Pointing-Devices and Displays

[#1]

Hi there,

I have (2) two ATI FirePro V4800 Vid cards in (2) different PC's. System (1) is set up with Win 7 Pro 64 bit and runs Autocad Mechanical, Inventor and MEP Suite. System (2) is set up with Win XP Pro and runs Autocad Mechanical, Inventor and MEP Suite. Now for my question; which drivers are the best to use, the ones from autodesk or the ones from AMD? I've just checked both websites and AMD has a newer version than Autodesk. Example AMD is 8.8xxx and Autodesk is 8.7xxx. Which driver should I use?????????????

[#2]

If AutoCAD is the app you use most, Autodesk's driver: it's not 'newer' that matters, it's "tested and approved" that is important.

[#3]

I have a different opinion.

Nvidia and ATI are well aware of the requirements for Quadro and FirePro drivers and they probably test them far more thorougly than whoever certifies drivers for Autodesk. You'll almost always get better performance from a newer driver, so you can either wait around for months (or years), or whatever until Autodesk gets around to certifying the new driver, or you can load it up and make use of the extra performance knowing it only takes about 20 seconds to switch back to and older driver on the odd chance you do encounter a problem.

The reason that new drivers are released is to resolve problems and improve performance over the previous version, so in most cases, the newer driver is going to be a "better" driver than the relic Autodesk "blessed" when they last tested many months ago.

[#4]

Ok, I want to favor your ideas, but at the same time I want to expand on this topic.

Back to the Vid card it's self. My Viv cards are Fire Pros and there is nothing saying FireGL on the boxes.

First, what is the difference between the two. (I'm going to try to find out)

Secondly, Autodesk shows my drivers under Fire Pro but at the same time it shows Fire Pro (GL)

I'm going to assume that the drivers will work for both

AMD has a site for listing Certified Applications and tested Vid cards and it seems that the GL version is more popular.

I'm going to have to look into this a little deeper

I like my Vid cards b/c they make my software fly. and they handle 3D dwgs at 100 megs at a reasonable cost.

[#5]

FirePro is the new name for ATI's line of workstation cards formerly known as FireGL.  As far as I know, all the cards they've manufactured for the last couple of years have carried the FirePro name.

[#6]

Thanks for the info on the card name change.

In addition to the drivers, I have downloaded and installed the Autodesk version on my Win 7 64 bit system and the drivers show up as certified and seem to work fine so far. Now, on the Win XP 32 bit system I have downloaded the newer drivers from AMD and they also seem to work good but autocad doesn't recognize them as being certified.

All in all. the updated drivers have improved the performance of the display for both systems. My next task will be tweaking the software to see if my settings can be improved.

Again, thanks for the info.