GPU cards and opinions

Gepetto

Gepetto

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I am about to upgrade the GPU in my workstation as the MCAD program I use all the time is upping the ante on minimum GPU requirements for an upcoming December release. Very nice of them to pre-warn ahead of time, that kind of support is rare.

I have proven I can get by with the AMD FirePro card I have now but it may end up on the edge and I cannot live on the edge while doing designs. Crashes are not fun.

Looking a the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12GB dedicated video memory, dual fan GPU PCIe card. Any users that would care to comment on this or other >8GB dedicated video cards that are out on the market?
 
FredR

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You said two slot. Do you have 2 or 3 PCI slots available? What motherboard and CPU?
 
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George S.

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And don't forget about the auxillary power connections at the card if needed. Some OEM power supplies have the additional 6 or 8 pin pigtails and some don't.
 
mr_rye89

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At work I picked out a gaming laptop for my supervisor to do AutoCAD on, I forget what graphics it has(Nvidia something) but it works great for that.
 
Gepetto

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FredR said:
You said two slot. Do you have 2 or 3 PCI slots available? What motherboard and CPU?
Click to expand...
I have PCIe slots out the wazoo Fred. I have 5 unused slots. Only one presently occupied of the 6 available and that is the current GPU FIrePro

Xeon 8 core processor
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v3 @ 3.50GHz
 
Gepetto

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George S. said:
Isn't that a gaming card? Thought a Nvidia Quadro would be the choice for CAD.
Click to expand...
I am looking at both George. The gaming ones are the ones the MCAD software supplier team uses and recommends. They indicated a GeForce GPU with >4GB (they like 8GB) of dedicated video RAM. GeForce 2000-4000 series is what they use and develop on.
 
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George S.

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Gepetto said:
I am looking at both George. The gaming ones are the ones the MCAD software supplier team uses and recommends. They indicated a GeForce GPU with >4GB (they like 8GB) of dedicated video RAM. GeForce 2000-4000 series is what they use and develop on.
Click to expand...
Go with what they recommend, but also look at used Quadro cards. I've bought a few used gaming cards over the years for my youngest son, and the current card I use in my entertainment machine. They've all worked great and none have died. Just have a stout PSU to run them and renew the heat sink compound. Been using electrically non conductive Noctua NT-H1 compound lately, I like better than the old Arctic Silver.
 
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I thought about doing an EGPU setup with my thinkpad, but we’re looking at $700….

I don’t even game or design but I would like hardware H265 encoding. My core i7 supports it but encoding seemed slow in Handbrake.
 
Gepetto

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I ended up deciding on the Nvidia Quadro P4000 for my CAD application. Mused over the M4000 for a bit but went with the lower power, higher performance P4000 instead.

Hope I made a good choice, wading into GPU options available today is daunting with no good comparison of what does what better. IMO, too many choices exist, too much product complexity.
 
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George S.

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Just put a Quadro 4000 into a Lenovo S30 that I stole some parts out of for the D30. Don't know what version it is, probably the 2GB vram OEM version. Going to load Windows 7 on this machine and try it with the first gen Quant Asylum. Interested in seeing if there's any difference between running the Quant Asylum QA400 on the S30 Thinkcentre versus a T410 Thinkpad. They never updated the drivers for 10 as it's been a legacy product for many years.
You should have a solid card with 8GB 256-bit GDDR5. And, Nvidia has it's act together on drivers and software. Something about the video colors and performance of a Quadro that's different, and to me, less fatiguing to my eyes, than a gaming card. Hope it works out for you Joe.
 
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FredR

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Gepetto said:
I ended up deciding on the Nvidia Quadro P4000 for my CAD application. Mused over the M4000 for a bit but went with the lower power, higher performance P4000 instead.

Hope I made a good choice, wading into GPU options available today is daunting with no good comparison of what does what better. IMO, too many choices exist, too much product complexity.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that if it is this card:

https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/...-p4000-data-sheet-a4-nvidia-704358-r2-web.pdf

It came out in 2017 and is Pascal based.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nvidia_microarchitectures
 
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