Chipset recommendations for Revit 2010?

[clog boy]

Revit 2010 supports DirectX hardware acceleration. Does this mean any fast NVidia chipset with DirectX support will do? Or are Quadro cards still the reigning standards? Honestly I don't perceive any performance difference between my AMD Dual Core (2.50ghz) with GeForce 7600 and my HP work PC with 2.66ghz core2duo and nVidia Quadro 1700.

Bottom line: does DirectX support mean that good gamer cards are better supported with Revit 2010 than with previous versions? Have the hardware recommendations changed?

[nhousty]

I've just spent the last 2 hours comparing a mixture of chipsets in our office,

Athon X2 3800 (939) Xp x64 - Gforce GS 7300
Core 2 E6850 (nvidia 680i) Vista x64 - Quadro 560
Core 2 Q9300 (P35) Vista x64 - Quadro 570
Core 2 Q9300 (P35) Vista x64 - Gforce GTX 260
Core 2 Q6600 (P35) Vista x64 - Quadro 570

All machines running Revit 2010 x64.

I was looking at graphics performance while viewing a conceptial mass using orbit with shadows and I couldn't notice a difference. It was jittering with a refresh at about every .5 - 1 second intervals. I have attached the file so other can tell me if it has better performance on better graphics cards and/or hardware?

Cheers for any feedback

Nick

[clog boy]

Thanks for your hard work.

Now suppose you would make a curtain wall by face with lots and lots of panels, so that it will get slow and quirky on all machines. Could you then tell which machine has best graphical performance?

we use HP workstations with dual- or quadcores (one Pentium 4 machine, the one that needs the upgrade) all with 32 bit WinXP.

[muttlieb]

If you have access to subscription center, I recommend you download the "Model Performance Technical Note" document. The general recommendations for video cards is pretty much unchanged. The biggest difference is the switch to DirectX, so a card that supports DirectX 9 or later is recommended. Cards designed to support CAD applications are suggested, but it's not necessary to get a high-end, expensive CAD card. Revit is CPU intensive, so you'll see the biggest difference in performance in operations such as orbiting a 3D view with a faster CPU.

[ws]

I've just tried your test model in Vista 64 Revit 2010 using my new PNY Quadro FX 3800 card in a Core i7 quad core 2.93GHZ with 6GB ram.

Orbiting is juddery - refreshes maybe every .25 second - hard to measure but certainly not smooth (this is on a 30" monitor at 1920 x 1200 resolution).

I had a very long talk with a workstation specialist before buying this card and his advice was to get an Nvidia card - the FX 1800 would have been a more cost effective choice - or maybe even the FX 580 if you just want it for Revit.

As has been said, the database nature of Revit seems to prevent the smooth accelerated graphics seen in every other 3D application and so I imagine that a fast hard disk and cpu helps.

Incidentally the workstation man told me that they are currently selling Corei7 dual Xeon (I think) workstations overclocked and very stable and quiet at 4GHZ, so that may be the direction to go ultimately.

[clog boy]

I've tried the test model too, works flawless with shadows off but really chunky with shadows on. Configuration is a core2quad Q9450 with 3GB RAM, and a NVidia Quadro FX 1700 graphics adapter. I'm running a HP xw4600 Workstation with WinXP x32 Profssional SP3. We've one similar production machine, and a higher end machine for rendering. We also have one machine with a Pentium 4 3.2ghz processor, 2GB memory and a Quadro 280 graphics card which needs the upgrade.

Considering the level of expertise in this thread, would anyone recommend replacing the entire machine over upgrading the graphics card? It will likely be replaced, if economically viable, within two years and I'm looking for a cheap way to get the most out of the rest of it's life. Our IT guy is still as stubborn to hold true to the Quadro series.

Does anyone have negative experiences or recommendations regarding the Geforce series, say 9600 or 9800? Would you expect one of those with 512MB to be a big performance boost compared with the existing Quadro 280 with 64MB?

[samov]

Shadows will always be slow. You are not meant to work with them on all the time.

[clog boy]

Shadows will always be slow. You are not meant to work with them on all the time.

Performance improves precious little with fixed sun position rather than view-oriented, but I think shadows should be mapped and remapped whenever the 3D view is activated. In the Accurenderer days we used to have the Radiate button. It took nearly forever but boy did I love that function.

[sfaust]

In the Accurenderer days we used to have the Radiate button. It took nearly forever but boy did I love that function.

Radiate for Accurender was an attempt to calculate bounced light. Mental Ray does that any time you render as a matter of function, and does it much better and much faster...

[muttlieb]

We also have one machine with a Pentium 4 3.2ghz processor, 2GB memory and a Quadro 280 graphics card which needs the upgrade.

Considering the level of expertise in this thread, would anyone recommend replacing the entire machine over upgrading the graphics card? It will likely be replaced, if economically viable, within two years and I'm looking for a cheap way to get the most out of the rest of it's life. Our IT guy is still as stubborn to hold true to the Quadro series.

I'd replace the entire machine. I doubt upgrading the video card is going to improve performance much. You might try one of your other higher end cards in that machine to see if you can tell a difference. As long as the card works with hardware acceleration and you don't get display errors, it should be fine.

Does anyone have negative experiences or recommendations regarding the Geforce series, say 9600 or 9800? Would you expect one of those with 512MB to be a big performance boost compared with the existing Quadro 280 with 64MB?

I have an Asus GeForce EN9600 GT silent card in my home PC and it works fine with Revit. I haven't tested it extensively with 2010, but I haven't had any errors. The Revit Performance Technical note still suggests cards designed for CAD apps though. Not exactly sure why that is. Large amounts of RAM is not necessary though, 128MB is plenty.