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Welch
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Which Pro Card?

Fri Mar 06, 2015 9:40 pm

I'm back to building a workstation for some medium grade AutoCAD and a few other production tasks that aren't GPU dependant. I don't build machines with Pro cards to keep up on where they all stand in comparison to one another and how to find the best bang for the buck.

This particular case the person bought themselves a very very nice monitor already.

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/moni ... D97KQSR/ZA

Being 4k and for AutoCAD I think its fairly safe to say that 4GB cards are a starting point. Anyone care to share their recommendations between the current AMD FirePro and Nvidia Quadro cards? The customer may not be too keen on spending over $800 on a card however, but im open to options.
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whm1974
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:01 pm

The customer may not be too keen on spending over $800 on a card however, but im open to options.


Yet he brought a 32" UHD Professional grade display. That couldn't have been anywhere near cheap....
 
Welch
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:53 pm

He thought he did well getting it for $1099, which im sure if it was needed then sure... but those displays are meant to be for high end graphics works like texture work, photo editing and anything needing accurate color reproduction, which they don't need thus far.

They will be dealing with 2D autocad for the most part and one of his kids (almost 30) is going through a masters program and may be using it for some more advanced 3D autocad in the future. Otherwise id just throw in a higher end consumer card. However he would like it to be capable just in case.

Looks like either the W7000 or K4000 are in the right price range and ability. Keep forgetting both manufacturers arent as aggressive with Pro card releases as they are with consumer (stability and all of that). Odd seeing reviews from 2013 for a new system build.
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whm1974
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Fri Mar 06, 2015 11:41 pm

He thought he did well getting it for $1099, which im sure if it was needed then sure... but those displays are meant to be for high end graphics works like texture work, photo editing and anything needing accurate color reproduction, which they don't need thus far.


He did do well for that type of monitor. Granted it's overkill... I myself have a 30" Dell 3014 Ultrasharp
and after using 2560x1600 for two years there is no way I'm going back to anything lower. And it was on sale at the time too.

They will be dealing with 2D autocad for the most part and one of his kids (almost 30) is going through a masters program and may be using it for some more advanced 3D autocad in the future. Otherwise id just throw in a higher end consumer card. However he would like it to be capable just in case.


For student use a high end consumer GPU may be just fine, but I don't know about a master program however.

One question, does the display do 4K@60Hz?
 
Welch
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sat Mar 07, 2015 12:01 am

Looks like the Samsung site doesn't say but Guru3d article about the display says the full 4K res is at 60hz.

Consumer cards as much as they would be almosy identical for the 2D stuff they are doing... they still could benefit from the graphics having ECC and the added attention to the drivers that the Pro cards get. Again if they are doing some 3D stuff in the future then it is another reason to have a pro card.
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whm1974
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sat Mar 07, 2015 12:16 am

Consumer cards as much as they would be almosy identical for the 2D stuff they are doing... they still could benefit from the graphics having ECC and the added attention to the drivers that the Pro cards get. Again if they are doing some 3D stuff in the future then it is another reason to have a pro card.


So how much will this system cost total? And what are the specs?
 
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sat Mar 07, 2015 8:52 pm

Autodesk runs fine on consumer hardware. There are DirectX modes and decent generic OpenGL support. If you go Nvidia you even get CUDA support in Autodesk and Adobe, to name a couple.

K6000 vs Radeon HD7850 vs 750Ti is pretty indistinguishable in terms of viewport performance; What you're missing are some driver exclusive features, the only one of which Autodesk ever seems to use being wireframe antialiasing. TBH, if you're modelling in wireframe you need to give up; the last decade of CAD has been solid modelling, NURBs and realtime shaded viewport rendering. Wireframe modelling is so 1995...

Youtube Quadro vs Geforce and you'll see plenty of examples of performance between the two. It's true that the viewports can be slightly smoother on a $6000 Quadro than they are on a $300 GTX780 but the difference in performance is a few percent, and comes nowhere close to the 10-20x increase in price. That money goes on supposed "support" but it's Autodesk, the support is pointless because Autodesk make sure that their software runs well on AMD, Nvidia and Intel drivers alike.

We use Quadros for Solidworks. For everything else they're a pointless waste of money - we could buy a 2P Xeon with 16C/32T and 128GB of RAM for the same money as a K6000. To spend that sort of money without very good justification for it is borderline retarded.

The only exceptions to the rule for Geforce vs Quadro is when you run out of memory, or when you start to run into insane numbers of polygons. The first step is to go for a 6GB Titan or 290X 8GB. You can buy several of those before you reach the cost of a single 12GB Quadro and they both have less-crippled computational abilities compared to their cheaper consumer siblings. Secondly is to look at your workflow. Just because you *can* mesh something in such a way that it's 120 million polygons doesn't mean that it's a good idea. Try modelling smarter, not just throwing more compute power at your own dumb decisions. I can load entire masterplans for skyscrapers and international airports, bringing in xrefs for pre-fabs, and the Geforces/Radeons still cope fine.

Perhaps more embarassing is that plenty of CAD software is still single-threaded. Seeing one 100% thread and eleven idle threads when only AutoCAD is running makes me a SAD PANDA :(

Forgot to mention, even though it's THG, this is kinda useful in showing how pointless a Quadro/FirePro is for Autodesk software
Last edited by Chrispy_ on Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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whm1974
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:09 pm

Perhaps more embarassing is that plenty of CAD software is still single-threaded. Seeing one 100% thread and eleven idle threads when only AutoCAD is running makes me a SAD PANDA :(


This is downright silly. Multi-core CPUs have been around long enough for CAD software to be multi-threaded.
 
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:37 pm

Chrispy is right -- no reason to throw workstation graphics at this when a $100-ish consumer card will serve just fine. Autodesk software makes embarrassingly poor use of 3D acceleration, to the point that one of the first troubleshooting steps is to turn of hardware acceleration entirely (and leave it there, because it rarely makes much of a difference!)

If he's doing SketchUp as well, or if there are other 3D graphics packages in use, I might throw more horsepower at, but otherwise a GTX 750 or so would be more than sufficient.
 
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:02 pm

Maya, Catia, Solidworks.
Those are the applications I know of that benefit from Quadro/FirePro

AutoCAD, 3DSMax, Revit, Inventor, Rhino, Sketchup, Microstation - I would actively AVOID workstation GPUs and aim for a consumer card that has been around long enough for the Application vendor to have worked out the kinks. We have issues with Maxwell (the GPUs, not the rendering software!) for whatever reason, but the older Kepler cards seem fine. GCN Radeons all seem rock solid, probably because it's architecture that has been largely unchanged for almost four years now.

I think the driving force is laptops. More and more people are using laptops to do work both at home and out in the field. Most laptops have a paltry, consumer-focused GPU at best, more likely only an Intel IGP. These huge software companies aren't going to ignore an increasing majority of potential customers by making software that requires a crazy-expensive workstation card; They want to sell as many copies as they can and the way to do that is to make a product that works even on Intel Integrated graphics.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:20 am

Chrispy_ wrote:
Maya, Catia, Solidworks - Those are the applications I know of that benefit from Quadro/FirePro.
AutoCAD, 3DSMax, Revit, Inventor, Rhino, Sketchup, Microstation - I would actively AVOID workstation GPUs and aim for a consumer card.
By those criteria, an inexpensive Bonaire GPU in a Radeon R7-260X 2GB might suffice. Have you tried any cards this cheap with your real-world applications?
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:50 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Chrispy_ wrote:
Maya, Catia, Solidworks - Those are the applications I know of that benefit from Quadro/FirePro.
AutoCAD, 3DSMax, Revit, Inventor, Rhino, Sketchup, Microstation - I would actively AVOID workstation GPUs and aim for a consumer card.
By those criteria, an inexpensive Bonaire GPU in a Radeon R7-260X 2GB might suffice. Have you tried any cards this cheap with your real-world applications?

Nope. We have a Unity coder working on Oculus Rift projecs and he needs many displays (5, or seven if he's connecting to the HDTV's as well), so we bought him a Bonaire R7 260X for extra outputs, but he only uses it for the Rift. In saying that, our oldest active GPUs are HD7850 cards and they're barely faster than Bonaire, although they all have at least 2GB of VRAM.

The most important thing to do is to choose Nvidia or AMD.

AMD cards typically have more VRAM and superior DirectX, OpenCL and DirectCompute performance than the equivalent Geforce.
Geforces typically compensate by offering CUDA and If you're running a CUDA app, you don't want an AMD card no matter how fancy it is.

If you're talking strictly AutoCAD, get a cheap Kepler Geforce. Anything from a GTX650 all the way up to a 6GB Titan would be my recommendation, but probably the most sensible value options would be one of those low-end Kepler cards with stupid quantities of VRAM - like a GTX 650 that has 4GB. It could never run games smoothly in a scenario where 4GB would be needed, but you could certainly fill it with 4GB of CAD model!

The reason to choose AMD would be for Eyefinity and VRAM sizes. 8GB 290X cards are cheaper than 6GB Titans and (CUDA apps excepted) offer better compute power too.
Last edited by Chrispy_ on Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Welch
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:55 am

Total cost of the machine was coming out to right around $1850 that includes my build fee and 2 year warranty. For there uses doing a Xeon or Haswell-E made no sense, the benefits of ECC on the system just didn't matter and wasn't worth it.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card: ---
Case: Corsair 550D ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair Professional 750W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro (OEM) (64-bit)

Thanks for the very informative heads up Chrispy, that was exactly the type of information I was looking for, I may change up the video card recommendation to a 290x or the like as it would be cheaper than either the Quadro or FirePro cards.
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:03 am

I edited the post above, but Autodesk and Bentley software is giving us some grief on Maxwell cards at the moment, hence the Kepler recommendation.

Snigle biggest performance bottleneck for real-world AutoCAD usage is RAM, based on the sort of modelling we do. Slap 32GB in there if the budget allows - then you've maxed out the board and don't have to worry about it for a while!

As always, YMMV - the way an architect or engineer uses CAD is probably completely different to how a game developer or someone in the movie industry would. I can only relay my experience with the former groups :)
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Welch
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:44 am

Yeah, the last time I built a system for someone using CAD + Sketchup and other professional programs was a few generations ago (Sandybridge E). Which had 32gb of ECC RAM and a Quadro Graphics, with 2 x IPS monitors when those were pricey and the customer came in right around $3500. Also included was an SSD which at the time were ULTRA pricey. Man, that machine still rips to this day though :)
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whm1974
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:36 am

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Snigle biggest performance bottleneck for real-world AutoCAD usage is RAM, based on the sort of modelling we do. Slap 32GB in there if the budget allows - then you've maxed out the board and don't have to worry about it for a while!


Isn't 16 GB of memory and a 512 GB SSD kind of on the small side for CAD?
 
Welch
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 5:55 pm

whm1974 wrote:
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Snigle biggest performance bottleneck for real-world AutoCAD usage is RAM, based on the sort of modelling we do. Slap 32GB in there if the budget allows - then you've maxed out the board and don't have to worry about it for a while!


Isn't 16 GB of memory and a 512 GB SSD kind of on the small side for CAD?


Sure I could slap 32gb of RAM in it and still keep it well within budget by removing the Pro series card. I mentioned adding an additional 16gb to the customer but he was the one thinking he wanted 16gb and he isn't 100% incorrect in that assumption with the type of work they do. Even with the daughter doing her school work on it, its a far cry from the Hollywood movie 3D animation type stuff that would truly benefit from that much RAM. Plus there is the possibility that if he likes this setup better than going the Dell route that he may want to purchase another, one specific for his daughter to do school work, in which case the Pro card + more ram could be brought up and if her projects are serious enough the option for an E series with ECC is a possibility.
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whm1974
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:05 pm

What about disk space? I'm thinking that CAD dataset and saved files are huge.
 
Welch
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:24 pm

Again, I think some are assuming they are doing some very large CAD drawings and they really aren't. I looked at their current system (a Dell Precision) which has 2 x 500gb HDDs in it right now in RAID so they have 500gb of storage and they are only using about 180gb total, so they will be perfectly fine with a 500gb drive. By the time they would need anymore if they did, they should be able to purchase a faster, newer SSD with more storage for much cheaper than getting into a 1tb SSD right now.

Based on Chrispy's post I'm going to drop the Pro series card and go with a consumer card considering the majority of what they are doing is build floor plans in 2D which is using DX which the consumer cards beat the pro cards on anyhow.
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the
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Mon Mar 09, 2015 1:05 am

There are a handful of exclusive features for Pro cards:

1) Hardware acceleration for 2D line anti-aliasing - this makes working in wireframes far nicer due to AA being applied.
2) 30 bit color output over DisplayPort - despite consumer monitors supporting 30 bit color (native or via lookup table), consumer GPUs are artificially limited to 24 bit depth.
3) Unrestricted double precision floating point performance - nVidia often puts a limiter on double precision performance on their consumer cards while AMD has just started to do so for their consumer GPUs.
4) Certified drivers for professional applications
5) GenLock and SDI options - these features are significant for video production.
6) ECC options on select high end professional cards
7) More on board memory than their consumer counterparts - general double but due to how capacity also scales with market segment, there is overlap

Out of the list above, 1 and 4 would be genuinely useful for 2D CAD applications being discussed. In particular is number 4 is that is what gets you support in case there are any rendering anomalies or bugs. On the same note, AMD/nVidia tune their FirePro/Quadro drivers for stability and then image quality where as the consumer drivers have speed and functionality set as higher priorities. 2 maybe also relevant but it doesn't sound too critical.

As far as recommendations go if a professional level card is still desired, the K4200 has my eye currently. It is a refresh of the K4000 from last year but falls relatively close to the K5000 in terms of specs. It maybe worth holding out a few weeks are there are some professional level graphics conferences in March which nVidia may introduce new workstation GPUs.

Though I'm with the majority in thinking that a consumer card would be fine. Just double check with the software vendor what GPUs are certified for their applications.
Last edited by the on Mon Mar 09, 2015 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:27 am

the wrote:
There are a handful of exclusive features for Pro cards:

1) Hardware acceleration for 2D line anti-aliasing - this makes working in wireframes far nicer due to AA being applied.

DSR solves this problem very nicely via the driver control panel. Or you know, VSR if you're buying AMD cards because DSR is an Nvidia term... :roll:
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Re: Which Pro Card?

Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:47 am

Item #4 is by far the most important thing. You're buying something with certified drivers for programs X, Y, Z, versions 1, 2 and 3. You will get timely patches if even the slightest image discrepancy is found.
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