quadro K2000M

[kprom]

We are looking at ordering a Dell Precision Laptop for running Inventor 2013.  The M4700 which we would likely get with a SSD primary drive and a HDD for the work directory.  My concern is the graphics card.  Currently we run Geforce GTX 560 cards since Inventor runs on Direct X now.  They work well but ocassionally we see a little slow down on large assemblies when rotating. (not sure if it's graphics related or CPU)  The fastest card available in this model is a K2000m.  I haven't found a lot of info out there on this.  Does anyone know how this would compare to the GTX 560?

We work in large assemblies.(~800 parts) Currently we have desktop workstations with Xeon Quad cores and 12 GB RAM, about 3 years old.  This laptop would be used with a dock and a 20" monitor, possibly a second as well.

thanks

[GARRYFRASER8394]

Yeah, if you've not used it you won't miss it, I'd been using it for a few years on previous PC so was frustrating 🙂

[DesignerNinja]

I'm running a similar setup but with the Dell 6600.  The hottest graphics card that was available was the nVidia 4000M.  It's been a good card and I don't have any complaints.  I do fairly large - 200 to 1000 part assemblies and they are complex.  My system runs fairly well.

That being said, if the 5000M was available when we bought this laptop, I would have gotten it.  From my experience, Your going to need all the horsepower you can get.  I would not recommend the 2000M for large assemblies.  Especially if you are going to optimize as best you can with SSD drives.

Go for Dell 6600.  It will pay for itself in time saved - no doubt.

Good Luck

[SBix26]

I, too, had never tried the Quality setting (never had the hardware to do it with before).  I now have a K4000M, and I notice something unusual.  If I move the model and stop, it anti-aliases as expected.  But if I then move the mouse, the anti-aliasing goes away (leaving jagged edges), and does not come back until I move the model very slightly (just bump the 3D controller a little bit).  Again, it looks great, but only as long as I leave the mouse perfectly still-- as soon as I move that cursor the least little bit in the graphics area it goes back to jaggy.

I have no idea whether that's a Windows (Direct3D) thing, an Inventor thing, a NVIDIA thing, or even a 3Dconnexion thing (unlikely).  But odd, certainly.

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 2
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, SP1
HP EliteBook 8770w; 8 GB RAM; Core™ i7-3720QM 2.60 GHz; Quadro K4000M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.16.2
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

[hans.martin.haga]

I have the M4700 with K2000M, 32 GB and 512 GB SSD. Impressive performance, although I use it mainly for running virtual machines with Inventor and Vaultserver.

One word of warning: The M4700 has two graphics adapters/GPUs, an embedded Intel HD 4000 adapters and the Nvidia. The Nvidia core is enabled by the Nvidia Software, and you have to be sure that the Nvidia software recognizes the installed software - otherwise you risk running benchmarks (and other software) using the HD 4000 adapter!

I found it best to disable the HD 4000 adapter (by disabling Optimus Technology in Bios), as I found that the general display quality degraded when using the HD 4000 adapter (less contrast) for desktop applications. I also suspect that Inventor in some cases ran on the HD 4000 adapter, as it would run terribly slow at times.

[Ray_Feiler]

I'm not seeing that behavior here.

nVidia® EVGA® GeForce® GTX 580 Classified 3072MB GDDR5

Driver 314.07

[GARRYFRASER8394]

the problem only occurs on the newer K series cards that came out last summer,

From what I've been told it's a Nvidia driver problem which they don't seem in a hurry to fix 🙂

[kprom]

---

@sbixler wrote:

I, too, had never tried the Quality setting (never had the hardware to do it with before).  I now have a K4000M, and I notice something unusual.  If I move the model and stop, it anti-aliases as expected.  But if I then move the mouse, the anti-aliasing goes away (leaving jagged edges), and does not come back until I move the model very slightly (just bump the 3D controller a little bit).  Again, it looks great, but only as long as I leave the mouse perfectly still-- as soon as I move that cursor the least little bit in the graphics area it goes back to jaggy.

I have no idea whether that's a Windows (Direct3D) thing, an Inventor thing, a NVIDIA thing, or even a 3Dconnexion thing (unlikely).  But odd, certainly.

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 2
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, SP1
HP EliteBook 8770w; 8 GB RAM; Core™ i7-3720QM 2.60 GHz; Quadro K4000M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.16.2
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

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What do you think of the K4000M, how is the performance?  Have you run something like GPU-Z to see how much of the card you are using?  

thanks,

-Keith

[Ray_Feiler]

I see said the blind man who could not speak.

[SBix26]

Haven't done anything with GPU benchmarking.  I just observe that I can open up the biggest assembly that we've ever made in Inventor (473 files, 856 occurrences), and spin it as fast as my SpaceExplorer can make it go without (apparently) blanking any parts... on a 2560 x 1920 screen.

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 2
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, SP1
HP EliteBook 8770w; 8 GB RAM; Core™ i7-3720QM 2.60 GHz; Quadro K4000M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.16.2
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager