video card for new build

[Anonymous]

the new system :

3.5GHz Intel Core i7-4770K
32GB memory
500GB 840 EVO
Windows 8.1 Professional (x64)

the carry over video card :

Nvidia 7950gt    

we do 99% 2D work on Autocad.  will this 7950 perform well for 2015? also, if there is a card you would recommend in the $300 range , please let me know .

thank you

[nrz13]

From what I've seen so far, no video card really performs well on AutoCAD 2015, and if you're doing 2D work, you won't notice much of a difference between different cards anyway.  AutoCAD does seem to do better with a dedicated card, even if it is a pretty low-end card.  However, yours is actually quite a bit worse performance-wise than the onboard graphics that comes with your i7-4770K.

Since you're pretty much only doing 2D, you could try the system using the onboard graphics to see how it works out.  If it's too sluggish, then you can throw in a cheap video card that has a better benchmark result than the onboard graphics (I'm assuming you're building this system yourself and could easily do this after the fact).  If you end up buying a graphics card, you'll most likely need to disable the onboard Intel graphics in the BIOS so AutoCAD can properly see the dedicated card.  Unlike previous versions of AutoCAD, the 2015 version can't pick the best card automatically.

[Anonymous]

Well, I've decided to bypass the boss and go straight to the engineer. He says , right now there isn't much demand for 3D, but will start to become more prevalent over the next few years. So, I was thinking of instead we should look toward a workstation card. I was thinking of something like the FirePro W5000 with 2GB of ram. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you nrz13 for the comment.

[nrz13]

The W5000 should be sufficient for most users, I think.  The nice thing about workstation cards is that they're officially supported by Autodesk, so if you have a graphics issue, it's on them to fix it.  The downside is that they're quite a bit more expensive and have a lower performance for most tasks than consumer/gamer cards.  We've always used workstation graphics in the past (mostly 2D work), but we'll probably move towards consumer cards for our next systems.  Anecdotally, I have been using a GeForce GTX 680MX on my home setup without issues and other users here on the forums are also happy using consumer graphics.

[Anonymous]

My biggest concern is with future use of 3D. I was assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that a workstation card would be better suited for the increasing 3D work. Just not sure what kind of real world advantage it gives you. Thank you for your comment

[nrz13]

These benchmarks were done using AutoCAD 2013, but it gives you an idea still:

2D
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-3.html

3D
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-5.html

[Anonymous]

The Firepro W5000 is an excellent card for both 2D and 3D Autocad. I have been using it for over a year (and a V5800 before that) and it works great. It also works great for Revit and Rhino. I happen to prefer it to nvidia cards because I found the colors much brighter and sharper than Quadro cards.