GTX 560 Ti for C3D

[MrMaia]

Hello guys

I'm building a new PC (to use primarily with plain Acad and C3D 2010-12) and something that bothers me is the video card choice. As you may wonder, the issue is Quadro vs GeForce.

As I'm no ATM I wouldn't like to spend more than, say, $350 on a card, so the Quadro 2000 would be the most expensive card I can buy. Anyway the 560Ti has definitely caught my eye, on price and specifications. On the other hand, it's not a Quadro. And ATIs are out of the deal as I'll use the 3d Kit from Nvidia soon.

Here's the rest of the build:

Intel i7 2600k @4.5Ghz (OC'ed)
Asus P8Z68 Pro
8GB 1600Mhz Corsair Vengeance
Corsair 650HX

Did anyone here on Augi ever worked on a 560Ti-powered machine? How does it perform? Can it be a better bang for the buck than the Quadro 2000?

Thanks a lot!

[Ed Jobe]

The "bang" will be determined by how well it works with AutoCAD, therefore you should use the certified hardware list to find the appropriate card. Gamer cards typically are not well suited for cad.

From the site listed above, only the AMD FireXXX and NVIDIA Quadro lines are certified for AutoCAD the basis for C3D. Other cards may run acad, but they probably won't use hardware acceleration and if they do, some of the hardware options will probably be disabled.

[MrMaia]

Thanks for the response Ed Jobe. Actually I'm looking for user feedback.

I highly disregard this list for I think it is extremely biased. Of couse Nvidia would never let Autodesk certify the GeForce - who'd ever spend all that gold on a Quadro if you can get an equally certified and higher-specificated board for 5 times less?

Anyway the Hardware Acceleration built in C3D 2012 sucks enormously with any card - take the image drape issue for example, we have to turn it off anyway.

[cdatechguy]

I did a comparison of the GTX 580 and the Quadro 2000 a while back... (Still bugging my IT guy to get the 580 back in my machine)...

They pretty much ran head to head in everything...but the 580 whipped the Quadro in 3D views. Since I use Revit this is awesome...but for regular 2D use they were about the same..Quadro was just a bit faster in 2D.

So if your working a lot in the 3D views with Civil the 560 would be a good choice...but if you still stay in 2D most of the time the Quadro would be better, but its not necessary. A lot of folk are switching to the GTS/GTX cards now anyway since they are less expensive.

[MrMaia]

Thanks a lot cdatechguy, that's something very good to my pockets!

I pretty much mix up 2d and 3d because I work with surveying, but as i'm understanding the GTX would pay off anyway for the slight performance decrease.

BTW I'd love to read more feedback to come to a solid conclusion. Anyone else got the GTX and the Quadro running?

[cdatechguy]

Don't think I can get in trouble to linking to another forum....but the discussion over there is very informative...While it is for Revit, I would think it would work for Civil3D as well...

A lot of CAD folk are not fond of OC'ing...as you will require more fans or coolers..but its your rig....I would update to 12gb of RAM though....even though 8gb is recommended, that extra 4gb makes a difference.

[MrMaia]

Once again thanks A LOT cdatechguy, it's a tremendous piece of discussion you've just posted here. I'l read everything and I hope I come out with a favourite.

I'm a computer enthusiast, so I do like OCing and all. And I was considering the 16Gb RAM spot but that was budgeted out. Now I'll reconsider it, thanks!

[cdatechguy]

If you like getting into computers.....find out what its like to work with SLI...lol....I keep trying to talk our IT guy into letting me try it.

[MrMaia]

I haven't studied much about SLI yet, but as far as I know it is either a potential overkill or a big waste of cash. In SLI there's a "master" and a "slave" (don't ask me about triple or quad SLIs, lol) GPU, and each one works on half frame, or they alternate the frames they work on (i.e. one on the odd frames and the other on the even ones). It can sound nice when you stop here, just like it's "double the horsepower of any GPU", but it's not like that:

• The rest of your sistem can bottleneck your SLI;
• The power the SLI consumes is often more than twice that of a single GPU;
• The memory bandwidth and the clocks, which are quite important, will not improve when you SLI as the boards work separatedly;
• You are spending twice the cash on a SLI but buying a better single card can be a better choice for the specs - and also because you have room for a 2nd card (in SLI, of course) in the future.

And most of all, as I said the SLI makes the GPUs work on frames - which means the most SLI benefited applications are games (which requires high FPS rates), and I think the most you could take from it at work is while orbiting.

Your IT can explain you more about this, but anyway I would not recommend going SLI.

[sinc]

I agree that Autodesk's Certified Hardware List isn't very useful. It's always way outdated, especially when it comes to the "gamer" cards.

I have an i7-2600 w/GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and it works quite well for Civil 3D. The GTX 560 Ti would be expected to perform marginally better.

All in all, C3D doesn't hit the graphics card very hard for most things. I also have an i7-920 with GeForce 9600 GT. That machine definitely is not as nice, and the i7-920 doesn't compare to the i7-2600. Yet there isn't a whole lot of difference when it comes to graphics. The 9600 GT handles C3D's graphics demands quite well, too, even though that card is about four generations behind current technology.

I've tried various Quadros, and the only real difference I notice is that I pay at least twice as much for very similar performance, compared to GeForce cards.