GPU advice

[patmat2350]

I need to spec out a new PC, and am stumped on graphics cards. 

I always thought that in the Nvidia range, Quadro-anything was better for 3D CAD than GeForce-anything... the latter being better for gaming. Though frankly, I have no idea why gaming and CAD graphics are fundamentally different!

But a respected CAD workstation builder (Orbital Computers) is telling me that for my case (home PC + some relatively complex F360 assemblies), the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 is a good choice, and way better than my current Quadro K1200 with 4GB.

I look up the certified GPU page:
https://www.autodesk.com/support/system-requirements/certified-graphics-hardware/fusion-360

...and don't see this 1660 mentioned anywhere. 

So should I run away from this vendor? Or is he right when he says: 
"Back several years ago, there was an appreciable distinction between Quadro and GeForce in some programs like solidworks. That's not really the case any more, all next gen Nvidia cards are simply called 'RTX', they've completely gone away from the Quadro vs GeForce branding designations. In Autodesk products, GeForce have all tended to perform really well because its written in DirectX which is the same programming API used for most video games. Something like the RTX 3050 would certainly be even better, but if the K1200 is getting the job done, I figure 4x that performance for minimal cost would be ideal without overkill." 

Thoughts?

[TrippyLighting]

The "pro level" quadro cards from Nvidia and Fire GL cards from AMD have "certified" video drivers mostly optimized for OpenGL. Autodesk Inventor and Fusion 360 indeed use the DirectX API.

Another piece of essential software that Autodesk Inventor and Fusion 360 share is the Geometric Modeling Kernel called Autodesk Shape Manager, or ASM.    

The bottleneck in modeling/assemblies in any CAD software is the Geometric Modeling Kernel  that runs exclusively on the CPU and mostly single core. A faster GPU does not help with that!

One difference between the Pro, or CAD graphics cards and gaming graphics cards has been that gaming stuff can be, or already is overclocked out of the box, associated with higher heat levels.

Your vendor probably knows the rest of your system and has matched the graphics card to it.  I'd follow that advice!

[patmat2350]

Thanks.
I've also just read that gaming GPUs optimize frame to frame smoothness in fast changing environments at the cost of sharp detail (precision). Whereas CAD designers need that fine line sharpness.

Perhaps a related topic: With my current setup, zooming in to the limits reveals disparities between the edges of solids and the lines or curves that actually define them, which can be annoying if not confusing at times.  I wonder if this is caused by F360's definitions of these different entities which should be "line on line", or something in the GPU?

[TrippyLighting]

That lack of visual acuity you are experiencing is the result of Fusion 360's adaptive LOD (level off detail)  algorithm.

Almost all 3D software uses varaiants of this.

In Fusion 360 that is object based and the tesselation artifacts can be come very visible in long, thin objects.

This can be manually overridden and is also object based.

Find the component or body in the browser, right-click on it and select Display detail Control. Change it from "adaptive" to "Fixed-High". that should improve the situation.