Who ever came up with the term "lo and behold"? Yes I spelled lo correctly, I looked it up through the power of the internet. But lo and behold, people are reading this little blog of ours, and it was good.
Yesterday I posted a blog about the specs on my Dell Precision M6400 and I received a few comments - yeah! One was talking about my machine catching fire, while the other brought up a very good point - Why do I need a "CAD" video card? Things that make you go... uhhh, dunno - because that's what they tell me to use...? Now I always knew that there was a difference between workstation class video cards and gaming cards beyond just the price difference, but to me its like saying there is a difference between an Audi A4 and my wife's Passat. Yes, there is a difference - but what exactly? Hey, the Passat is less expensive and gets me where I want to go - so what specifically am I getting with the additional 20K? A performance transmission that I'll never take advantage of?
I honestly see the point of the question. So yesterday I threw that question to the hardware geniuses downstairs to see what they had to say about Graphics cards. Here was the response:
There are several key aspects to a specifying a good system for use with Inventor. The general characteristics in priority order are:
- 64 bit OS
- System RAM
- Hard Disk speed and size
- CPU power
- Graphics HW
The first one is essential; any purchase of a new system to be used with Inventor should be made with a 64 bit OS; e.g. Windows 7 64 bit is the current Microsoft OS version and is highly recommended. Then, the next priority is having a large amount of System RAM to use; e.g. the 12 GB specified is a good number but don’t hesitate to go for more System RAM at the expense of the other following items in the list.
The 80 GB hard drive is on the small side given that hard disks are typically not that expensive these days. I would suggest possibly getting a larger or another disk drive in addition. It is amazing how much disk space can be consumed by not only Inventor but all the other applications and data you might decide to have available. I suggest getting a 300 GB hard disk.
The last two are the places where you might decide to save some money and spend it on the System RAM and Hard Disk instead. Essentially, the CPU is typically not the limiting factor on the same level as the System RAM and Hard Disk. Regarding Graphics HW, the Radeon HD 5850 with 1 GB of video RAM is a very good card. There are essentially two reasons to use a much more expensive “workstation” card:
- You desire to have larger amounts of video RAM available than a “consumer” card might offer so your graphics performance can be enhanced by caching unchanging geometry data on the graphics HW using the video RAM. This is determined by your workflows and size of assembly files you work with.
- You want the ability to update your graphics driver quickly if some problem specific to Inventor arises. The graphics HW vendors will fix and update their “workstation” graphics HW drivers on a much more frequent basis for applications such as Inventor compared to “consumer” or “game” HW where the driving force is game use. That said, Inventor uses standard DirectX functionality similar to that used by games so there is little if any “workstation” specific capabilities in DirectX that Inventor might rely on using.
So there you go. More cannon fodder. I was even a bit surprised by the response and even his suggested order of importance when it comes to hardware. Because I've used crappy video cards in the past and I have seen a difference. What I didn't take into account was the changes in software - OpenGL vs. DirectX. Looks like another blog post there...?
-Rob
Recent Comments