Good Video Card for CAD

[Carp1812]

I'm looking for a good video card for a CAD machine. I'd like to spend less than $600 on it. I will be running 2 monitors (dvi) on a pci-express platform. I'll be running a P4 3.2 with 2GB mushkin pc 3200 and a raid5 configuration with 7200 rpm sata hdd's. Please include any personal experiences or reviews of these cards. Thanks in advance.

 

[ohnnyj]

Anything in the Quadro line that you can get for that price would be a good idea.

 

[yhelothar]

Is this for 2D or 3D?
Anything will work great for 2D.

 

[Carp1812]

This will be for 2d 99% of the time. I tend to get into a lot of large drawings - maps of an entire city, sanitary sewer system maps, water distribution system maps, and then plan & profile drawings with lots of surveying points. Maybe a more appropriate question is - should I be looking for particular specs? For instance - OpenGL 1.5 or OpenGL 2.0? Does DirectX have any influence on CAD? I do a VERY small amount of gaming, so I'd like something that will run flight simulator and racing games fairly well also. Thanks for the help so far.

 

[gobucks]

for 2 monitors, you could always grab that new xpress 200 mobo from ATI, and like an X700 Pro/X800 or something. The IGP on the xpress 200 can drive a separate monitor when a graphics card is plugged in.

Other than that, if you want something relatively inexpensive, a 6600GT dual-DVI would work nicely - i have such a setup right now, and the XFX card only set me back $180. I don't do any CAD rendering, but my guess is that having OpenGL 2.0 would be helpful, and the 6600GT has support for it with the new 75.90 beta drivers, and it will be included in the next official driver. And i know it's powerful - at least as powerful as last generation's fastest card, the 9800XT, with better features and better performance in new games.