Which mainstream GPU shoud I get to work with Revit?

[brunosidrim]

I was about to buy a 6600 GT, because a heard it could work as a Quadro 540, which is very good for AutoCAD.
But for my surprise, i've seem a lot of people are having trouble with the 6600.

From what I know, a Quadro 540 or a FireGL 3100 would be perfect to me. But my computer is a Dell Optiplex GX620:

945G chipset, PCI-E
P4 3.00Ghz with L2 2Mb cache
1Gb DDR2 533
300 watts power supply

ATI and NVIDIA both recommend a 350 watts power supply for the FireGl and Quadro cards. I'm not planning to change my power supply. And since I'm a new Revit user, a believe that I could start with a more simple card, and let the Quadro or FireGL for the next computer.

So the question is, which GPU should I buy? I'm planning to spend a maximum of U$ 200,00.
X300, X600, X1300, X1600, 6600 GT, 7600 GT. It could even be a 5200, as long as it works with Revit.
If you have another card in mind, please add it to the list.
I know a 7600 GT will make a great diference in games compared to a x300, but will I feel it in Revit?

If none of those mainstream cards works fine with Revit, do you think that's worth:

a) try to run a Quadro or FireGL with the 300 watts power supply. (which I'm distrustful to do)

b) change the power supply to run a Quadro or FireGL. (That would be the most expensive solution; and I'm dont want to start messing with my brand new Dell parts)

But what do you think?

[Kroke]

I've ran Revit with the x300, x600 and 6800GT. I now have a 7900GT the 7900GTX was too expensive for the speed boost. The 7900GT rocks in Revit AND gaming, I can tell you that.

[brunosidrim]

Oh!
If I spent U$ 350,00 I would expect it to realy rock.
But right now i intend to buy a cheaper one, as long as it works fine.
How was the performance of the x300 and the x600?

[Kroke]

X300, weakest card Dell offered at the time, did just fine on Revit, but I also do gaming, my next cpu had the X600 so I swapped the card, still great with Revit, nothing choppy, etc, but still lacked huge in gaming.
We have two spare x300's sitting in the office now since the upgrades. With the 7900GT I can edit families etc with shadows on and it doesn't bog me down, the X's it would bog down. As I mentioned in another post, I'm anxiously awaiting how my partners new Alienware does with dual liquid cooled SLI 7900's with Revit, and will take the benchmark test once we get it installed and integrated into the office to see where we sit and start counting down until I get the beast of a machine for myself here, hehe.

[iru69]

I bought an nVidia Extreme N6600 Silencer (GF6600 chipset) for a home system a few months ago. I got the 256MB version for a ~$130, but the 128MB version should be adequate for ~$100 (US).

One of the reasons I got it was that it's one of the more powerful video cards that doesn't have a cooling fan (I like quiet computers).

It works fine with Revit, though, like many nVidia video cards, it sometimes leaves slight "artifacts" when zooming in and out - it's really not a big deal, mostly annoying because it shouldn't have to be that way if the Factory would just address it. It doesn't get nearly as many of the "An error has occurred, the window must close" errors that the Quadro FX500 I use at work does.

The performance is more than adequate for Revit. Hardware acceleration works of course. Shadows generally appear instantaneously when I turn them on. Overall, a pretty good card for not very much money.

Let us know what you end up with and how well it works.

p.s. - I wouldn't invest any more money than you have to in that computer, don't mess around with your PSU - and you're already up against the wall with only 1GB RAM... Actually, 300W is probably fine to run the Quadro/FireGL cards depending on what else you've got in there that you didn't mention, but I don't think it would be a very good value to put such a card into that system. Start saving your pennies for the next computer.

p.p.s - what video card do have in the system now? Or is just the Intel integrated chip? Why do you need a new video card?