Graphic Cards/ Configurations that do NOT work

[christopher.zoog51272]

Please post all NON-working configurations in this thread.

In order to qualify as "not working", the card:

1. Must NOT support OpenGL mode in revit 6.0 or 6.1

AND/OR

2. Must encounter performance slow down when hardware acceleration is set to full in the display control panel


Please post graphics card model and driver, as well as much information about the PC as possible, (eg CPU, Ram, stc)

Also post weather turning off hardware acceleration "fixed" it.

(Edit by SD: If you are running slow, it seems that a Re-installation of your Video Card Drivers may be a solution...try it and report back!)

[sbrown]

The model of the card is the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000. The driver version(s) are as follows:
6.14.10.6422 (from the ATI website)
v.7.91.2-030729a-010470c (from the Dell.com website)

They both seem to be giving the error after the splash screen now. Not just the NVIDIA. Once I uninstalled the driver, Revit worked just fine.

[Allen Lacy]

Does not work with hardware acceleration set to full:

Acer
P4 1.6GHz
Windows 2000 Pro
512 MB RAM
Nvida RIVA TNT 2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro
ViewSonic E90f 19" Monitor

I have reinstalled the driver, and now full acceleration and OpenGL are working! :banghead: :screwy:

This only worked for 6.0, 6.1 is a problem!

[Wes Macaulay]

1. Must NOT support OpenGL mode in revit 6.0 or 6.1 (open GL turned "on")
2. Must encounter performance slow down when hardware acceleration is set to full in the display control panel
I'm a little confused... does this mean that "non-working" cards are those that in theory support OpenGL (and most do), and when the OpenGL acceleration box is checked in Revit, there are problems?

Or in short, to be on this list, the the Open GL check box must be checked?

[cphubb]

Dell
Precision 340

P4-1.7
Nvidia Quadro 4 64mg
512Mb RAM
Latest Drivers 2-15-04
Hardware Accell set at Full
W2k

Revit 6+ does not work correctly with OpenGL rendering turned on (In Revit.)
However I am confused.
Another workstation
Dell Dimension
P3-1.0
Nvidia GeForce 2 GTS
256Mb RAM
Latest Drivers 2-15-04
Hardware Accell Set to Full
XP

Works fine. (I'll post this in the other thread as well)

Despite less ram and slowere processor video preformance is better on the slower machine.

Chris

Tried RE-Installing drivers - no luck

[christo4robin]

Dell Inspiron 8200
P4 2.2 Ghz
512 RAM

Nvidia Geforce2go 32mb
Bios version (video card) 3.11.01.44.D1
Driver version 4.4.8.2
Driver date 6/24/2003

Ran version 5 no problem - OpenGL off and Hardware acceleration full
Version 6 I had to turn Hardware acceleration off completely (OpenGL still off)

I haven't tested version 6.1 yet. I'll report back on that one.

[christo4robin]

Same issues for me with 6.1.

I set Hardware acceleration to full - got the dreaded Pre-Highlighting performance warning.

Set Hardware accel back to none, and 6.1 works.

FK @ Revit - is this info fostering any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Wes Macaulay]

These ATI configurations do not work for 6.1.:

Local built desktop
Intel mainboard (can't remember which one)
Pentium 4 1.6 Ghz
512Mb RAM
Windows 2000 SP4
ATI Rage 128 video, driver version 5.13.01.192; same problem with latest driver version 5.13.01.3279
Note: OpenGL on causes lines to disappear in plans with Thin Lines Mode OFF. Lines return when OpenGL is turned off, or if Thin Lines Mode is ON.
This behaviour continues in 6.1 build 20040322_2136

Dell Latitude C600 laptop
Pentium 3 800 Mhz
Windows 2000 SP4
512Mb RAM
ATI RAGE Mobility 128, driver version 5.12.01.1062 (version A06, newer versions drop lines like crazy)
Note: this configuration gets the "magnetic" behaviour if more than one view is open. With only one view open, video performance is good
This behaviour has been improved but still continues in 6.1 build 20040322_2136

[Chad Smith]

Mine's not working either.

P4 2400, 1GB RAM.
nVidia GeForce Ti 4200 with AGP 8x - Accelleration set to full.
nVidia video driver 5.3.0.3
Screen Resolution 1280 x 1024 72 hertz

Revit 6.1 - OpenGL ON
Windows 2000 SP4

Maybe the Revit Dev. Team need to had a chat with the AutoCAD Dev. Team. My video card works fine with AutoCAD. :wink:

[dg]

P4 3.2
WinXP Pro fully patched
2GB Ram
PNY Quadro FX700 128mb AGP
NVidia driver 7.1.8.4 (24/2/05)
Dell 2405 widescreen @ 1920 x 1200 (analogue) and AOC 901 @1280 x 1024 (digital)
Revit 8

Can't even get one window open with OpenGL on
:-((

No problem with an NVidia FX5200 128mb though - this would do up to 6 windows before slowing down.

[Scott Hopkins]

My new PNY Nvidia Quadro 1400 does not work with OpenGL turned on. All the annotations, grid lines and sections redraw with every zoom or turn on the mouse wheel. It is really quite painful to watch. The card works well in 2D with OpenGL turned off but then the 3D pans and rotations kind of sputter and are not as smooth as with OpenGL turned on.

I am so ******! What the hell is up with this? This is supposed to be one of the most Revit friendly of the OpenGL cards out there! The Factory really needs to get their act together and solve some of these issues. Is anybody at the Factory talking to Nvidia? My old $85 dollar ATI 9200 does a better job than my new expensive Quadro. The trouble is that I need the Quadro for other applications I use. Fix this problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Update:

After following Wes's link to the PNY Quadro drivers I tried installing them in place of the standard Nvidia Quadro drivers. Low and behold Revit is now working pretty well in OpenGL. I say working "pretty well" because there are still a few bugs in the PNY Quadro 1400 drivers. Zooming in or rotating around a large model with shadows turned on invariably causes Revit to crash and close that particular view. With OpenGL turned off shadows don't cause a crash they just take forever.

[Wes Macaulay]

And this is with both the PNY 71.84 drivers -- from:
http://www.pny.com/support/drivers/?prod=quadro

...and/or the nVidia 77.56 reference drivers from:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

If neither of them work, than yeah, the Factory needs to know... and Scott, there's nothing more irritating to me than video cards that don't work with Revit! So I'm with you on this one...

[DanielleAnderson]

I've got a fairly new (less than 3 months old) machine with an nVidia GeForce and I have never gotten open GL to work on it either, which means I end up having the same kind of graphical issues (jumpy lines, etc.) that I had with my previous 2.5 year old machine.
I think I will, though, talk to the IT guys and see if the proper drivers are installed although I know they had this machine made specifically FOR revit.

[Wes Macaulay]

Danielle, let them know that Gigabyte and MSI cards aren't compatible with Revit. Most of the others (Asus, AOpen, Chaintech, Gainward) have worked an GeForce models I've seen. EVGA also makes GeForce cards, but I haven't run into any of those yet.

Here's a list of all the manufacturers that make GeForce cards:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/support_aic

[vaughnmr]

This is really starting to get to me...

We've got gamer cards out there that are working with OpenGl hardware acceleration turned on, while Quadro's are being brought to their "expensive" knees. I know the factory has a lot of work on their plate, but this is an issue that keeps coming up. I want to build the ultimate Revit machine, and I can see it now: "Ouch" the $1,000+ Quadro card optimized for OpenGl won't do AMG w/ shadows or open new 3d views or just crashes. My old Quadro2 Pro workes like a charm in Autocad and Viz with Opengl, but completely chokes in Revit. Now I don't know whether to get a better Quadro or go to WalMart and grab something off the shelf...

PS as far as the driver issue goes, I downloaded every driver available for my card, and cycled back (it's an old card, so maybe that would be the answer) and saw no difference (with Revit). Also tried every possible setting in Opengl drivers, all to no avail.

Michael

[Wes Macaulay]

Hey Michael.

As far as I know, the FX540/FX500 cards are reportedly working -- at least the Dell and Leadtek brands. It's totally overkill to buy anything more for Revit. Video is not the bottleneck.

[Scott Hopkins]

I got a reply from the Factory on the Video Card issue:


Dear Scott,

I have spoken with development about your issue regarding OpenGL in Revit not working with your graphics card. Unfortunately, there is no solution to the problem, other than not using OpenGL. This problem will most likely not be fixed in the next release, Revit Building 8.1, as well. However, development is working on a major project to better integrate graphics cards in Revit Building 9.0.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best Regards,Presumably part of the reason you are paying more for a workstation cards is that they have be tweaked and adjusted to work with professional applications. Nvidia's Quadro cards have a long list of CAD and modeling applications that have been "certified". Hopefully with the release of Revit 9.0 we will see a Revit certification show up in the Quadro line. OpenGL on my PNY Quadro 1400 is buggy in Revit. The use of the term "major project" does at least sound promising.

[Solomon]

Scott -

I've got a PNY FX500, and was unable to use it with OpenGL in Revit. However, I dropped the desktop color depth down to "Medium (16 bit)" instead of "Highest (32 bit)" and found that many of my problems using OpenGL in Revit went away.

Of course your mileage may vary (your card is much more "high-end" than mine, and I'm pushing mine a bit hard with dual displays - Dell 2405fpw @ 1920x1200 & a 17" @ 1280x1024), but if you haven't tried that you may give it a shot (provided color depth isn't of utmost importance to you...)

Solomon

[BWG]

Power Color (ATI OEM) ATI Radeon 9200, 256 MB. ATI 5.8 driver and earlier versions. Get lots of screen trash with Open GL on and lots of crashes with Overlay Planes on.

Seems to be working with Open GL with 5.9 driver. I won't be trying overlay planes because I don't trust the error handling in Revit.

XP Pro

[davidwlight]

My new PNY Nvidia Quadro 1400 does not work with OpenGL turned on. All the annotations, grid lines and sections redraw with every zoom or turn on the mouse wheel. It is really quite painful to watch. The card works well in 2D with OpenGL turned off but then the 3D pans and rotations kind of sputter and are not as smooth as with OpenGL turned on.

I am so ******! What the hell is up with this? This is supposed to be one of the most Revit friendly of the OpenGL cards out there! The Factory really needs to get their act together and solve some of these issues. Is anybody at the Factory talking to Nvidia? My old $85 dollar ATI 9200 does a better job than my new expensive Quadro. The trouble is that I need the Quadro for other applications I use. Fix this problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Update:

After following Wes's link to the PNY Quadro drivers I tried installing them in place of the standard Nvidia Quadro drivers. Low and behold Revit is now working pretty well in OpenGL. I say working "pretty well" because there are still a few bugs in the PNY Quadro 1400 drivers. Zooming in or rotating around a large model with shadows turned on invariably causes Revit to crash and close that particular view. With OpenGL turned off shadows don't cause a crash they just take forever.
Scott,

Following on your previous post about Quadro 1400 drivers & Revit, are you now working? If so, which drivers are you using? Are you still getting crashes? I was working with client yesterday who had Dell workstations, Dual 3.4 Xeons, with FX1400 graphics cards installed. Enabling opengl in Revit 8.1 & all hell let loose! :shock: With crashing, screen draw errors etc. etc. Disabling the opengl & turning on overlay planes...everything settled down. Although, in my view for the cost of the card...the client definantly not getting the best performance! Your input would be most grateful.

[Scott Hopkins]

Dave,

Is your card a PNY 1400 Quadro? I have only tried the PNY 1400 so I can't speak for all 1400 cards. While I was finally able (using the correct drivers) to get get OpenGL working with the PNY 1400 Quadro, the card still seemed to have a lot of conflicts with Revit. Anything too complex, particularly with shadows turned on, caused a crash. Turning OpenGL off solved all the problems, but isn't using OpenGL the whole point of an expensive video card? I ended up returning the the PNY Quadro 1400 and getting an MSI 6800GT, a much faster and cheaper card that works very well with Revit.

I am now very dubious as to the value of professional workstation video cards vs. consumer cards. At least for Revit, I don't see a lot of added value over consumer cards. Revit doesn't take advantage of Quadro cards in the same way that an application like Maya does.The main benefits of a Quadro card for Revit are supposed compatibility and anti-aliasing. Once you toss out compatibility then what are you left with? If you really like the look of anti-aliasing on all of your diagonal screen lines then you may want an expensive Quadro card. I personally don't like anti-aliasing when working in Revit. I think it makes everything look a bit fuzzy. I prefer a crisp jagged line. Also with anti-aliasing turned on the video card fan has to crank way and gets really noisy trying to cool the card. Maybe if Revit were to come out with stereo goggles the Quadro will be the card to have. I think a fast and cheap consumer Ge-force card is the way to go. The trouble is, it can be very very difficult finding a Ge-force card that will work well with Revit. Thats why most people go with the least expensive Quadro's, the 500 and 540. Both of these cards (if you get the right manufacturer) seem to work well with Revit.

If you consider that the very expensive Quadro 3400 is similar in speed and bandwidth to the much cheaper Ge-force 6800GT then you start to wonder if you are just buying marketing hype.

Good luck!

[Wes Macaulay]

Scott is right -- high-end CAD cards are a waste of money for AutoCAD, ADT and Revit: they just don't need the bandwidth.

And they may not even be compatible with Revit. It appears that few cards are being tested to work with Revit, with some exceptions (ATI on their FireGL cards, both for AGP and PCI-E).

I had an MSI GeForce 6600 that came with my new computer, and it wouldn't work with Revit. I hadn't heard of ONE MSI video card working with Revit until Scott's post! Edit: Wrong. Just got a client's computer with a ye olde MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 to work -- but only with the MSI driver for that card which is two years old. None of the newer versions would work properly.

David, reference planes tend to degrade performance significantly, so try the oldest and newest drivers for that model from the Dell website; don't use the reference drivers from nVidia.

[davidwlight]

Scott/ Wes,

Thanks for the advice, the whole Revit graphics card issue seems like a mine field! However, you have given me plenty to look at & I am grateful for the advise8-) . The FX 1400 is a stock card from Dell, so I will try the various drivers that the Dell site offers in the first instance. Failing that, its a cheaper gaming card.;)

[Prodev75]

Dave,
...............I am now very dubious as to the value of professional workstation video cards vs. consumer cards. At least for Revit, I don't see a lot of added value over consumer cards. Revit doesn't take advantage of Quadro cards in the same way that an application like Maya does.The main benefits of a Quadro card for Revit are supposed compatibility and anti-aliasing. Once you toss out compatibility then what are you left with? If you really like the look of anti-aliasing on all of your diagonal screen lines then you may want an expensive Quadro card. I personally don't like anti-aliasing when working in Revit. I think it makes everything look a bit fuzzy. I prefer a crisp jagged line. Also with anti-aliasing turned on the video card fan has to crank way and gets really noisy trying to cool the card. ................
Good luck!

I can deal with fuzzy. I can tolerate a noisy computer...But the crashing can just mess your entire day. I love the software(Revit) keeps the ball rollin in production. But umm....well....This graphic card thing.....Hopefully this will be resolved soon or some recommendations from the factory or post some requirements for optimal operations, configurations etc..

[janunson]

Revit 9.0 works with ATI Fire GL V3100 with the latest drivers (8.263)
Revit 9.1 WILL NOT RUN unless drivers are rolled back to version 8.1133.1.1.

hardware:
Pentium D 945P, dual core 2800 MHz. | 2801 GB GR LPC SouthBridge | 2048MB RAM | Windows XP SP2,3, 128 bit | .NET 2.0 | BIOS: AMI 1000627r0112712006 | ATI FireGL V3100

[Wes Macaulay]

I have the 8.263 drivers on my FireGL V3100 and they're working fine under 9.1...

[ron.sanpedro]

I am now very dubious as to the value of professional workstation video cards vs. consumer cards. At least for Revit, I don't see a lot of added value over consumer cards. Revit doesn't take advantage of Quadro cards in the same way that an application like Maya does.

It seems to me that this is a Revit problem, as I would expect $5000 worth of professional software to take advantage of the power in a $500 professional graphics card over a $200 gamer card. I think it is high time that Revit catch up with professional quality hardware, and become multi-monitor, multi-processor/core and 64-bit aware. To spend $500 on software and have it not be able to take advantage of a $3000 computer over a $1000 computer seems odd.

Some day Revit I hope Revit will milk every last drop of power from a Windows 64, dual socket, quad core (yes, count em, 8 CPUs!) 16Gb of ram, 1Gb/3 DVI GPU moster machine. At that point, we will have Asimov's "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Hopefully sooner than later.
Gordon

[MRV]

I've been constantly crashing in Revit since going to 9.1 (I crashed about 20 times yesterday, probably lost 2 hrs of work). This is with the ATI v3100 and 8.263 drivers. Today I loaded Revit first thing in the morning, zoomed in and out in a file (before doing absolutely anything else) and crashed. Unchecked "use overlay planes" and haven't crashed since (fingers crossed).

Also noticed that while rotating in 3d, the model sometimes suddenly pans for a split second while rotating, kinda like it "skids" across the screen. I've never seen this before in prior releases. The 3d performance of Revit seems to be getting worse.

Michael

Asus M2NPV-VM
AMD2 X2 3800+
2GB CORSAIR DDR2
ATI FIREGL V3100

[Wes Macaulay]

Try using the 8.133 drivers -- these are the only ones certified for Revit.
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=1673

[Steve Jager]

Having trouble w/OpenGL and this driver in both 9 and 9.1

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400/4400

9.1 defaults to Open gl on opening and you have to disengage it before you can use 9.1.
We get serious crashes, blue screens and what not.

[tim.101799]

Having trouble w/OpenGL and this driver in both 9 and 9.1

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400/4400

9.1 defaults to Open gl on opening and you have to disengage it before you can use 9.1.
We get serious crashes, blue screens and what not.


I have an NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M w/ 512mb of video ram in my new Dell Laptop. So far it seems to be working great with Revit. But I am having some issues with AutoCad. In Acad my cursor is very slow and jumps around the screen.

[patricks]

Does anyone know if Revit will work with any of the GeForce 7 series cards? I built my home computer with a Quadro FX540 card specifically so I could run Revit at home, but I'd sorta like to put a couple of games on my machine (although I'm not really much of a gamer), yet still be able to run Revit. I downloaded a demo of some new graphics-intensive driving game (350MB+ for the demo!) and the gameplay was rather jumpy in some views, I assume because I'm running a "workstation" card instead of a "gaming" card.

[madcadder]

Does anyone know if Revit will work with any of the GeForce 7 series cards? I built my home computer with a Quadro FX540 card specifically so I could run Revit at home, but I'd sorta like to put a couple of games on my machine (although I'm not really much of a gamer), yet still be able to run Revit. I downloaded a demo of some new graphics-intensive driving game (350MB+ for the demo!) and the gameplay was rather jumpy in some views, I assume because I'm running a "workstation" card instead of a "gaming" card.

Sounds like the perfect setting for dual cards running dual monitors.
You got a PCI express card now on a monitor, use it for the CAD screen. Grab a "gaming" card and a 19" LCD for around $400.00 and play games there.

Not the cheapest solution, but it is a sweet one.

[patricks]

I only have one PCI x16 slot on my motherboard, though. :(