Video cards

[James Doolittle]

I've been told to look for a video card for our Offline PC-DMIS CAD seat. We're sitting at V3.7MR2 and decided not to renew the software license (as of 12/31/05), so 4.0 is likely not in our future.

Looking for a dual-head, most our solid models (STEP, IGES) aren't all that big (50MB and less). Trying to stay under $400. The computer its getting put on is a Dell P4 1.8Ghz and I have an AGP and surplus PCI slots to work with (no PCI-Express).

I've heard complaints about the ATI line of video cards, but none recently, are they ok now? Right now I'm looking at this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102315

What do you guys think? Any other recommendations?

Thanks,
Jim

[rebeldude]

I think you should at least get 256 Mb know matter what brand of card you get. Better to have too much memory than not enough

[\v/inston]

if you are not going to be using pc-dmis v4.0 then you should do fine with a lower end Geforce card, a 6600 with 256mb of ddr on it should be fine. you needn't spend more than a hundy, go here.

https://www.pricewatch.com

[Joe Zastrow]

I would suggest an Nvidia quadro FX 540 I use the 540 and it works great with PC Dmis, Pro E and Solid works. The Quadro cards are designed for open gl and PC demon also uses open gl. along with the majority of cad applications. Most of the video cards out there are designed for games that don’t use open gl so those cards might have awesome reviews from gamers but the card will have issues with PC Dmis.

[Underspec]

Unless you plan to play 3d games on your CMM computer any 256MB memory video card should be fine.

[johnboy]

Over time there have been numerous reports of conflicts with ATI cards and PC-DMIS. I don't see how that could suddenly not be a problem now.
I've been told the reason ATI cards don't work well with PC-DMIS is that they are designed for video games, which uses a different method/format/technique. One uses DirectX and the other uses (?), I can't remember.

[Stuart]

ATI's are slow, clunky and don't refresh the screen very well with PC-DMIS. For some reason, ATI's drivers for OpenGL are severely insufficient. Talking to Wilcox, it seems like they do most of their testing with the NVidia Quadro line of cards. A couple of our customer's have bought 3DLabs cards and have nothing but praise for them. Our personal experiences indicate that NVidia GeForce cards work well with their newest software drivers.

Stu