into hard core solid and surface modeling it won't make much difference. Most of what you will be doing is probably wireframe and basic surface, espeically as an engineer.

 

Isn't the 4850 like $150 now?

 

having trouble finding one for that price, in canada at least. hd 4850 seems to start at $185. well guess they are pretty much the same in performance. so which ever is cheaper

 

Don't know about CAD but I use Inventor all the time on my MacBook Pro- 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.

Haven't had any problems, everything runs quite fast.

 

How about Pro/Engineer and Catia v5. Can these be run decently with a GeForce 9800GT? Has anyone 1st hand experience with this. I soon will be using Ansys too. I want to be able to run a game like Call of Duty 4 with high-res/graphics.

 

Isn't the biggest diff between consumer and professional GPUs that consumer/gamer GPUs are optimized for DirectX while pro/CAD GPUs are optimized for OpenGL? And aren't more and more CAD/modeling programs coming out with DX modes now? Thus largely negating the benefits of pro class cards? I may be off base, but that was my understanding.

 

Holy Thread Resurrection, Batman!

 

i run
autoCAD 2009/2010
autoCAD architecture 2009/2010
autoCAD civil 3D 2009/2010
Autodesk Revit 2009/2010
Autodesk maya
Catia V5

sometimes together

on my laptop (C2D T7300 2.00ghz and a 256mb 8600M GS)
and desktop (C2Q Q8200 2.33ghz and a 512mb 9600GT)
and they all ran fine

i also ran catia and autocad on a crapy 10yo white box with onboard gph 1gb system ram on xp and it ran ok

and if you are only using AutoCAD 2009 it should be fine with onboard considering its the least demanding of all of these programs

you really should get 64bit os though as the 4gb+ ram will help heaps plus most autodesk programs are optimised for 64bit

plain autoCAD inst a very graphics intensive program but if our going on to the civil 3D autoCAD or maya or revit or even catia you should be fine with 9600GT or higher

cheers
hope i helped
mtarm1

 

oh also if you didnt know you can get all of your autodesk apps from autodesk student communities - http://students7.autodesk.com/?lbon=1

you have to register with an educational email for it to work

after that you can downlaod pretty much every current Autodesk program for free and an 18 month trial key for most products (when it runs out you just renew it and get a new serial) although a very few only have 30-60day trials but most 18months

cheers
mtarm1

 

Not sure how a 9800GT will do in particular, but as for OpenGL performance there are soft mods you can do to GeForce cards to make them perform similar to Quardro Cards (similar to how Quadro Cards can be swiched over to GeForce Drivers).

In reply to the previous posters(from way back when ) who claim that Quadro Cards perform less than their GeForce counterparts in gaming, this in incorrect even without modification. Of all the benchmarks I've done on 770m I outperform or at the very least stay in line with a 9600GT (with identical cpus and mem). I've also discovered that my 770m is much more tolerant of overclocking as I have been able to get a stable overclock well over what other people are getting on the 9600GT(about 2x the best OC i've seen for 9600GT)

 

what i would sugest to you is investing those workstation money into ram and CPU. for 2d applications the is no need for a hardcore GPU.

I have a friend he has e PC with quad 2.4, 8 gigs of ram, 8800gtx, and he works just fine with files bigger than 150 megs in 3ds max, other CAD software.

 

a good explanation of OpenGL card

 

well, one thing i know for sure is that cad cards don't do well in games....

 

beware of the drivers though....