ok guys, ive been out of the loop recently in terms of hardware (final year shenanagins) and i really need to upgrade. I do a lot of 3d work, however its worth noting the likelyhood of me doing 500+ part assemblies in solidworks is quite slim, so quadro cards arent needed at this point. It would probably help if i list my current specs, q6600 @stock 4gig of corsair ram asus p5 something motherboard 800 watt psu I use a range of software, from ugs nx6, solidworks 2008, alias studiotools, Flash, 3dsmax (final render + Vray for nice renders ) and also Photoshop. I want something nice for games (fallout 3 is very poor on my 8500 gt), just so you know how much hammering this thing is going to get, I also prefer Vista ultimate as i like my transparent squishy fisher price approach to os's. i was thinking along the lines of something like http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151338/show_product_specifications?spectype=extended anyone?
The ATI Radeon 4830s are meant to be very good, and quite close to the performance of the 4850. They're also quite overclockable, according to this review. They're available on eBuyer for under £100, so you might want to have a look at those.
off topic i know but how do you rate UGS NX 6 compared to SW 08, Sw 09 has some great new features i cant wait to get my paws on. If i was you i would buy a Quadro Fx570, and a Xbox 360 and leave it at that. Trying to combine the two just gets annoying. I run a GTX280, whilst i wait for CS4 to make use of CUDA, and i hope solidoworks might flip over to cuda..... Never have i had such problems in running a Geforce card with solidworks, it crashes, locks up. I just wish i looked at my options a bit better at the time and spent my £250 on a quadro and console instead of a GTX280. partly why i cant wait for 09 to release so i can reinstall.
nx6 has some crazy surfacing jazz which works fine on my 8500 gt, are you running latest drivers and all that jazz? erm solidworks and nx are similar in principle, however i wouldn't dare be tempted to do anything 100 component + as i've always worked with the headache/brilliance of ugs stuff, but ive heard good things about its library system, however i would advise, learn everything. dont think about it, learn everything and you can adapt to whatever your new employer throws at you because their to cheapskate to buy in whatever software you are used to. also my monitor is that **** i don't have dvi in, so an eggbox wouldn't be the ideal solution as my budget is tighter than an innuendo about virgins.
Solidworks in pretty much the industry standard CAD software now, every company i have contacted about manufacturing all use solidworks, i use to think Pro/E was the standard. Anyway i am pretty well skilled in solidworks, i the most i have done in an assemble is 60 components before using smart fastners so yeah 100 odd in total i guess. I am using lastest drivers, i am due a system overhaul soon, maybe this christmas hoil... As i said, there is much less pain in grabbing a quadro rather than crawling along with a gaming card. Your CAD skills will out grow your PC spec alot quicker than you'd expect.
When its back in stock, Specialtech sell a 4850 for £105. Its a little above your price range, but its a brillant card, and it apparantly can be flashed/modded into an ATi Fire style card fairly easily.
Pixmania do a 4830 for £83.90 which is pretty amazing considering it has a custom Sapphire dual slot cooler. http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/177...hnology/radeon-hd-4830-512-mb-ddr.html?type=i
I would disagree, you wont see the benefits on anything less than 100 components, and considering most of the hard work is done by the processor as real time rendering is either gay, or for animators. it doesn't suit my needs. for industry its either inventor, ideas or catia. take your flavor, it all does the same job just dont base yourself around one package because someone like me who can scuplt in zbrush, model the hard components in nx6 (coupled with fea simulation to get the tooling right using cfd) and render it using vray, you would be hard pushed to keep up with the speed at we have been taught to work at. Cheers for the advice guys, i should be getting something new in my case quite soon.
a part from the use of zbrush, solidworks can do all of the above. It dosen't do dynamic simulations, but thats a whole other game in its own. I would rather be a master at one than a jack of all trades, but i can see your point. Think i shall look into flashing a 4830 into a FireGL, ATi havent been that great in the workstation dept compared to nvidia. but if it works why not!
+1 again, the 4850 has some decent oc'ing in it too, check out smalley's review of the card, you could even get the silent gigabyte one!
people in this day and age need to learn new software quickly, and adapt to new employers who dont have your particular I wouldnt call it jack of all trades as once you have the ability to solid model and take your skills to a different program, its hardly a challenge to apply yourself if you can learn new software quickly if you have already adapted to new software. Solidworks cannot do sheet metal processing, rendering to a significant degree (if you want example of my own work i am willing to provide, as its ability to not handle bump, transparency and colour mapping eludes me), also its mould flow analysis for injection moulding tools is quite a headache as well compared to the simplicy of the nx offerings. back to the original post, cheers boys i am getting the 4850 as it can handle everything i can throw at it really (maybe not 8x aa but i am limited to my poop monitor).
