Will AutoCAD benefit from Direct X cards?

Hi,

My office PC has finally kicked the bucket and I get to buy a new PC with the specs I choose!

I am not a professional 3D modeller, I am just starting to do some basic 3D models, like fridges and sinks etc. My renders are mostly the "default" renders SketchUp uses. My usage is mainly AutoCAD(90%), Sketchup(usage is increasing steadily though) and photoshop would be the last 10%.

I read tons of good reviews on the FirePro V4800 but it's not available readily here, and the Quadro's are too expensive, with the cheapest being the Quadro 600 and that's still twice as much as the V4800.

But I've been talking to another guy who does CAD in SolidWorks, he says in recent years, there isn't much to differentiate the 2 tiers unless you go high end because AutoCAD(what i'm using) is using DX in the viewports or whatever? So an OpenGL card won't really shine under my kind of usage.

And the cost, it costs too much to get a workstation card, and when it breaks, it costs alot to replace it. Whereas with a normal consumer card, it's cheap, it works, and if it breaks, i can just hop down to the nearest electronics store and get a replacement.

What do you think? I'm slowly doing more 3D stuff in SketchUp and I've seen some really nice renders using the Kerkythea render plugin(and it's FREE!) so I'm still wondering would a gaming card work?

Hi,

 

My office PC has finally kicked the bucket and I get to buy a new PC with the specs I choose!

 

I am not a professional 3D modeller, I am just starting to do some basic 3D models, like fridges and sinks etc. My renders are mostly the "default" renders SketchUp uses. My usage is mainly AutoCAD(90%), Sketchup(usage is increasing steadily though) and photoshop would be the last 10%.

 

I read tons of good reviews on the FirePro V4800 but it's not available readily here, and the Quadro's are too expensive, with the cheapest being the Quadro 600 and that's still twice as much as the V4800.

 

But I've been talking to another guy who does CAD in SolidWorks, he says in recent years, there isn't much to differentiate the 2 tiers unless you go high end because AutoCAD(what i'm using) is using DX in the viewports or whatever? So an OpenGL card won't really shine under my kind of usage.

 

And the cost, it costs too much to get a workstation card, and when it breaks, it costs alot to replace it. Whereas with a normal consumer card, it's cheap, it works, and if it breaks, i can just hop down to the nearest electronics store and get a replacement.

 

What do you think? I'm slowly doing more 3D stuff in SketchUp and I've seen some really nice renders using the Kerkythea render plugin(and it's FREE!) so I'm still wondering would a gaming card work?

Absolutely. Gaming cards work just fine. You will have no issues whatsoever. There are even gaming cards that are certified by autodesk so be sure to check the approved list of cards on their support website.

I have been working with a consumer level ATi HD4850 (not certified by autodesk) for the last three to four years and have never encountered any problems. Yes, it has more power consumption for less CAD performance, but the price more than compensates for that. Any other application than CAD the consumer cards outrun the CAD specific cards by miles.

To be honest I find the processor / cpu to be far more important. During the drafting itself AutoCAD uses only a single thread, which means having a quadcore with 8 threads (high end intel i7's) is of almost no use; AutoCAD will use no more than 16% of all that processing power. For that reason I'd select a quadcore without multithreading like the i7's or, if the budget is limited, even a proper dualcore like the i5's.

Rendering has little to do with your graphics card. It is driven by the CPU.

SU does not use DX. It uses openGL.

Rendering in kerky is handled by the CPU not gpu.