Building a new pc for my cousin who is an architect. Can anyone recommend a graphics card for AutoCAD 2013 and is a bit future-proofed. I dont use the software at all and looking online I can see quadros etc but are their any mainstream cards that will do a good job that are good value ? Cheers
It depends on what he's willing to do with Autocad. Maybe that could help you : http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/AutoDesk-AutoCAD-2013-GPU-Acceleration-164/ EDIT: Another good link to understand CAD card better http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493.html
For 2D, just about any card will do. If he wants to go 3D, you should stick with Quadro (green team) or FirePro (red team). But do not get a Quadro NVS card - they stink. (Disclaimer: I am a 3D CAD user.)
Can I suggest that as an architect to future proof then the ability to handle complex 3d geometry is the way to go. Not knowing what remit they work in, I hope that they are aware of BIM and it's industry wide implications.
I hate BIM! But then I am a bit of a troglodyte. Yea; slap a Quadro 2000 or one of it's re-freshers in there and he'll be golden.
BIM sounds very interesting, not just for the money aspect but for the application of effort helping good people in Business to maximise and do more, add value, make peoples days better. I think Bit tech should do an interview with hoochy to be honest lol I am currently tasked with creating a document to standardise several server rooms with a big wad of cash being put on the table to do it once its done but my team mates are not hungry for it and I am out of my depth on it other than a row of common issues like light, raised flooring, celling clearance, UPS configuration, power trip aspects. Its a bit much for me, as a team we agreed we would all work on it together but they are all having family's and taking dare I say it holidays. We got pinged from the ASIA office asking how do you fill in this blue print, doc even thou the doc is not ready they should not even be reading it yet. I started the whole topic off by bitching about how US regional office had sht all over the place in there including vendor cables funking out of the wall, and zero network connectivity of the lan enabled monitoring devices. If you work in IT, you have your job, then you could literally have a full other time job just improving on the sht you see that needs to be fixed, that is instead of working 35hours a week, you could 75. And hiring new people is not the answer because if you ask them a question they go off on a tangent and they detract from logical thought, and you just have to keep your face closed, I do that drink soya coffee and just work harder. hoochy tell us some interesting aspects of your week and month, how has the BIM affected people and how have you helped? lastly the quadro cards are expensive. Once intel drops down to 5nm fab, then we are shipping to a new material which will be a revolution around 2019, 2020.
Handy recent article at Tom's Hardware Basically, unless you're running NX (I hate that programme) then a standard GPU is fine, especially if you go AMD. I'd say go a bit nuts and get a 290X - awesome performance for CAD.
I do CAD for a living. Others have already answered, but you don't need a beefy card for autocad, not even for rendering. AutoCADs renderer is all cpu based. If you're planning on doing large 3D projects then a more powerful card would be preferred but you definitely don't need a workstation card. If you see my thread about modeling the bit fenix prodigy in autocad you'll see its a fairly complex model and was done on a A6 Llano APu and an AMD 7770. Even in a realistic shaded viewport with real time lighting on it ran ok, and only took like 10m render.
