Graphics card needed for Pro E

[shifty]

I'm helping a friend find a graphics card for his computer.He wants to run Pro Engineering on it.It won't be for gaming.We're looking in the $400 to $500 range.I don't know much about these high end work station cards and could use some help.Thanks

[glc]

ATI Fire GL or Nvidia Quadro. If you can handle 600 bucks, this is a kick butt card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102347

It's got a Radeon 9800XT GPU, so it even games well.

[shifty]

Sorry.I forgot to mention it has to be pci express.The computer is a Dell 8400.

[glc]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102459
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133117

If this is over your budget, you are going to have to use a consumer card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102512

I'm a bit concerned whether the Dell power supply has the guts to run a high end card.

[shifty]

I'm concerned about the power supply too.He's bringing it over Tuesday and I'll have a look.The same model Dell also comes with a high end ATI card as an option but I wonder if they upgrade the PS with the card or they use the same one for all model 8400s.The way they cut costs I wouldn't be supprised if they used a cheezy PS unless you upgrade the card.It haas an 300X in it now.

[glc]

Is the X300SE falling apart with this engineering package? It's really a pretty decent card for CAD work, it's just not a strong gamer.

Come to think of it, I think I read that the 8400 comes with a 350 watt PC Power & Cooling-built power supply. This should handle any of my recommended cards. Dell has never used shoddy power supplies - they may not have the high wattage ratings but they have always been quality units. I have a customer that ran a GF4 Ti4400 in a Dimension 4100 with a 200 watt Delta-built power supply with no issues. The card supposedly needed 300 watts.

[shifty]

He was complaining about it being slow.It may be because he only has 512 mb ddr2 ram and a 7200 rpm hard drive.The machine he uses at work has 2gigs of ram a Quatro Fx3000 video card and a scsi 15000 rpm hard drive.Since ram is cheap now I think he should load it up with as much as possible.We are considering a 10000 rpm raptor hard drive too.Maybe we should go with the ram and hard drive first and see how it performs.

[glc]

Sheesh - there's nothing you can do to the Dell to get it to run like THAT machine.

Without knowing how sensitive that engineering package is to video card quality, it's hard to tell where your upgrade bucks will be best spent.

145 bucks will get you a DDR2-533 dual channel 1 gig kit of ram (2x512) from Crucial, exact match. Single 1 gig chips are around $135, you DO need to install it in pairs.

74 gig Raptors are running about $180.

[shifty]

Actually his work computer is a Dell!They spend some big bucks upgrading all the design machines about six months ago.I looked into the devise manager and saw what was in it and talked to the guy who was in charge of purchasing them.They replaced older Dells that were 600mhz P3s with Elsa Gloria 64mb video cards.The older machines ran the program fine.The new towers were about $4500.I'd say the Dell salesman did his job.As far as the ram is concerned I'll see haw many slots he has.Maybe we can keep what he's already got in it if he has 4 slots.

[glc]

Yeah, it has 4 slots. Pro graphics programs use OpenGL, not DirectX - maybe you are having a driver issue with the X300. Then again, maybe you just can't get a X300 to handle the unique demands, if I'm not mistaken the Gloria was a pure workstation card.

[shifty]

Thanks for the help.