Forums >> Workflow & Implementation >> Hardware >> looking for a video card recommendation

danezeq

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Joined: Fri, Apr 5, 2013
78 Posts

hi there,

i dealing with realy heavy revit porject, which really hard to navigate inside.

i discussed this revit speed issure a lot on technical forum, got all kind of suggestions like using workset etc..

i thought about upgrade some components in my pc..

right now i have i quite nice system bought in 2011.

motherboard: gigabyte x58a-ud3r

cpu: i7 950

ram: 18g (1333MHZ)

video: Geforce GTS 450 (1024MB)

when i go to reviit option menu it says my video card is unknow and never been tested with revit.

i thought that world be the first thing to upgrade. what do you say?

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rbcameron2

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Joined: Sun, Oct 19, 2008
101 Posts

Depends on your budget:

A lot of people have had tremendous luck with nVidia.  Personally I've owned a quadro 4000 and 5000 and now I have dual Quadro K4000.  If you do any iRay rendering for 3dsMax, I really recommend that.  Quadros are the perfect blend of performance for both 3dsmax and Revit.  Plus they don't zap your power supply with these 200watt+ monster cards.  Autodesk has a partnership with Nvidia, so I recommend sticking with them.  They did just release the GTX 760 - 2Gb (for $250) and in theory that card should work, but also has never been tested, nor will it be tested.

Quadro K4000 has yet to be tested with Revit, (but it will be qualified hardware eventually) so you will get a similar warning.  It works on my system 100%.

Dell T5500

Dual Xeon X5650 (12threads x 2) - 24Gb - 1333Mhz RAM - 256Gb - Samsung 840 series SSD - Dual Quadro K4000's.

Windows 7 pro - 64bit - Revit 2012/13

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RB Cameron

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danezeq

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Joined: Fri, Apr 5, 2013
78 Posts

thanks for your answer.

you think Geforce GTS 450 (1024MB) is good for working with revit? how is it compared to the nvidia video card you mentioned?

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rbcameron2

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Joined: Sun, Oct 19, 2008
101 Posts

We've had tremendously good luck with our Quadro 2000 and 4000 here at the office.  I have had zero faults with them (as long as i'm using the correct drivers!) and my new K4000's have yet to even struggle with 300Mb files.  I have 100% confidence in them.  $800 each on newegg.com)

The GTX 760 is "based" on the same kepler architecture as the K4000 but costs 1/3 as much.  I just don't know enough about the new 700 series GTX cards from nVidia to make a fair assessment on whether or not they'd work well with Revit.  Rest assured though, Autodesk does not, has not and more likely will not test those types of cards with any of their products.  So if you go cheap, you will always get that "error" saying your graphics card is unsupported.  It IS supported, just not "qualified hardware."  I'm 99% sure that switching to it would improve your performance dramatically from the old GTS 450 for the simple fact that its twice the ram (2048Gb).

Either do a google search for "Autodesk Revit Qualified Hardware" and type in your specs. or here is the link:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?siteID=123112&id=18844534&results=1&stype=graphic&suite_group=103&release=2013&edition=2&os=8192&manuf=1&opt=1

Windows 7 - 64bit I presume?

you should be able to pick up a Quadro 4000 (2Gb) card for roughly $390-$450 on ebay.  Which is basically the price of a GTX 760-770.

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WWHub

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Joined: Tue, May 16, 2006
13079 Posts

For our office, we have found that the simple NVIDIA driver EVGA, 1GB cards at $50 work just fine.  We don't do a lot of rendering but even then, we don't have problems.

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johnpanda

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Joined: Tue, Jul 16, 2013
1 Posts
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Hi RB Cameron,

We have just received a K4000 card and we are starting to see issues when pushing the boundaries of files around 450Mb.

The issues we are facing is that we are seeing multiple displays of objects when zooming in and out. It appears like it isn't clearing the regeneration of objects as it increases and decreases their size. Mainly we are experiencing that with dimensions and text but it is also effecting modelled components like walls etc.

Can I please ask you what driver you have installed as this seems to be the cause of this kind of thing normally.

Thanks in advance

John Panda

CAD Manager

Melbourne, Australia

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rbcameron2

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Joined: Sun, Oct 19, 2008
101 Posts

JPanda

I try to stay on top of whatever the latest driver nvidia offers.  in this case its the 320.x now.  For Revit 2013.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-tesla-grid-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-320.49-whql-driver.html

As a side note, I typically don't run over 400Mb on my files, so do whatever you can to take that unwanted file size down.  There are a few good tips on file size just by googling or searching AUGI.com.  I have a good idea what you're talking about though, and if your 3D view is doing something goofy, I suggest deleting it and creating a whole new 3D view from scratch, not duplication.  That solved one co-worker's issue immediately.  Also, this occurs in plan views too.  Toggle the "use hardware acceleration" checkbox in options, as well as anti-aliasing.  I also changed my background colors to Blue, Blue and Orange with semi-transparency turned on.  Basically Windows is fighting Revit for control of who's in front of the screen.  We had a similar (maybe the same?) issue when windows rolled out an update about 3 or 4 months ago.

Also, CAD tends to do weird things to Revit 2011, 12, 13 and not sure about 2014 yet.  Not sure about what version of Revit you have or the other potential conflicts you have in your model though.  Have you been crashing or is it more of an annoyance sort of thing?

EDIT: Is it doing something like this?  see attached

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samjohnsonus

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Joined: Tue, Sep 3, 2013
8 Posts

NVIDIA driver.. will be best go for it.

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