Revit 2010 - Graphics Cards that work (and those that dont)

[iankids]

I think that was my original idea on the pdf printing problems about quad cores as there is an issue with quad cores and the revit.ini tweaks for wall clean-ups recommended for quad cores, and multi-threading for hidden line removal in plotting is enabled by default in Revit 2010.

The real reason however turned out to be the Direct3D hardware acceleration being enabled.
As you seem to also have found, disabling it cures the problem?

Switching to an Nvidia FX3800 card has solved all my problems with Revit 2010 under Vista 64 - all is currently sweetness and light

mmm...I'll have another go with the 3d switched off & see if it still creates the ghost print in the pdf printer.
Forgot to mention pdf995 pdf printer.

Cheers,


Ian

[need4mospd]

My ATI 4850 works flawlessly with my i7 & 6GB ram. Shadows are very quick(2-3 seconds) to generate on a fairly large project. My Q6600 at work with the FX1700 was taking 30+ seconds on the same project...
Currently running XP 32bit on the i7. I'm in the process of a triple OS install of Vista 64 and Windows 7.

[BomberAIA]

I have a MacPro Xeon Dual Core with an ATI Radeon x1900 512MB card, 13 gigs of ram, Vista 64. (Boot Camp) I updated my drivers and turned on DirectX. My computer started to crash. Also, my image & ribbon disappears after a command. I will try to disable the ATI Control Panel. Before I updated my drivers, DirectX did not work. With the shadows on, I find the speed very good except for the crashing.

[clog boy]

Please folks, some people need to be more specific about the cards they're using. ie ATI has the Radeon and FireGL. NVidia has the Geforce and the Quadro.

I'm using an nvidia quadro FX 1700, not running perfectly smooth but it looks quite stable. Except for the overlay controls (close window, viewcube) which get incidently greyed out. Haven't tested as much at home with an AMD Athlon dualcore and NVidia Geforce 7600 but it seems to run quite solid.
My home PC has a Vista Experience Index of 5.3 based on lowest performing component, and the best performing one scores 5.9. Don't know about work PC as it runs XP x32.

I am quite curious about how GeForce performs related to Quadro cards, and how that relates to it's purchase price.

[gwnelson]

I'm a week into a new box that I built:

i7 965; 12 Gb; PNY NVidia 580; Vista 64 Ultimate; 150 Gb HD 10,000 RPM; Dual Monitors; all latest drivers, etc.

Observations:

1. With both Hardware Accel & Anti-Alias on there seems to be some ghosting on 2nd monitor. Now have Anti-Alias off & seems to be better.
2. Printing to PDF is almost immediate.
3. Simply trying to open the main file panel (the big red R) to print & stuff takes a few seconds, seemingly longer than necessary.

I went with the NV 580 largely because of all the comments here that souped-up graphics cards don't improve Revit performance. If it suffers at all maybe it's because of the two monitor set up. BTW - got all components from Newegg, shipped almost overnight with no shipping charges. Compared what I spent ($3000) vs a comparitive build from XI computers ($4300) to make myself feel good.

[clog boy]

Looks like a nice machine.
However why didn't you go for the i7-SSD combo? It comes with a Solid State harddrive which has no moving components. So effectively infinite rpm. Doesn't work that much faster except for file access times, but it saves on noise, heath, power consumption and probably has a much better lifetime.

I'm assuming it's a Quadro card?

[gwnelson]

The choice of the HD was solely based on budget. I used to have 22" + 17" monitors and wanted to upgrade there (within my $3000 budget). I got a 26" & lost the 17".

And yes, the card is Quadro FX580. It did say that it was built with all the latest Direct 3D technology (for whatever that's worth), which also prompted my decision.

[ws]

Interesting.

The Quadro 580, 1800 and 3800 series are looking promising at the moment, but as they are new not many people will have them.

re. clog boy's queries on Quadro v Geforce...
big breath...
this is a very long running debate - at one time you could turn a Geforce into a Quadro just by joining two solder spots on the card with a track of graphite from a soft pencil (maybe you still can ).
But that isn't really the point.
The Quadros usually use the same graphic chips as the Geforce cards but they unlock advanced features in the unified drivers (hence the ability to modify them).
However, supporting chips, clock rates, memory do vary on the cards - the Quadros are built for longevity and stability, the Geforce cards are intended for performance in games.
The driver features and optimisations follow those intentions.

So, you might be lucky with a Geforce and it works fine, but maybe not.
It is true that some/most/many? of the high-end features in modern 'professional' cards don't make any difference to humble 3d aec cad - they are usually aimed at mcad applications - but the stability thing is worth something.

FWIW I've always bought Quadro cards, until Revit 2008 seemed happier with Ati FireGL cards, and am now very happy to be back with Nvidia and the FX 3800 and Revit 2010.

[clog boy]

Wakey wakey, 2010 now supports Direct3D. So now that all DirectX compatible cards are a likely choice, picking a proper card for the new Revit is like sharpshooting with a cartridge full of rock salt.

What factors are important? Chipset performance? Memory speed? Amount of memory? All/none of the above?

[Wes Macaulay]

Video card memory may be more of an advantage now based on the Factory's blog post about views being cached for faster opening. But the first time you open a view, GPU horsepower does help. Our V5000 FireGL's have more GPU oomph than the V3000 cards and views open much faster, though view navigation once the view is opened doesn't seem to be much faster; why that is I don't know.

So if you're going to work with a lot of views open, more memory would be better methinks; but for sheer stability, we're still preferring our ATI hardware. One of our Quadro cards is literally BSODing with 2010 -- but this is a dual monitor setup where the user is also chilling with iTunes (and Winamp) up on the second monitor, but we disabled all the alpha channel effects of those apps and we haven't had a crash since. I'd really like to have both makes as continuing options.

DirectX doesn't care a whit about professional apps, so in reality Quadro vs GeForce and FireGL/FirePro vs Radeon shouldn't really matter. The book's still being written on what works with 2010, and we haven't seen the first SP which may well include enhancements to Revit's graphics.