Upgrading computer

[KevinPinks7697]

I am just about to put in a requisition to upgrade my computer as I find my system a little slow when using Showcase 2013. Just wondering what the ideal machine would be? My current system is : (see attached)

Thanks

[mcgyvr]

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticl...

I'm loving the machine in my sig.. 

Just fast processor..decent graphics card.. and SSD drives..

The biggest improvement I got was working local instead of over the network.. Luckily I'm the only one here doing cad stuff so I simply copied all our files to my hard drive and we just "sync" it back up to the server each night.. 

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

I'd suggest this..

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/180043-amd-r9-295x2-review-500-watts-of-cool-running-4k-gaming-...

500W ???  WOW

[mdavis22569]

I have pretty much the exact same at home as mcgyvr... I have an I7, 16g ..with Solid State HD

[kwilson_design]

This may help steer you in the direction you need to go http://www.cadplace.co.uk/News/Reports/What-s-the-right-workstation-for-Autodesk-Showcase-and-3ds-ma...

That being said, I know a lot of people swear on the professional cards and that used to be all I ever used in the past, but you can get a lot of performance for relatively cheap going with the latest GeForce cards. I have two rigs I use Inventor with. One has nothing but pro Quadro cards and Tesla C2075 in it (Boxx 4920 Xtreme) and the other we recently built to be my dedicated GPU renderer machine (in sig). Inventor, Showcase and anything else Autodesk runs fine on either type of cards I've tested it with. Basically you don't have to have Quadro cards even though everything you'll read about 'recommended specs" will probably say something along use a pro card. Pro cards = optimized drivers which may or may not be beneficial in some software versus others but so far I haven't noticed anything significant to really justify spending big money for Quadro anymore. My GTX rig runs circles around my Quadro rig.

[mcgyvr]

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@kwilson_design wrote:

This may help steer you in the direction you need to go http://www.cadplace.co.uk/News/Reports/What-s-the-right-workstation-for-Autodesk-Showcase-and-3ds-ma...

That being said, I know a lot of people swear on the professional cards and that used to be all I ever used in the past, but you can get a lot of performance for relatively cheap going with the latest GeForce cards. I have two rigs I use Inventor with. One has nothing but pro Quadro cards and Tesla C2075 in it (Boxx 4920 Xtreme) and the other we recently built to be my dedicated GPU renderer machine (in sig). Inventor, Showcase and anything else Autodesk runs fine on either type of cards I've tested it with. Basically you don't have to have Quadro cards even though everything you'll read about 'recommended specs" will probably say something along use a pro card. Pro cards = optimized drivers which may or may not be beneficial in some software versus others but so far I haven't noticed anything significant to really justify spending big money for Quadro anymore. My GTX rig runs circles around my Quadro rig.

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The "requirement" of having Quadro/FireGL cards went away YEARS ago (5+ or more I think) when OpenGL was phased out of Inventor.. Its all DirectX now and as such any decent "gaming" card should do the trick just fine..  

[mslosar]

The 'requirement' that is still there, most likely, is for testing purposes on their end.

There are a much smaller number of quadro cards out there then geforce cards. It's much easier to test 25-30 quadro cards to make sure they work than 200-300 geforce cards (if not more). Each vendor takes a reference board from nvidia and tweaks it themselves in various ways meaning you'd have to test each variant. Then you have the matter of how far back you want to test as well....

[LT.Rusty]

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@kwilson_design wrote:

My GTX rig runs circles around my Quadro rig.

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My at-home rig using 2008-vintage 512 MB Radeon 4870's run circles around my Quadro setup at work.

[kwilson_design]

Yes not to mention if he ever wants to dive into CG outside of Showcase and into an unbiased renderer, or even a biased renderer like Redshift, that takes advantage of CUDA cores he will be MUCH better off spec'ing his new rig for a GeForce card. Quadros are not ideal for CUDA GPU rendering as they are snail slow compared to a GTX card. So that opens up your rendering possiblities and avenues down the road.