NVIDIA® Quadro® P600

michael3424

Are there any benefits or downsides to using the above video card with Onshape?

I'm about to buy a new PC and and this card is the only "official" replacement for a built-in Intel video chipset.

john_mcclary

Seems kind of old and low end, what are the specs on your intel chipset?
Is this a used PC or a new one?

Best part of Onshape is, you can log in and benchmark it before you buy it. Which I would recommend.

Otherwise, most any discrete card should be better for Onshape than the intel chipset. I haven't had much love with the intel video in Onshape.
It isn't bad, but it is noticeably worse than when it is running on the discrete chip.

Paul_J_Premakumar

This isn't an Onshape official statement, but more of my personal experience with graphics cards. If you are unable to benchmark, before you buy

1. Checkout sites such as https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Quadro+P600&id=3729 that provide more information
2. Search online for any bugs reported against the card. FYI, I did a quick search on in our bug database and did not find anything specific to this card. 

Depending on what you are modeling, If you have large assemblies, the more memory you can get, the better it is for performance.

michael3424

Thanks for the comments.  I should probably clarify that I'm not looking for ultimate performance so much as trying to make sure I don't buy a pig, from the standpoints of performance and compatibility.

@john_mcclary - I'm looking at buying a new HP Z2 mini workstation.  The alternatives to the Quadro P600 appears to be a Quadro P1000. an AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 4150, and the integrated "Intel® UHD Graphics 630".  I doubt there is anywhere near me in the Chicago suburbs that sells this model PC and has them available for demo so testing benchmarks for myself is probably not likely.  It would be interesting to see if HP was willing to run them and report back or maybe someone here is using a Z2 Mini and can report.

@Paul_J_Premakumar - Thanks for benchmark site link.  I'll check that out.

I am semi-retired and using the free Onshape plan for my hobby and non-paying design projects and Alibre Design for the small amount of paid work that I do.  The former is mostly just a few parts with no or very small assemblies but I still plan to get more than the default memory.

One reason for the question is that my current PC is an HP Z400 workstation with 18 GB RAM and a Quadro 600 and does not perform very well on the Onshape - it gets:

Overall performance* Measured triangles per second 53.7 million

                                   Measured lines per second 22.0 million

Which a bit worse than most get.  My speed in Onshape seems mostly OK with a bit of a lag which is noticeable but not super annoying.

PeteYodis

@michael3424 You will likely find a much better bang for your buck performance wise with a non-workstation class card.  The typical gaming card generally gives great performance in Onshape for often much less money for an equivalent level of performance from a workstation class card.  We don't need the certification for openGL and drivers that are tuned to installed applications.  Usually our recommendation is to try devices out in in a store on your datasets while logged into your account.  With Onshape, you get to try devices with us before you buy them.  Not really the case with installed software.  

peter_1776

If you're only using Onshape, not other CAD, consider the 1660 GTX. You can also consider the Quadro P620 if you use other CAD systems.

michael3424

peter_gillespie969 said:

If you're only using Onshape, not other CAD, consider the 1660 GTX. You can also consider the Quadro P620 if you use other CAD systems.

I also use Alibre Expert for paying work, but gaming cards are also recommended for that program, so it likes the P600 series would be mostly a waste of money for me.  

@pete_yodis - forget to actually post my reply to you, but the PCs I'm looking at are not usually carried by Best Buy and the other store front sellers near me, so testing before purchase is not an option.  I'm pretty much stuck with word of mouth.

CGCAD_Engineer1

Hi Michael,

For what it's worth; I'm currently working with the P400. 

It's not superduper fast, but it works for me. These are my performance results (on Windows 10 and Firefox);

Measured triangles per second

124.4 million

Measured lines per second

69.4 million

michael3424

That's a lot better than I get with my current NVidia Quadro 600 card on a HP Z400 PC.  Onshape performance on this hasn't really been a problem for the most part so far as I can tell on my admittedly small projects.  If anything Internet lag is the largest time drag.

Measured triangles per second

51.9 million

Measured lines per second

22.2 million

john_mcclary

The most important thing is how it feels for you.

All the hard work is done on the cloud. you just need to rotate and zoom reasonably.

john_mcclary

but for the price difference it is pretty much a no brainer if you want the performance.
I usually follow the philosophy: Buy the best you can afford, upgrade less often. 

I'm running a RTX 2070
just a quick newegg.com search of a Quadro p600 and a RTX 2070 is about double ($200ish)

but the performance is about 15 times higher (with the cheap laptop Max-Q version, while running solidworks in the background with over 2 gigs of memory taken up). Seems like a very significant bang for your buck, I can only image the desktop card is better.

michael3424

That RTX 2070 looks like it provides a huge performance boost over my current setup. and the price fits within my budget.  Does the card manufacturer make much difference for a given GPU chip set?  

john_mcclary

Not enough that I would worry too much about it.

It is usually better fans and heat sinks and cases that they add between brands.

michael3424

Yeah, just trying to make sure what I buy now will work well for a few years.  I try to make PCs last for a few years so shoot towards the middle to high end of what's available when purchased.

john_mcclary

Yea, I learned that lesson years ago.. cheap computers die young