Best Reasonable Graphic Card for Revit?

[saeborne]

Hi all,

Is there a consensus regarding the best graphics card for Revit Machines? We're at a point where we will need to upgrade a series of machines. I'd like to make sure that I recommend the right card for roll out.

Of course, cost is a factor. If I recommend a graphics card that is $1000 or more, IT will laugh at me. I've heard many people mention ATI FireGL series. Any other recommendations? What is the ideal memory on the Graphics Card?

Thanks in advance.

Sae.

[Rick Houle]

We have abandoned ATI for all nVidia in our new PC specs.
We just ran into too many problems with ATI (at one point - in one build)...

nVidia Quadro FX 3700 with 512mb of ram is our standard. Middle of road in my eyes... and i'm coming from I.T.

Nothing serves your Revit needs better than RAM and VIDEO. If your I.T. folks are laughing at that, then they (and the purse string holders) need to catch up to what is going on around them. Welcome to the world of BIM.

Hey, there's always cad to fall back on... or crayons.

[patricks]

I have found that the entry-level Quadro cards are more than enough for Revit use, if that's what you mainly use on your machine. Other software may require a higher-level card, but for mostly Revit use, the Quadro FX550 (with dual DVI outputs) works just fine. There is no need to spend more money on anything higher than a 128MB card.

At home, I run the FX540 (DVI/VGA outputs) for both Revit 2008 and 2009 and have had no issues.

[greg.gebert978266]

We have only just started using Revit, but as you can read in my signature we are using NVIDIA Quadro FX1700 512MB and have had no issues. The only reason we went to the FX1700 is because I think that's the lowest FX series Dell offered with the T3400 (don't know that for a fact). Don't get the NVS series (2D only)!!!!!! Dell shipped us the NVS series accidentally and it was bad! We went with the Quadro series because they are Autodesk certified (I don't think ATI's are). Our IT guy also said that to update ATI drivers you have to install the old drivers, then install the new drivers (cumbersome). With NVIDIA you can just install the new drivers. We have also only updated the drivers once Autodesk has certified them. This will put you a couple of updates behind, but at least they have been tested.