It is the smaller version of the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 120M for notebooks.
My one hope is that the SolidWorks developers and the GPU developers, whether they’re NVIDIA or another manufacturer, work closer together on the hardware/software interface that forgets what looks good in demos or benchmarks, but encapsulates any type of graphical work within the application to make design less frustrating.It is based on the GeForce Go 7300 with professional certified graphics drivers for applications like CAD, Rendering, 3D modelling, etc.
Perhaps the combination of the CPU, GPU and software is to blame and it’s up to us to find the trifecta omnibus of graphical perfection. It’s easy to expect that every edge will be crisp and every rotation clean and breezy, but it’s still not there. After using it for a few months I can tell the difference, but if you think it gets rid on any lag whatsoever you’d be mistaken. The FX 1800 was one I’ve been waiting to get my hands on. I’ve always had pretty good result with NVIDIA Quadro cards, except for a few that have completely crapped out on me for no apparent reason. Otherwise working within sketches between views is very fast. Offset selection when zoomed in very, very tight. If you really want to work optimally though, you’ll want to turn off RealView in SolidWorks (toggle View, Display, RealView Graphics) and TURN OFF ANY TRANSPARENCY. If you’re zoomed in on a large assembly doing some detail work with simple sketches, patterns or other features, no problem. If you’re zoomed out and have RealView on, you’ll be getting some lag. Where the FX 1800 really stood out is when you’re zoomed in tight on a large model. After that, the rotating and general viewing was much better, but still had a lag in some instances. What fixed this is doing a force rebuild (Ctrl-Q) and selecting ‘Hide all Types’ in the View pulldown. Not so different from the FX 1700, but felt even more unresponsive. After it was open, rotating panning and zooming all had lag. This is where it all sucked a bit, and maybe it’s on the program side, but you’d expect a model to be able to rotate smoothly once everything was opened. Less of that now, which I’m sure was on NVIDIA’s checklist. Much nicer, especially during reviews, where waiting for models to load become targets for awkward silences and meaningless conversation. Not so with the 1800, the model appeared faster with a shorter amount of lag between flipping back and forth between different screens.Īlong with that, it was easier to rotate the model, zoom-in, out and pan, while SolidWorks was loading everything. In the older Quadros I’d get a big lag on the switching and sometime even lock up. When you’re opening a large assembly that takes a good part of an eon to open, it’s common for a user to switch to something else *internet* to increase productivity, and then check back to see the progress of the model loading.
This is where I found one big boost over the FX 1700. Via the Control Panel, you simply select Set Up Multiple Displays and choose the mode you want to rock. The Display set-up is exactly the same as the FX 1700. No problem, you can find a DisplayPort to DVI adpater for around $10-20, just don’t call or go to RadioShack trying to find it there. I didn’t get a user guide with the video card, but quickly figured out as I discussed above that I would need an adapter.
Hit the component tab and you’ll see the full driver versions listed next to their associated file (image below.) For the FX 1800 there’s only one supported driver shown on the SolidWorks Certified Graphics Card Drivers website.
Click that and you’ll get a dialog box with the (truncated) driver version shown. To find the Nvidia Quadro FX 1800 driver version, right click on your desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel In the bottom left corner of the window that appears, you’ll see a link that says System Information. From the numbers alone it looks obvious that the 1800 should be better. Here’s the surface comparison of both the 17 from the NVIDIA website. You can only use two of the ports, both DisplayPorts or the DVI and a DisplayPort. But wait, 3 ports doesn’t not mean you can use 3 monitors. If you buy it from a store, you’ll get 1 adapter. This can be very annoying and was for me, since the card I received didn’t come with a DisplayPort to DVI adapter. The biggest difference you’ll want to know about besides all the specs (below) is that the FX 1800 has 2 DisplayPorts and 1 Dual Link DVI-I port, whereas the previous FX cards came with 2 Dual Link DVI-I ports. Before I use the FX1800, I had used a FX 1500 and FX 1700.