Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

toxic

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 9, 2008
1,664
1
I recently switched from a GTX 285 to a 5770. I've been making a wing in SolidWorks and rendering it in PhotoView, and it seems like the 5770 is 10 times slower (literally) than the 285 ever was... has anyone else had this experience, doing CAD or otherwise?
 
I don't pretend to know much about the software you're using, but is it remotely possible that PhotoView utilizes CUDA for acceleration? If so, that may explain the huge performance difference, as ATI cards don't support CUDA at all (it's proprietary NVIDIA tech).

Also keep in mind even disregarding CUDA, the GTX 285 is a faster card than the 5770 in almost every way.
 
I don't pretend to know much about the software you're using, but is it remotely possible that PhotoView utilizes CUDA for acceleration? If so, that may explain the huge performance difference, as ATI cards don't support CUDA at all (it's proprietary NVIDIA tech).

Also keep in mind even disregarding CUDA, the GTX 285 is a faster card than the 5770 in almost every way.

I doubt it uses CUDA. CUDA makes use of the GPU to assist the CPU, not the other way around.

the 5770 actually benchmarks the same or better than the 285, aside from a few tests.
 
I have a lot of experience with Engineering CAD software, while I do not use Solidworks regularly, I am Professionally certified on Autodesk Inventor Professional (which is the same thing). Both Autodesk and Solidworks software are geared towards Nvidia GPU's, they do in fact use CUDA. The main difference is the drivers. Nvidia drivers especially the Quadro cards drivers are designed for CAD and other professional software. I have used the 5870 with Inventor, and have found that it is decent, but I recently upgraded to the Nvidia Quadro 4000 and let me tell you I have never seen this kind of performance. ATI cards and Geforce cards are designed to keep frame rates up during gaming, while Nvidia Quadro cards are geared towards stability and accuracy.
 
I have a lot of experience with Engineering CAD software, while I do not use Solidworks regularly, I am Professionally certified on Autodesk Inventor Professional (which is the same thing). Both Autodesk and Solidworks software are geared towards Nvidia GPU's, they do in fact use CUDA. The main difference is the drivers. Nvidia drivers especially the Quadro cards drivers are designed for CAD and other professional software. I have used the 5870 with Inventor, and have found that it is decent, but I recently upgraded to the Nvidia Quadro 4000 and let me tell you I have never seen this kind of performance. ATI cards and Geforce cards are designed to keep frame rates up during gaming, while Nvidia Quadro cards are geared towards stability and accuracy.

I agree, I have the Quadro 4000 for CAD work (Revit & Inventor) and it's night and day. The ATI FireGL cards are tuned for CAD as well, but they only work in windows.
 
To better understand the problem, I should ask if you mean it's slower to render or just slower to navigate the model.
To render the model, it should make no difference as it's CPU based, but to navigate it it will, because Photoview 360 does use CUDA because it's based on Mental Image's iRay.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.