Best graphics card for running Revit LT on an old HP xw4600 Workstation

[grumpygreyhound]

Hi

I am looking for some advice please.

I have two HP xw4600 workstations.

The first has the following hardware:-

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 at 2.66Ghz, 8Gb RAM, Normal Hard Drive (Not SSD), Matrox M9125 PCIe x16 graphics card.

It has two slots marked PCIe 2 x 16 75W + 75W. Only one is utilised with the Matrox card.

It runs at 3.7 on Windows Experience Index.

The second machine has:-

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 at 3.16Ghz, 8Gb RAM and a Samsung EVO 840 SSD.

Same slots as above are available.

It runs at 5.0 on Windows Experience Index.

Both machines run Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

Various system requirements are available at the following link (Revit LT2018 is the one I am interested in)

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Revit-2018-products.html

And here is a list of Certified Graphics Cards:-

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?siteID=123112&id=18844534&results=1&stype=graphic&product_group=2&release=2018&os=8192&manuf=all&opt=2

 

[grumpygreyhound]

Hello again.

Is there anyone who has the expertise out there that can answer this?

I am now sure if my Matrox card is better than some of the other cards I have read about on this forum. Take the Quadro K4000 for instance, is it any better than the Matrox for CAD work? I don't understand all of the benchmarking stuff and obviously cannot find a benchmark for an old Matrox against a much newer card.

It's not as if I cannot find the information on this forum as there are lots of posts about xw4600 upgrades and some mention CAD but I didn't to hijack someone else's post that was marked as SOLVED.

Please help!

 

[hang-the-9]

Your Windows Experience index results are not really valid, they are pretty basic and because your core 2 duo system has an SSD, the average score for it will be higher. You need to compare the CPU scores only.

For the video card, it is very old, DDR2 with 512MB of memory, any modern card will be better for you. Pick something from the last few generations of the Quadro or FireGL cards that you can afford. For those systems with their older CPUs I would not bother going past the lower two tiers of cards.

 

[grumpygreyhound]

Your Windows Experience index results are not really valid, they are pretty basic and because your core 2 duo system has an SSD, the average score for it will be higher. You need to compare the CPU scores only.

For the video card, it is very old, DDR2 with 512MB of memory, any modern card will be better for you. Pick something from the last few generations of the Quadro or FireGL cards that you can afford. For those systems with their older CPUs I would not bother going past the lower two tiers of cards.

Thanks. Could you perhaps point me to a list of cards and tiers you take of. It's all gobbledygook to me.

 

[hang-the-9]

Your Windows Experience index results are not really valid, they are pretty basic and because your core 2 duo system has an SSD, the average score for it will be higher. You need to compare the CPU scores only.

For the video card, it is very old, DDR2 with 512MB of memory, any modern card will be better for you. Pick something from the last few generations of the Quadro or FireGL cards that you can afford. For those systems with their older CPUs I would not bother going past the lower two tiers of cards.

Thanks. Could you perhaps point me to a list of cards and tiers you take of. It's all gobbledygook to me.

The list of approved cards has the models listed, P1000, P2000, etc... look at the lower numbered ones, those will be the cheapest in the series. Quadro P2000 would run in those systems, and would be a good pick for something that can be moved to a better computer at some point. P4000 would be better if there are more complex models to work with (a lot more video memory and cores), but your CPU will be well behind that video card so an upgrade would really be good for that.

 

[grumpygreyhound]

Thanks hang-the-9

Just looked at the P1000. I'm afraid it's well out of my price range.

I've since discovered the K series and am looking at a 2nd hand K4000. The bandwith is 135Gb/s and 3Gb memory.

Not sure how the other stats stack up. It stated Direct3D 11.0 which I take it is the same as DirectX 11.00?

I cannot seem to find any stats for the Matrox M9125 as I believe Matrox lost their way around 2007/8 according to some write-ups I've skimmed through.

So K4000 and an SSD to help with file opening. What do you reckon?

One thing I wonder is the K4000 is listed as 80W but my board says this 75W + 75W? Will it work?

 

[hang-the-9]

The K4000 looks to have a power supply adapter for the power, so it will not just draw power from the PCIe slot. It will be way better than the Matrox card.