Videocards...

[Velerona]

Hello!

I'm trying to build a pc on a budget.

I'm trying to understand if I truly need an Nvidia Quadro card or can I settle on a GTX 1660?

[JParis]

3 minutes ago, Velerona said:

or can I settle on a GTX 1660?

Sure if you want to have issue...go right ahead

 

Seriously though, this question gets asked numerous times...

You are always better off with a CAD/CAM card running CADCAM....don't believe the Fire GL hype....this forum is littered with people who went "cheap" and have issues.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

I've used GeForce cards many times in the past.  As long as your models aren't very large and complicated they work fine.  And when I say "very", I mean "very, very".  Some people here (above) do work of that complexity, but it isn't that common.  You'll be fine.

[cncappsjames]

6 hours ago, JParis said:

......this forum is littered with people who went "cheap" and have issues.

I'd be willing to bet Video Card issues is the single most plentiful issue since the forum got started 20 years ago. No joke.

@Velerona if you want to roll the dice, go right ahead, however, when you have issues, you'll be promptly told "we told you so". You'll get offended, then probably leave. This forum membership is littered with hundreds if not thousands of users that were warned. No exaggeration. They didn't heed the advise and didn't like getting scolded for it, then REALLY didn't like getting told there was no fix for their issue and reminded they were warned.

Please, we beg of you, do yourself a favor and spend a few hundred more bucks and get a CAD/CAM card. No need to spend thousands, but be smart.

 

JM2CFWIW

[#Rekd™]

Honestly if you pay up front and buy a good solid system it will last 5-6 years. If you go on the cheap side you will constantly be needing/wanting to upgrade.

 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Velerona said:

Hello!

I'm trying to build a pc on a budget.

I'm trying to understand if I truly need an Nvidia Quadro card or can I settle on a GTX 1660?

Depending what kind of work you are doing, if it involves a lot of surface operations I've heard low end graphics cards cause issues,

I've been doing a lot of my work on my home pc on intel graphics, but my work area is small and its all wireframe toolpaths, at my work we only use quadros no exceptions.

Worst case try it.. you can always sell it after and upgrade, graphics cards are easy to move.

[Tim Johnson]

The RTX cards would be a better choice over the GTX cards but you should have a minimum of 4 GB of RAM. If the models in your files are smaller and not many of them the cheaper cards should do fine. The larger your models are and the more models you have in your files the better your video cards with more ram you will need. The range of the RTX cards are almost unlimited.

[gcode]

I've been running Quadro cards for at least 15 years

It does make a difference,

My work PC has a 3 year old Quadro P4000, my home machine a Quadro RTX 4000

There is a noticeable difference between the 2, Verify runs load faster and better on the new card

by a noticeable margin.

It seems like the load Mastercam puts on video cards gets greater with every release.

IMO, it's foolish to not buy the best Quadro your budget will allow.

If you cheap out building the machine you will suffer for it now and dig up some $$$ to upgrade it later.

If you are building this machine to learn Mastercam and work through the tutorials a GTX gaming card will probably be OK

but you will end up replacing it once you start doing serious work with it

[neurosis]

What happened to the good ole days when you could convert a GeForce card in to a Quadro?   

 

[JohnW@Kauffman]

My system was built in 2014.  We don't do large or complex models typically, but I still spec'd a Quadro K4000, because a number of people here said a Quadro was the best way to go.  Boss told me I had to cut some of the cost out, so I dropped back to a K2000. 

I will add this: MEMORY!!  When I was told to cut the cost of this system 6 years ago...one of the areas I trimmed was in RAM.  HUGE mistake!  Dropping from the Quadro 4000 to the 2000 worked out OK for our situation, but cutting the memory has bitten us badly!

 

[MWearne]

I have a system with a GTX 1650 and it works. If 'works' is good enough that's up to you. 

 

What I want to know now is if the new RTX 30 series cards are worth the buy. These cards are a huge jump in performance. The 3080 and 3090 are benchmarking above the Quadro RTX 6000...for 1/6 the price. Unless a new Quadro series is on the horizon???

[JParis]

The ultimate bottom line CAD vs Gaming cards is OpenGL

CAD cards are streamlined for OpenGL utilization....gaming cards have some OpenGL instructions but they are not the same by a longshot.

That's why CAD cards carry the expanded costs....the hardware is either the same or modified slightly. The power is in the OpenGL instruction set

[CADCAM3D5AXIS]

Nvidia Quadro Cards FOR THE WIN

PLUS MORE RAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MWearne]

Just pointing out specs here...

RTX 6000 - OpenGL 4.6, 24GB Ram, 4608 Cuda $4000

RTX 4000 - OpenGL 4.6, 8GB Ram, 2304 Cuda $900

 

RTX 3090 - OpenGL 4.6, 24GB Ram, 10496 Cuda $1500

RTX 3080 - OpenGL 4.6, 10GB Ram, 8704 Cuda $700

 

Specs don't tell the whole story buy seems like the new 3080 will give the Quadra 4000 a run if not beat it, while the 3090 looks a lot better than the Quadro 6000 for less than half the price. Yes this is only hardware specs, ram type may vary (ECC), and drivers may vary as well, at the very least, this is interesting. If a new Quadro line is coming, I cannot wait to see what those numbers look like.

[JParis]

The OpenGL instruction set on the GeForce cards is not the same set...if performs the CAD functions test slower

But hey, what I know

[jeff]

19 hours ago, mwearne said:

Just pointing out specs here...

RTX 6000 - OpenGL 4.6, 24GB Ram, 4608 Cuda $4000

RTX 4000 - OpenGL 4.6, 8GB Ram, 2304 Cuda $900

 

RTX 3090 - OpenGL 4.6, 24GB Ram, 10496 Cuda $1500

RTX 3080 - OpenGL 4.6, 10GB Ram, 8704 Cuda $700

 

Specs don't tell the whole story buy seems like the new 3080 will give the Quadra 4000 a run if not beat it, while the 3090 looks a lot better than the Quadro 6000 for less than half the price. Yes this is only hardware specs, ram type may vary (ECC), and drivers may vary as well, at the very least, this is interesting. If a new Quadro line is coming, I cannot wait to see what those numbers look like.

That's a bad comparison. Quadro cards are a totally different animal so comparing the specs head to head is futile.

For the longest time I was running a GTX980Ti in my cad system and everything was fine...UNTIL  we had to start opening up some large assembly files from our customer and manipulating them. This crippled the GeForce card. The Quadro was buttery smooth.

A lot of others here regularly have Mastercam files much larger than I have, so I'd say I'm just on the edge of needing one most of the time,but I have noticed a difference.

 

If your files are basic 2D, some minor solid modeling and generic toolpathing, then a gaming card could be enough for you. But if you do any type of work with larger files then you'll definitely want a Quadro, no matter what the specs say it handles cad in a different way because of the drivers, that's what sets the 2 apart.

[gcode]

23 hours ago, Neurosis said:

What happened to the good ole days when you could convert a GeForce card in to a Quadro?   

 

It really didn't mod the card, it just changed what it called itself

If I recall, after the mode the card would call itself a Quadro, but still wouldn't run real Quadro drivers

[neurosis]

Just now, gcode said:

It really didn't mod the card, it just changed what it called itself

If I recall, after the mode the card would call itself a Quadro, but still wouldn't run real Quadro drivers

The point if the mod was to be able to run the quadro driver. 

From what I recall, the drivers are (or were?) the only difference between the two cards. Typically the GeForce cards are higher end cards without the driver support for OpenGL.

Now that was a long time ago so I'm testing my memory.   

[JParis]

1 minute ago, Neurosis said:

From what I recall, the drivers are (or were?) the only difference between the two cards. Typically the GeForce cards are higher end cards without the driver support for OpenGL.

The last really good Modable card was a GeForce 6800 Ultra....

Typically the hardware is the same but portions of it are disabled on the GeForce as it's just not used...

[neurosis]

1 minute ago, JParis said:

The last really good Modable card was a GeForce 6800 Ultra....

Typically the hardware is the same but portions of it are disabled on the GeForce as it's just not used...

 

This was a quote from one of the old mod tutorials -

"

The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. They are generally 2-5X more expensive than their gaming counterparts, the NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards. But everyone knows that Quadro and GeForce graphics cards are virtually identical in hardware.

Yes, you read that right. Even with the unbelievable price tag, the NVIDIA Quadro is really no different from their desktop GeForce counterparts. So why is NVIDIA charging you so much for a Quadro?

"

[gcode]

3 minutes ago, Neurosis said:

The point if the mod was to be able to run the quadro driver. 

From what I recall, the drivers are (or were?) the only difference between the two cards. Typically the GeForce cards are higher end cards without the driver support for OpenGL.

Now that was a long time ago so I'm testing my memory.   

Yes.. it's was a long time ago

I remember spending days screwing around with it.. and in the end it didn't make a dime's worth of difference.

 

[neurosis]

7 minutes ago, gcode said:

Yes.. it's was a long time ago

I remember spending days screwing around with it.. and in the end it didn't make a dime's worth of difference.

 

I never tried it myself, but I knew people who did.

They weren't working with Mastercam however. They were doing the mod for graphics software.  They said that it worked pretty well. 

[gcode]

Some of you might enjoy this

I remember reading years ago, that one reason Quadro's cost more than GeForce is the quality control that goes into building an industry rated card.

I suspect another reason is economies of scale. They probably sell 10 GeForce cards for every Quadro so the per unit cost is much lower

 

 

[crazy^millman]

RTX 5000 16gb card in my Laptop and just had a customer burn up their processors trying to regenerate one of my programs for their machine. What took me 20 minutes to regenerate for angel changes on some 5 axis toolpaths with stock models burned up their processor after 4 hours on their system that was only 5 years old. It gave up the ghost and now they have to get a better system to even work with the Mastercam file I provided to them.  

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

I don't think someone slapping together their first budget CADCAM computer will be working at that level.