AutoCad Hardware Acceleration - Can I do it or not? (i8200, GF 4 440 Go 64mb)

Question

After spending some good time trying to figure this out by reading up on it, I'm still not sure. Should hardware acceleration give me an advantage in Autocad or not? I'm using it for 3D stuff. So far, I have not been able to see a difference between using hardware acceleration or software acceleration. I have an i8200, p4 1.6Ghz, 640Mb ram, GF 4 440 Go with 64mb, with latest bios and Dell released video drivers (Detonator 42.58). I've tried it with Autocad 2000, 2002, and 2004, latest service packs. I understand that there's a difference between professional CAD cards and gaming cards (antialiasing lines, etc, etc), but shouldn't my video card still give me an advantage over doing it all through the CPU (I always have antialiasing lines turned off in the options)? As far as I can tell, Autocad acceleration simply uses OpenGL. I remember at some point a while back Dell announcing with some fanfare that their latest laptop video drivers were fully openGL compliant. Am I doing something wrong or is this lack of performance a fact of life? I sprung for the best video I could get on a laptop for CAD and graphics (I don't really play games), and I was mightily disappointed to find out that it seemed not to matter one cent for what I wanted to do. Is softquadro the answer? I'm planning on trying that after a bit more reading up about it.

thanks,

Justin

mattcowger · Answer

While the nVidia cards are 'compliant', that doesn't mean they are OpenGL accelrated. My guess is that they aren't, as they are geared towards DirectX Acceleration (for games), not OpenGL for applications (and Quake I think).

dog6 · Answer

So, what would be the difference then between having a compliant-yet-not-accelerated card, and having to use software acceleration, and a non-compliant card, and having to use software acceleration?, or without "compliance" in your hardware drivers would you simply not be able to use openGL aps?

-Justin

mattcowger · Answer

The apps would continue to work, however they simply wouldn't be accelrated. My guess is that the 'compliance' means that the card's driver will accept some subset of the OpenGL commands, and emulate them in software. You wouldn't get any accelration this way, but the app would at least run (albeit slowly). What you want is the Quadro card.

ofelas · Answer

I would suggest putting an NVidia Quadro Go700 card into your Inspiron 8200; it is a workstation/CAD oriented graphics card with dedicated OpenGL/T&L support, which was standard issue on the Precision Workstation M50.

dog6 · Answer

Well, I'd rather not spend the $300 on a two year old machine. I wish I would have know all of this when I bought it. Just to get this straight: the best card I could get on this machine at the time I bought it offers me no benefit over the cheaper options for what I'm doing? Does 64mb vs 32mb at least offer some advantage for this?

Is there a way to turn off the graphics features that this card cannot accelerate? Autocad settings? system tweaks?, before I go all the way and install softquadro? All I care about when I'm working is pan, zoom, and rotate speed.

thanks

HMKrieps · Answer

I don't really know about AutoCAD, but your video card should definately be OpenGL accelerated and do it in hardware.

dog6 · Answer

Is there a test or benchmark program I can use to confirm this -- at this point I wouldn't be after a performance number, just a binary result that says "yes, your card is OpenGL accelerated" or "no, sorry pal"... or that determines what subset of OpenGL is hardware accelerated and what isn't. Is it possible that somehow the system isn't auto-detecting the capabilities of the card, and the card is laying by idle while the cpu does all the lifting?

thanks, Justin

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AutoCad Hardware Acceleration - Can I do it or not? (i8200, GF 4 440 Go 64mb)

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