NVIDIA & Vista

[Todd Tracey from Fastech]

I just found this on ZDNET Regarding performance issues with NVIDIA Cards. As most of us running Mastercam have slanted towards NVIDIA that is a problem. System I installed Vista on at home has ATI and doesn't seem too bad on performance. (See below)

 

 

Given the long ramp up to the launch of Windows Vista it's hard to believe that some companies didn't use that time wisely to come up with drivers that performed well under the new OS. Well, it looks like NVIDIA didn't give the task of developing Vista drivers the attention that the project deserved and this has left gamers frustrated.

 

The problem revolves around NVIDIA's current set of Vista compatible drivers, which include the v96.85 drivers for the GeForce FX series, the v97.46 drivers for the GeForce 6 and GeForce 7 series, and the v100.59 beta drivers for the GeForce6, GeForce 7 and GeForce 8800. Gamers have been reporting that these current series of drivers aren't fully compatible with Microsoft's new operating system and that they cause computer games to lock up and crash.

 

NVIDIA has acknowledged that these drivers aren't up to the standards it demands. In a statement NVIDIA spokesman Brian Burke said that the development of robust Vista drivers was now "the highest priority in our company" and that "over the coming weeks, Nvidia and our partners, along with the industry will continue to update Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add feature support."

[gcode]

Has anyone here tried Mastercam X, X2 and Solidworks with a Quadro video card and Vista??

Someone posted a Vista Solidworks benchmark last week that showed an 85% performace decrease from

WinXP. I'm guessing X won't run much better,

though I don't know anyone whose tried it.

[Todd Tracey from Fastech]

Gcode- According to the info above, I'd be suspect with anything NVIDIA for now.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Todd,

 

Though I can't back this up with any data, , I believe Win2k and XP make up the lion's share of OS's out there right now. Under those, NVidia can't be beat for stability and performance so IMHO, they are still THE viable option, and as long as I still have my XP disk, I'm good to go no matter if I buy a new PC or choose to build my own. At the end of the day, I can always swap out a HDD and go with a proven winner instead of a steaming pile of Vista.

[Thee Rickster ™]

Might be wose to stick with Xp Pro.

 

rick

[TeccBoxx]

Hey gcode, I have been running Solidworks and 9.1 for the last week on my Dell M90 with a Quadro 2500 FX.

 

As for Solidworks, I installed 2006 and I was able to run it once, although it would crash every time after that. So I was able to get the 2007 Vista beta and it has run perfect since installation.

 

Mcam 9.1 has run with the only difference I saw was that when it backplots it is slower, but verify and everything else runs great.

[Rick Damiani]

Vista is bad juju for anything that uses OpenGL, 'casue OpenGL support isn't there in Vista. Tom's Hardware ran the SPECviewperf tests on Vista and the results were ~80% slower than on the same hardware in XP. Link here: Tom's Hardware

 

Vista is not supported for the current release of Solidoworks or Inventor, either. Autodesk dosn't have a timeline for compatability that I'm aware of, though I'd not expect anything to be done for any of the current releases. Solidworks is working on a Vista version, but I'm not sure when it will be out.

 

My advice is don't even think about Vista for systems you are doing real work on until this summer at the earliest, and even then you really want to limit it to new hardware. Informal testing I've done on the retail version indicates that 1GB or RAM is the 'office apps' minimum, with 2GB a more practical starting point. That means that you'll proably want to think about the 64-bit version and 4GB of RAM if you are currently at 2GB or so and feeling a little cramped on more complex jobs.

[Fig sign]

http://www.emastercam.com/cgi-bin/ultimate...ic&f=1&t=024886