Poor 3D performance with Quadro 2000

[Jimbo_Jet]

Hi, thought I'd try here for help as Nvidia appear to be useless at helping me.

 

I have a new Quadro 2000 which in 3D Autocad performs no better than the Geforce 9600 GT it replaces, but in 3dsMAX the viewport frame rate has rocketed as it should.

 

As far as I can tell Nvidia do not make an AutoCAD performance driver for this card, which is plain ridiculous!

 

To test this I had a CPU and GPU monitor running while using 3DOrbit in various view modes on AutoCAD and 3dsMAX with a very large file open in each. In AutoCAD one core of my quad core processor runs at 100% (25% of total) and the GPU around 0-5% while rotating the model and the display frames per second is less than 5 or just unusable. This is no better that the 4 year old 9600 GT it replaced. AutoCAD is still a single core application in the main so this tells me that the GPU is just not being utilised correctly and a single core of the CPU is doing all the work.

 

In 3dsMAX a similar file now uses 70-100% CPU but 100% GPU load while rotating and I'm getting 85+ FPS which is ideal.

 

Has anyone had this problem?

 

I've tried dozens of different drivers, re-installs and clean installs but nothing has worked for AutoCAD. An no one on the nVidia forums has a solution but I'm far from the only one with this problem with the new range of Quadro cards.

 

Thanks!

[dedmin]

It's not a problem, but AutoCAD' s design flaw - new gadgets, old slow and made for 2d core!

[nestly]

Nvidia has claimed that Autodesk has removed support for a "performance driver" in AutoCAD2012, therefore they haven't developed them. Silly question, but I'll ask anyway..... Hardware Acceleration enabled?

[rkent]

Have you gone through the nvidia control panel, picked AutoCAD and then tried different settings?

[SLW210]

Have you tried the latest driver from Autodesk? Drivers

[SLW210]

I merged your 2 threads and moved to Hardware & Operating Systems forum.

[BlackBox]

For those who look to this thread prior to purchasing, I spec'ed out our new computers, and they're working great:

 

Dell Precision M6600, Windows 7 64-Bit, Intel [Quad-]Core i7, 16 GB Ram, 2 GB Nvidia Quadro 3000M

 

... Using Land Desktop 2009, Civil 3D 2011, Map 3D 2011, Civil 3D 2012, AutoCAD MEP 2012, etc.

[Jimbo_Jet]

Nvidia has claimed that Autodesk has removed support for a "performance driver" in AutoCAD2012, therefore they haven't developed them. Silly question, but I'll ask anyway..... Hardware Acceleration enabled?

 

Thanks everyone for the quick replies!

 

Yes I understand since 2012 something like that has happened. Crazy thing is when you go to the nvidia driver page and look for the autocad performance driver for the Quadro 2000 there isn't one. But there is for the Quadro 4000 albeit for AutoCAD 2011. Have tried installing that instead but it won't let me. If I could get it to install I would change my 2013 licence to 2011 do I could use it. Also, ype hardware acceleration is on but thanks for asking.

[Jimbo_Jet]

Have you gone through the nvidia control panel, picked AutoCAD and then tried different settings?

 

Yep tried that as well but no joy. But there is no setting for AutoCAD, just Autodesk Mudbox or Motion Builder?

[Jimbo_Jet]

Have you tried the latest driver from Autodesk? Drivers

 

Yep, several times including driver removal tools and fresh installs.

[Jimbo_Jet]

For those who look to this thread prior to purchasing, I spec'ed out our new computers, and they're working great:

 

Dell Precision M6600, Windows 7 64-Bit, Intel [Quad-]Core i7, 16 GB Ram, 2 GB Nvidia Quadro 3000M

 

... Using Land Desktop 2009, Civil 3D 2011, Map 3D 2011, Civil 3D 2012, AutoCAD MEP 2012, etc.

 

Can you verify with a GPU monitor that the Quadro card is being used in 3D cad and it's not just down to the CPU?

[Jimbo_Jet]

I've just had a direct response from an nVidia representative after asking them a direct question on the matter. Here is there response:

 

Hello,

 

Thank you for your submission. I wish I have good news to offer but Autodesk has decided to stop supporting external drivers starting with AutoCAD 2012. That is the main reason NVIDIA no longer offer performance drivers after AutoCAD 2011. This is not limited to NVIDIA GPUs and as far as I know this is true for AMD FirePro GPUs as well. Unfortunately there is nothing within the core of AutoCAD 2012 that will be able to take advantage of the Quadro GPU more than any other GPU without the performance drivers. The performance advantage that the Quadro GPU provided with previous versions of AutoCAD using the NVIDIA performance drivers is entirely gone.

 

Having said that we are working with Autodesk to better take advantage of the Quadro GPU in future release of AutoCAD, but I don't have any ETA on when this will be available. This is entirely up to Autodesk. This is a common question/concern, but unfortunately our hands are tied in this matter. We're doing all we can to assist Autodesk to take advantage of the Quadro GPU. We've published an article to our support knowledge base on this matter here: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3106/kw/Performance%20Drivers%20for%20AutoCAD%202012. I will make a post to the forum so others are aware of this limitation. Let me know if you have any further questions.

 

 

Best regards,

Ray

 

Very disappointing but I've asked in 2011 acceleration can be used instead. Here's my other thread over on the nVidia support forum:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=196708&st=0&gopid=1423416entry1423416

[Jimbo_Jet]

So I sent this reply back to nvidia:

 

'Thank you for the answer RayW. This does explain a lot but I'm sure many people, including myself, will be disappointing when we bought a Quadro card specifically to accelerate AutoCAD. Accelerating 3dsMAX is just a nice bonus for me, but admittedly iray acceleration may well come in to it's own for me in the near future.

 

So as it stands can I use my Quadro 2000 to accelerate AutoCAD 2011 in some way as I could get a licence for 2011 instead? I notice on the nvidia drivers download that there are no AutoCAD performance drivers for Quadro 2000's but the 2011 AutoCAD performance driver does show for Quadro 4000 or above? I have tried downloading that instead but it will not let me install it

saying 'No application found for which a performance driver can be installed or updated.' Yet I have AutoCAD 2009, 2012 and 2013 on my system with active licences for each?

 

I'm ending my 2012 license soon and going to 2013 only but have the option to upgrade my standalone 2009 licence to 2011 instead of cancelling it in July - which I would do if I could use 2011 GPU CAD acceleration?

 

Thanks.'

 

And then I got this reply:

 

'That's a very good question and according to one of the engineers it should work. The NVIDIA performance “drivers” just make a check for a Quadro GPU to be in the system. The installer for the performance driver is the same for all everyone. It sniffs your system and installs performance drivers for every copy of Acad or 3ds Max it finds for the versions the installer includes - which I believe are versions 2011, 2010, 2009.

 

If you have AutoCAD 2009 installed then I don't understand why the performance driver is not detecting it. That error you get during install suggest it can't detect AutoCAD 2009, 2010, or 2011 installed. What may be causing this error is if you had already ran the installer before. We never fixed the installer’s less-than-ideal feedback text. It will never say “It’s already installed” but will give you the error you posted if it's already installed. You can verify by checking if there's an NVIDIA HDI driver (I forgot it’s exact name) listed in the AutoCAD 2009 interface under Config/System. If the driver is listed then the performance driver did install, otherwise it did not install and we'll have to determine why.'