CAD and Gaming

[JeiTai]

I'm going to need CAD in like September and I'm also planning on getting a new graphics card.

My current one (HD7850) is having troubles with newer games and there are even more demanding games to be released.

I heard that both nVidia and AMD will release new graphics cards this year. Would a new card (gtx1070,r9 480) be capable of CAD as well as gaming? Or should I get two different cards, one for games and one for CAD? Or are cards such as Firepro and Quadro able to run modern games?

I have 3 screens, because i don't like switching from window to another and while gaming i like to have for example skype/teamspeak and a web browser open. If I need to go for two graphics cards and multiple screens are too much of a problem I can get rid of 2 of them.

Thanks!

 

[RCFProd]

A graphics card won't be bad in AutoCAD. If you're going to use it intensively, with heavy rendering operations than you should get a render card no doubt. However if you need CAD for studying then you will be fine with just a normal graphics card, like the R9 390 or the GTX 970. GPU's are close to releasing, so perhaps wait indeed.

 

[Twigman]

Heya, depends what type of CAD. Most I believe are more reliant on the CPU, but others use the GPU for lighting and keeping the actual render loaded so you can move around smoothly. A 1070 or 480 should deal with anything you throw at it, unless you're designing an object with a crazy number of vertices and ray traces. Then you'd be shelling thousands out on a Firepro/Quadro.

For example, my 750Ti runs all of my university work fine, but it's only first year stuff on Inventor/Autocad/Maya. Catia next year may change that though.

Two separate graphics cards would make it unwieldy to run three monitors concurrently, you would either need 6 display cables and change the input every time you wanted to change what GPU you want to use, or plug both into a displayport kvm and use a hardware swithc to do it for you (I'm not even sure that's possible, project for me over the summer!).

TL;DR, A single GPU of your choice will serve you well, regardless of what you want to do with it ~

 

[JeiTai]

Sorry, I forgot to answer/pick the solution.. had a lot of school and work stuff. Anyway, I did read your answer back then and I ended up buying a used R9 390X which is doing its job well.
So thank you guys a lot!