Graphics cards for Autodesk Products have been debated for years amongst the CAD community. Which card should I use? Can I use a gaming card? Must I just install the latest graphics driver?

A few weeks ago I had to swap out an Nvidia Geforce card for an Nvidia Quadro card. The machine was being used for a product called Lumion, which is a fantastic and fast real-time rendering software package and we were now going to be putting it through its paces by running AutoCAD Plant 3D.

Before I swapped out the cards I wanted to see if there really was a big difference when running AutoCAD software whether it be a Gaming card or a CAD card. I installed AutoCAD Plant 3D and opened up the sample model that comes with it. It opened up fine and looked good. I then tried to rotate the model… It stuttered…A lot!!

I took out the Geforce card and put in the K2200 card. Booted up the machine and opened up my nice big Plant model. It opened up just like previously.
I rotated the model and….WOW what a difference. It was much better than when I was running the Geforce.

After running for a while I did notice that there were a couple of what seemed to be graphics related issues. This was because of the version of graphics card driver for Autodesk Products that I was using. I was using the latest one and it is not always best to do that. Autodesk tests these cards with specific graphics drivers and certifies them. I looked on their Hardware website http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112 installed the one that was fully certified and things are running much smoother now.