Workstation video card for approximately $350

[MrCaffeineX]

I don't get a lot of requests from people that are doing CAD work, so I don't have a ton of experience with workstation video cards. Those that I have worked with tend to be ancient cards that have been used in machines for 7+ years (people doing CAD work don't seem to stay current with their tech in my experience).

A friend of mine has asked me for a recommendation on a new CAD workstation build that will be used for Mastercam, SolidWorks, and AutoCad. Ideally it will support the versions that he has from a few years ago, while also meeting the system requirements for when he upgrades the software in another year or two. All of the certified cards listed in their system requirements appear to be workstation cards, so I think it is safe to assume that a workstation card is called for in this scenario.

Based on the budget that he has, it looks like we're working with approximately $350 for the video card. After a quick scan on the Egg, I saw the AMD FirePro W5000 at $299.99, the FirePro W5100 at $349.99, and the NVIDIA Quadro K2000 at $359.99, all before shipping. As far as features are concerned, the W5000 supports OpenGL 4.2, the W5100 supports 4.4, and the K2000 supports 4.3.

I'm thinking the W5100 might be the most forward-looking card, based on features, but I'm not sure that the CAD software is using the newest OpenGL revision anyway. They simply state OpenGL is required. What is the performance difference like on these cards and is a 2GB card the right choice for this kind of workload?

 

[Mango_Reinhardt]

The specs on the W5100 do look good, but I would consider what type of CAD work your friend does before recommending a card. Currently on my work machine I'm using a Quadro K600 which is a low end card and I have no issues running Inventor 2012/2015 or Autocad2012/2015, but I generally deal with small assemblies (less than 200 parts max). No issues for me means everything works and I can turn and view the models smoothly.

If your friend is working with small assemblies any of those cards should be fine, but I recommend the W5100 because of the higher specs on the card. Though If he is dealing with larger assemblies or really complex parts you might want to look into something beefier.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

Right now he is primarily working with smaller assemblies. He uses the designs to generate drawings that he can run on his C&C machines and/or sometimes to run by hand on older machines, depending on the number of items being produced. Those are the easy part and even his old PC doesn't have a hard time manipulating those files.

The issues really started when he started bidding on jobs where a person/company is sending him a design. Sometimes they only need a small part machined, so they are relatively small files. Other times, he gets an elaborate design that has hundreds of pieces where he may be making 50% of more of the individual components in the assembly. His current computer chokes on these larger designs.

He wants to make sure that whatever he builds going forward will be able to handle the job. His current PC has been in operation for 7 or 8 years or so. Based on what he said, he wants the new one to go for at least the next 5 years. He is poised to expand his operations at the moment (who would've thought that there's a booming market for niche machine work here in the US) and he doesn't want the new build to hold him back in the near future.

I know another gentleman that runs another machine shop that has been very disappointed with his purchase of the K600. He runs a different CAD program called Cimatron and does a different kind of C&C work, typically making one larger piece with a lot of intricate details. I don't think that he's run SolidWorks or AutoCad though, so admittedly I don't have a legitimate apples to apples baseline to work from, but he is looking into getting a beefier card and the Cimatron software company's rep recommended at least a 2GB GDDR5 card.

With CAD software in general, is it safe to assume that it is primarily CPU/RAM limited? In other words, will a faster CPU and more RAM show more performance improvement than a heftier video card in general? That could also have an impact on the overall system build.

 

[pgaster]

Yes, SolidWorks is mostly about the cpu and RAM. Also, to be more specific, SolidWorks is mostly about single threaded performance. This means Haswell is your best bet.

Why single threaded?
In SolidWorks you create a part one feature at a time. Maybe you start with a solid block or shape, then you might cut some holes, then add say a boss for screws, or ribs for strength. Then you might add fillets to smooth some edges.
If you have to go back and change the size or shape of the part for example, that's back to the first feature. Now each feature you created after that needs recalculated. What each of those later designed features will now look like depends on all the recalculated steps before it. Recalculating one step at a time like that takes single threaded performance. SolidWorks is multithreaded, but it can't calculate how the last feature will look before it does all the rest.

So part modeling and design needs that single threaded performance. If you do rendering, then more cores and threads will be used. Also L3 cache size matters.
I would recommend at least an i5 Haswell, but i7 would be better.

Here are some recommendations from pros over at the SolidWorks forums:

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/78834

That was from March, and to be honest they only recommended the V4900, but I would say that's a bad idea now because the v4900 is an older architecture. A v4900 is basically a professional version of the Radeon 6670 which is very old now.
The Firepro W series are all GCN architecture and would be your best bet. I think the Firepro W4100 would be a good card, and it's a lot cheaper than the W5100. The savings could go toward a better cpu and more ram.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

Yes, SolidWorks is mostly about the cpu and RAM. Also, to be more specific, SolidWorks is mostly about single threaded performance. This means Haswell is your best bet.

Why single threaded?
In SolidWorks you create a part one feature at a time. Maybe you start with a solid block or shape, then you might cut some holes, then add say a boss for screws, or ribs for strength. Then you might add fillets to smooth some edges.
If you have to go back and change the size or shape of the part for example, that's back to the first feature. Now each feature you created after that needs recalculated. What each of those later designed features will now look like depends on all the recalculated steps before it. Recalculating one step at a time like that takes single threaded performance. SolidWorks is multithreaded, but it can't calculate how the last feature will look before it does all the rest.

So part modeling and design needs that single threaded performance. If you do rendering, then more cores and threads will be used. Also L3 cache size matters.
I would recommend at least an i5 Haswell, but i7 would be better.

Here are some recommendations from pros over at the SolidWorks forums:

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/78834

That was from March, and to be honest they only recommended the V4900, but I would say that's a bad idea now because the v4900 is an older architecture. A v4900 is basically a professional version of the Radeon 6670 which is very old now.
The Firepro W series are all GCN architecture and would be your best bet. I think the Firepro W4100 would be a good card, and it's a lot cheaper than the W5100. The savings could go toward a better cpu and more ram.

The build so far includes an i7-4790K (due to quirky pricing it is cheaper than the non-K version), probably an H97 motherboard, 16GB (2x8GB kit) DDR3-1866 RAM, 256GB SSD, 2TB spinner, and a decent 450-500W semi-modular PSU. He wants the Lian Li PC-7B chassis and I can't blame him, it is very nice looking, plus has the required drive bays, decent airflow, and can be snagged pretty cheap of late. After the new Windows/Office license and extra bits like a WiFi card, it left us with at most $300 - 400 for the video card, without going over his allotted budget.

The alternative is to start with an OEM workstation, which after the Office license, WiFi card, SSD upgrade, RAM upgrade, video card, and HDD upgrade, pushes the build price a bit higher than doing it ourselves. It does have the advantage of having the 3-year NBD warranty on the original components, but I suspect that if something does break I'll be the first to get a call anyway. The additional components wouldn't have the benefit of the OEM warranty either.

The OEMs just wanted too much money for marginal upgrades. Lenovo wanted $200 for a second 8GB stick of ram (they sell workstations with a single 8GB stick by default apparently) and it wasn't even ECC. Dell simply didn't offer it. Both were lacking in their video card selections as well. I do have requests for quotes with both that I'm waiting to hear back on early next week, so the price comparison was done based upon the web pricing, even though they will sometimes come back with a better price when you contact them and request a quote.

Anyway, that's how I ended up looking at the specific cards that I mentioned, because they simply fell in the price bracket and were also on the certified lists for the software. If we don't need quite that much GPU horsepower, I'm sure he wouldn't mind saving a few bucks or getting a third monitor or something...

 

[pgaster]

That looks like a great build and would more than do the job.

Of what you listed the W5100 I think would be best. It was just recently released and has 4GB of RAM where the other cards just have 2GB. I guess in the overall scheme of things it's not all that much more for probably some future proofing, but that's his and your call. Any of those cards would work well.