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upgrade graphics card on a mac? (#5005)
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bbuxton  
#1 Posted : Wednesday, February 19, 2014 10:52:23 AM(UTC)
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Does SharkFX benefit from NVidea's Quadro drivers?
I'm having difficulties with a large project that is really sluggish in the viewport and just locks up when trying to generate model to sheet drawings . Not sure if model to sheet uses just CPU or if it would be helped by a newer and bigger graphics card.
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CNC_Kid  
#2 Posted : Wednesday, February 19, 2014 12:31:25 PM(UTC)
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i am having, perhaps similar, issue with VC Pro v9 on windows 7. model to sheet is not where i see the issue, it's printing off the sheet to the PDF creator that came with the software. in my case, my PC hardware is good on RAM, has an ok AMD CPU, but has a crappy video chipset. i dont experience my issue in VC Pro v8, thus it leads me to believe it is software related.
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NicoCho  
#3 Posted : Wednesday, February 19, 2014 1:37:28 PM(UTC)
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Hi,

I too would be interested in understanding what parts of Viacad Pro take advantage or not of GPU acceleration. I'm considering replacing my iMac. CPU wise, iMac 21.5" and iMac 27" have more or less the same offering. However, from a GPU perspective, iMac 27" has a significantly better offering than iMac 21", with a significant price increase though.

Nicolas
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CNC_Kid  
#4 Posted : Wednesday, February 19, 2014 8:48:08 PM(UTC)
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from the Punchcad blog site:
Code:
*OpenGL<br><br>We draw our 3D data to the screen using OpenGL. In the past, we composited objects that did <br>not have a 3D opengl equivalent using 2D. The result was a small frame delay for compositing <br>the 2D frame into the 3D frame. With V9, those draw elements that do not have a 3D opengl <br>equivalent are drawn into an overlay window on top of OpenGL. End result, frame rates have <br>the potential to be faster in v9, more testing and benchmarking needed.


now, thats just the framework for writing the display. Adobe uses the Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) in CS6 supporting OGL and OCL, but does not support cuda. this MGE is the key for getting OGL/OCL processed in the video card GPU.

as for Punch software (VC and Shark), maybe Tim can chime in (and i'll try to ping him with this Q). you could also call support, they should be able to answer.

if you get more info please post it here.
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posh.de  
#5 Posted : Thursday, February 20, 2014 3:56:28 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: CNC_Kid Go to Quoted Post
...this MGE is the key for getting OGL/OCL processed in the video card GPU.

OGL is processed by the GPU if the driver supports OGL, which more or less all drivers of dedicated video cards do... more or less reliable, thus Radeons (optimized for speed with games) are not recommended for the Windows platform.
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CNC_Kid  
#6 Posted : Thursday, February 20, 2014 9:11:45 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: posh.de Go to Quoted Post
OGL is processed by the GPU if the driver supports OGL, which more or less all drivers of dedicated video cards do... more or less reliable, thus Radeons (optimized for speed with games) are not recommended for the Windows platform.


which means the software graphics engine has to use a framework that the video driver supports, thus making sure there is a match is a good thing. however, if Geforce and Quadro both support same level of OGL in the driver then i am not really sure why one card would be better than the other other than hardware spec.

i am looking at nvidia GTX 700 series, it's more of a gaming card then a CAD card, but will still kick butt supporting most CAD programs, and costs less than Quadro. take a look at this comparison (http://www.videocardbenchmark.n...gpu.php?gpu=Quadro+K4000). however, its known fact that for heavy 3D and rendering, you want a Quadro or FirePro card. another metric might be video outputs, do you need or want DisplayPort or Thunderbolt? is HDMI or DVI ok? etc.

back to OP's Q. i believe the answer is yes, since this CAD uses OGL and Quadro supports OGL (verify versions of OGL supported), the system should be able to exploit the benefits of OGL being processed in the video card for near instant screen updates.

and some tidbit info, some of the GTX cards can be mod'd so they act much like a Quadro or Tesla card (with limitations).
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posh.de  
#7 Posted : Friday, February 21, 2014 8:32:02 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: CNC_Kid Go to Quoted Post
which means the software graphics engine has to use a framework that the video driver supports

the 'MGE' used by Adobe is not required for doing this.

Originally Posted by: CNC_Kid Go to Quoted Post
if Geforce and Quadro both support same level of OGL in the driver then i am not really sure why one card would be better than the other other than hardware spec.

nobody claims this.

Originally Posted by: CNC_Kid Go to Quoted Post
however, its known fact that for heavy 3D and rendering, you want a Quadro or FirePro card.

the CAD video series are typically required for apps making use of the advanced OGL capabilities and regularly requiring [URL="http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-certified-drivers.html#page=partnerSelected"]videocard and driver versions certified by the app maker[/URL].

Originally Posted by: CNC_Kid Go to Quoted Post
back to OP's Q. i believe the answer is yes, since this CAD uses OGL and Quadro supports OGL (verify versions of OGL supported), the system should be able to exploit the benefits of OGL being processed in the video card for near instant screen updates.

the answer to the OPs question "benefit from NVidia's Quadro drivers?" is no because the advanced OGL capabilities of these CAD video card series resp. their drivers are currently not used by SFX/VC.

htc,
Norbert
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CNC_Kid  
#8 Posted : Friday, February 21, 2014 11:27:38 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: posh.de Go to Quoted Post


the answer to the OPs question "benefit from NVidia's Quadro drivers?" is no because the advanced OGL capabilities of these CAD video card series resp. their drivers are currently not used by SFX/VC.

htc,
Norbert


is there a list of OGL functions used by SFX/VC? which of these would make a diff between a Quadro driver and a Geforce driver
https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-opengl-specs

nVidia states that their Quadro & Geforce drivers are fully OGL 4.4 compliant, so this leads me to believe that they must be cheating in implementation of the functions if a Quadro driver does it better.

tidbit info: http://doc-ok.org/?p=304, which seems ti indicate that for OGL there is no big benefit to Quadro. and from what i can dig up, ECC for quadro is not implemented by hardware. hence why there's a big group of folks doing the Geforce hacks to "unlock" the benefits of using the better drivers.

regardless of the OGL functions used (or not used) i dont see why the non-crippled Quadro driver would not produce a more accurate display of anything drawn using the OGL framework. the crippled Geforce drivers cheat on math thus a trade-off between accuracy/fps/textures/raytrace, etc.....?
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NicoCho  
#9 Posted : Friday, February 21, 2014 1:46:41 PM(UTC)
NicoCho

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Hi,

Originally Posted by: posh.de Go to Quoted Post
the answer to the OPs question "benefit from NVidia's Quadro drivers?" is no because the advanced OGL capabilities of these CAD video card series resp. their drivers are currently not used by SFX/VC.


It seems to me that the question could still be pertinent as far as the iMacs are concerned, as the system is not much configurable and one could envision that the graphics driver supports GPU acceleration for OGL. I would be interested to hear what Tim knows about this.

In any case, as rendering is not OGL based in ViaCAD Pro and SFX, I guess that the answer is no for this particular function.

Again, an official statement would be welcome.

Best Regards,
Nicolas
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