Graphics card for solidcam

[synv]

Hi,

I want to buy laptop and solidcam will be installed in it.

there are 2 laptops that I consider:
1) with X3100 graphic card
2) NVidia 7300 graphic card

what graphic card is better ?

Thanks !

[Darinbee]

Since SolidCAM runs inside of SolidWorks....I recommend checking with Solidworks. You will probably notice that SolidWorks only reviews and recommends a Professional Series graphics cards like Nvidia Quadro and ATI Fire GL. This does not mean that the Nvidia GeForce and ATI Radeon cards will fail but you may experience graphics issues or flakey performance.

I am currently using an Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT with SolidWorks 2008 on a PC running Vista. My only complaint is the Coordinate View Gnomes that SolidCAM uses do not repaint properly, pretty minor and probably a driver issue.

Darin

[axis]

if you dont need a laptop dont get one use the biggest badest work station you can, this is from experance. i run an fx3500 card and sometimes its not enuff you cant throw in enuff ram in a laptop the newest workstations can go up to 62gig of ram you wont need 64 gig but 8gig is very nice. i like the portablity of a laptop but the functionality for price isnt there. save your money. or get a cad dedicated laptop you will not like the price http://www.cad2.com/workstations/lap...kstations.html

[Piobaire]

Agree with Mr. Axis, you'll sooner or later run out of graphic memory using gaming cards. Look for a nVidia Quadro-chipped card made for graphic workstations. Dell have mobile workstations also, but value for money a desktop is better and much more easy upgradeable. I think the Quadro FX1700 is good and very well priced

Avoid Vista as SW don't yet support it. SolidCAM don't run yet under x64-versions of SW so there is no need for more then 4Gb RAM at this point (x32 OS can't address more then 3Gb, as I have heard) Quite a difference between SW 2007 and 2008 in HW-demands.

BR
/Piobaire

[cam1]

Hi: I'm running a Dell Precision M90 with 2M RAM and an Nvidia QuadroFX 2500 video card. I'm totally satisfied with the performance, as compared to my desktop (although it ran 3k+ for the setup).I'm running SolidWorks 2007 Office Premium & SolidCam R11.2.

regards

[Piobaire]

Hi again!

I run a Precision M70 at customers with 2Gb RAM and Quadro FXGo 1400. 2007 is OK but 2008 is quite slower. This is now three years old and it shows.

On the new CAD-desktop I run a dual Xeon Quad 2,5GHz (45nm - 12Mb cache) 8Gb RAM and a Quadro FX4500 with Win XPx64. Two 500Gb and two 320Gb Seagate SATA300 HDD in RAID 1. On this I got SW 2007+2008 64-bit.
I built this for around 3500 USD + VAT. (got the FX4500 on ebay)

On the CAM-desktop I run a Quad P4 2,4GHz (65nm -8Mb cache) 4Gb RAM GeForce 8500 GT with WinXP x32. Two 500Gb Seagate SATA300 in RAID 1. On this I've got SW 2007 and 2008 32-bit along with SolidCAM 11.2 + 12.

Unfortenately SolidCAM runs only on SW 32-bit, so this would result in 4 (!) installations of SolidWorks on the CAD-station. NOT recommended... :-)

BR
/Piobaire

[cam1]

Hi How do you get 8MB of RAM on a 32 bit OS? I went through this with Dell, and they said that 2MB is the limit for XP Pro (later versions). Apparrently the OS reserves 2 MB for ity's own uses.
from Microsoft :
"All processes (e.g. application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is actually installed on the computer.In the default Windows OS configuration, 2 GB of this virtual address space are designated for each process’ private use and the other 2 GB are shared between all processes and the operating system. Normally, applications (e.g. Notepad, Word, Excel, Acrobat Reader) use only a small fraction of the 2GB of private address space. The operating system only assigns RAM page frames to virtual memory pages that are in use."

regards



regards

[Piobaire]

Hi!

I've got 8Gb in the CAD-station with WinXP x64 and 4Gb in the CAM station with WinXP x32, as SolidCAM don't run on SolidWorks 64-bit.

BR
/T

[cam1]

AHAA! 64 Bit with WinxP x64, but I'm willing to bet that the 4GB in the Cam station with Win x32 is only seeing around 2.7 GB, even though you installed 4 GB. I purchased a Dell Precision 690 Workstation with 4 Gig of RAM, and was disapointed when I went into device manager/system properties and saw that the OS was only seeing 2.7
Runs 2007 great anyways.

regards

[Piobaire]

Hm, I've heard from numerous sources that x32 cant address more then about 3 Gb. I went into Device manager for a look. And my system seems to map up from 00000000 to FFFFFFFF which is 4Gb. However, it feels too little with 2Gb and there is no 1,5Gb chips, so 4Gb seems right.

As long it's working and don't get trouble it's OK. One scary thing if you compare CPU-time to operator brain time, I know that myself needs the major upgrade... :-)

How do you like running SolidCAM ?

Best regards
/Piobaire

[cam1]

Piobaire:
I really like SolidCam, especially the fact that I don't need to exit SolidWorks. I've been using SolidCam for about 3 years now on a 3X VMC, and I find it very easy to use. The only negative comment is that I had to write my own Post for a Fagor 8055 control. The good news is that I am in control of my machine as a result of this.
I agree that most of the time my PC and VMCruns faster than me.

regards