AutoCAD GPU Acceleration w/ GTX 470?

[DanishDevil]

Pricing out a couple of workstations for an architect with i7s and 6GB of decent DDR3. He's going to be doing mostly 2D but also a good amount of 3D work in AutoCAD, and wanted to make sure that a consumer level nvidia GPU is going to be able to use its cuda cores to help out.

I've seen drivers for their workstation cards, but not for anything consumer level. If it won't work, should I bump up the RAM to 12GBs and snag a higher end processor than an i7 930, or will that be plenty? Also pairing with some RealSSD C300s. He will be using dual 30" monitors.

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[yogurt_21]

dunno if fermi based softmods for quadros are out but if they are you can do bios mod or a softmod to a quadro for the cheaper price.

see an ancient article on the topic of geforce to quadro.

http://forums.techarp.com/reviews-articles/24105-nvidia-geforce-quadro-soft-mod-guide.html
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539

article on fermi based quadros
http://www.deskeng.com/virtual_desktop/?p=2219

did i read that right? there's a dual fermi quadro 896 cuda cores ie gtx470x2?

edit: it totally is! http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadroplex-7000-us.html nvidia has a dual fermi card already!

double edit: nm false alarm
http://www.nvidia.com/object/qplex_display_configurations.html

it's a stand alone sli config. I thought it was a giant cooler or something.

 

[DanishDevil]

I honestly don't think any softmods are going to work past GTX 260s. That's the last kind that I found.

I assume that this CUDA Toolkit is what I would want to install on his machine, right?

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda_3_2_toolkit_rc.html

Would a GTX 470 even work with that, or not? If a GTX 470 won't work, then what is a Quadro card for about the same price that we could get for him? The fermi-based cards start at about $800.

 

[DanTheMan]

What you have listed is even overkill even for AutoCADD 3D modeling. If it were Pro-Engineer, SolidWorks, or UniGraphics I would say use a workstation card but not AutoCADD. We still use Quadro FX 1700 cards here at work for Pro-E and AutoCADD. For AutoCADD it works fine but for Pro-E - it's okay but a little choppy when a lot of parts get put together. Also the 920 will work fine. - My $.02 worth

 

[DanishDevil]

So no need for a high end GPU then?

 

[1freedude]

I'm not so sure that regular AutoCAD gets use of cuda. I have spent a fair amount of time on nvidia developers pages, and I think moldflow is the only autodesk product that uses cuda.

 

[theonedub]

AutoDesk's website doesn't even list the 4xx series as tested. It doesn't look like a non Quattro card can be certified, but they did test GT2xx cards and listed them w/ 100% compatibility. I'm sure they will eventually test and make sure the 4 series cards work, but maybe picking up a GTX285 on the cheap would be a more cost effective and proven compatible option.

 

[DanishDevil]

Thanks guys, I think I'm going to be tweaking the build quite a bit and catering it specifically towards AutoCAD itself.

Going to be going P55 with a high-end i5 6xx chip and 8GB of RAM, and I'll see what I can do about finding a GTX 2xx card.

Edit: See new thread:

Dual AutoCAD Machines for Architect