hi everyone I have recently needed to run autodesk inventor 2008 to design a machine for work. I currently have- Q6600 at a stock speed of 2.4 Ghz 2Gb og 6400 memory 8800GT graphics card Running on a windows xp 32bit operating system. The problem is running alittle slow when i start to use contact sets. Im thinking that I need to ungrade my operating system to a 64bit and increase the amount of memory to 4Gb or more. Would this speed the program up or would a new graphics card be worth while. Iv been looking a an nvidia quatro. But i dont understand what the difference between the geforce and the quatro cards?. Is there anything people would recommend to speed this process up. Thanks in advance Dave
i would go for 4Gb or more on the memory, and a 64-bit OS to make use of the extra memory. Of course the application has to be 64-bit in order to use more than 3.25Gb of memory which is the limit of a 32-bit based application. The main difference between a Quadro FX and a Geforce is the professional drivers, which nvidia only make compatible with there Quadro range of cards. The drivers allow for 3D acceleration with in the view ports of CAD applications, without this the viewports are rendered using software rendering all done on the CPU, wasting the potential of the graphics card no matter how good it is. My Quadro FX3450 is basically the same as an old Geforce 6800GT, except it can handle full load operation for longer periods of time. Anyway this old card out paces my GTX280 in solidworks 2009, purely because its doing the work, and not the CPU. The Q6600 is a very capable CPU, and I wont part with mine for a few years yet! So more ram, and 64-bit OS + application, then look at a Quadro FX. The basic cheap Quadro FX for just over £100 is perfect for your requirements, then more expensive Quadro FX's are really only worthwhile if your video editing in a big way!
Im alittle confused now then. Because i downloaded a driver from the autodesk website that forces the program to run on my graphics card. Even inside the program it reads the card and says its been hardware accerated.
maybe autodesk are now using direct draw to accelerate there viewports, rather than OpenGL. If so, then inventor would be using direct X in its viewport's allowing any supported GPU by there application. Either way that's a win for you!
Using more memory should help, 3d-CAD programs use oodles of memory ;-) ooooh! shiny Solidworks 2009!