Looking at a workstation GPU like a Quadro - advice?

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ryanjg11

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I'm running a GTX 970, but I haven't been gaming much at all, and have recently gotten into parametric 3D modeling with SolidWorks and similar tools. Even though the 970 is certainly workable in SolidWorks, I know it's not on their "approved video card list" and my system does quickly bog down on complicated models. This could be due to the overall age of my system - still trying to squeeze out a couple more years from this i7-2600K.

Thinking about trading my GTX 970 for an equivalent Quaddro card. What model would you recommend? This will be fitting into a miniITX setup inside an Ncase M1v5.

Other than a loss in gaming performance and general coolness factor, any other considerations in making such a move?
 
I'm putting together a new system for work, I do mostly Revit 3d. My current systems has the 970, I'm thinking of going to the Pascal Titan X. It seems like the best of both worlds for 1/3rd the price
 
ryanjg11 said:
I'm running a GTX 970, but I haven't been gaming much at all, and have recently gotten into parametric 3D modeling with SolidWorks and similar tools. Even though the 970 is certainly workable in SolidWorks, I know it's not on their "approved video card list" and my system does quickly bog down on complicated models. This could be due to the overall age of my system - still trying to squeeze out a couple more years from this i7-2600K.

Thinking about trading my GTX 970 for an equivalent Quaddro card. What model would you recommend? This will be fitting into a miniITX setup inside an Ncase M1v5.

Other than a loss in gaming performance and general coolness factor, any other considerations in making such a move?
Click to expand...
Pascal Quadro also has improved with lower new model matching Maxwell higher model.
But you are limited with low profile being the weaker Quadros, not even up to a 970.
P4000 is a cut down 1070 type of card and not low profile but at least single slot.
If you can fit single slot then the P2000 and P4000 are nice, but need to balance how much better these are with their professional drivers to using the cheaper Geforce and more diverse range of cards out there.
Review here on the Quadro with Solidworks/CAD: http://aecmag.com/technology-mainme...-quadro-p2000-and-quadro-p4000-for-cad-viz-vr

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Have you thought about using Soft-Mod to "change" your GTX 970 to an equivalent Quadro? It's more tricking your computer you have a Quadro card and allowing you to install the Quadro drivers. It doesn't unlock any performance from your card, but allows you to have driver support for all the 3D professional applications supported by Quadro cards.

Note: I have not tried this, just something I found on the net a while ago I thought was interesting...
 
Sorry for the necro, but I can shed some light on some of this if anyone still cares.

The quadro cards have certain features enabled compared to geforce cards. Quadro cards for example have hardware accelerated points and lines. Geforce cards do not.
This is the big reason for performance differences between the cards, and there are massive differences. A low end quadro K620 will beat a Titan in Solidworks if the edges are displayed. That's the quadro's hardware accelerated lines in action.

More details with numbers here: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...e-a-Quadro-video-card-in-Solidworks-2016-751/

Oh, and the days of soft mods is long gone. There are no mods for recent cards that I know of.
 
Did you see the comment in your link regarding using the Nvidia Inspector utillity to optimize GeForce cards for SolidWorks? Curious if anyone has tried this:

For performance you did not correct enough. To gain the performance of a Quadro card in opengl you must change setting in the Nvidia driver profiles. You need to use Nvidia Inspector to change the profile information. The result will be performance much better than a quadro card of the same price.
Nvidia defaults to:
Profile "Dassault Systemes SolidWorks"
ShowOn Quadro

If you change this to:
Profile "Dassault Systemes SolidWorks"
ShowOn Geforce
ProfileType Application
Executable "solidworks/circuitworksfull/circuitworks.exe"
Executable "solidworks/driveworksxpress/driveworksxpressdt.exe"
Executable "solidworks/solidworks edrawings/emodelviewer.exe"
Executable "edrawings/emodelviewer.exe"
Executable "solidworks/photoview/photoview360_cl.exe"
Executable "solidworks/photoview/photoview360.exe"
Executable "photoview 360/photoview360.exe"
Executable "solidworks/sldbenchmarking/sldbenchmark.exe"
Executable "i386_sldworks.exe"
Executable "sldworks.exe"
Executable "solidworks/sldrx/sldrx.exe"
Setting ID_0x106d5cff = 0x00000000
Setting ID_0x10d48a85 = 0x00000034 UserSpecified=true
Setting ID_0x10f9dc81 = 0x00000011
Setting ID_0x10f9dc84 = 0x00000100
Setting ID_0x10fc2d9c = 0x00000000 UserSpecified=true
Setting ID_0x202fd652 = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x202fe114 = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x20320ce4 = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x203691bb = 0x00000008
Setting ID_0x2045959a = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x205f7e3b = 0x00000000
Setting ID_0x209fd306 = 0x003d1028
Setting ID_0x20c1221e = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x20cbffc4 = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x20d518cb = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x20d59eda = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x50528ab3 = 0x00000001
EndProfile​
 
ryanjg11 said:
Did you see the comment in your link regarding using the Nvidia Inspector utillity to optimize GeForce cards for SolidWorks? Curious if anyone has tried this:
- snip-
Click to expand...

No, I didn't see that, so good catch. It looked interesting to me so I tried to figure it out. I have a GTX 780 I recently picked up from craigslist and also solidworks so I'm in a good position to give it a shot.
At first I had no idea what to do with the info. I got Nvidia Inspector, but then couldn't figure out what to do, so I was off to google.
A guy here had the same thing posted and couldn't figure it out either: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=403676&page=9
Someone told him to try Geforce 3D Profile Manager and there was a link so I downloaded that.
Again I was a bit stuck, but figured it out. I made a text file with the name of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks.txt
Then I cut and pasted the stuff from above into that file.
Finally I opened the Geforce 3D Profile Manager program and imported the text file I made.
The result? This enabled Realview in SolidWorks for the GTX 780. It makes things look pretty, which of course is nice, but there is no performance improvement. Rotations are not smoother, and if Edges are displayed performance tanks, just like it will with any Geforce card.
So this trick helps gets Realview enabled, but it will not help performance. You won't get Quadro performance. You do get something for free though.
I have also seen other tutorials before on getting realview enabled so this isn't completely unique, but this might be the easiest and safest way. Other tutorials show you how to edit the registry lines to enable realview. I'd probably rather do this trick instead.
 
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