|
Upgrading your video card and drivers can be one of the most effective ways of improving your SolidWorks performance and stability.
Many people have heard of Moore’s law, where the performance of processors doubles on an 18 month cycle but many don’t realize that video processors are on a 6-12 month cycle. This means that the changes in software to take advantage of new hardware abilities can rapidly lay waste to older video card technology and video performance. A 3year old video card may be six generations behind.
Video RAM is important, when multiple accelerated widows are open, higher resolutions and rendering complexity can all use more RAM. Video cards 3-4 years old, offered 32 MB of ram now you can get them with 512MB.
Generally new Video card drivers are updated on average about every three months, introducing new features and functionality and improving stability. This also means that as you update to the latest SolidWorks version you may not be taking advantage of all it has to offer, in video or that your drivers may be out of date for the new version and you may encounter issues related to this. I recommend checking for the latest driver for your video card on the SolidWorks website every time you update to a new service pack or about every 3 months. Below are just some of the issues you might experience if your video card and or drivers are out of date.
· Software hangs up (unresponsive).
· Software Crashes with “Unhandled Error”.
· Modules within the software do not respond to mouse clicks.
· The 3-D views are not re-generated completely, or contain blank areas where a window used to be positioned.
· 2D and 3D views do not update properly.
· Ghosting, sketch or edge lines show up where they should not.
· “Real View” may be grayed out or does not function correctly.
SolidWorks Technical Support spends a significant amount of time testing video cards and drivers from many manufacturers to find the most stable drivers for each card. SolidWorks recommends the use of Certified graphics cards and Drivers.
To find a Certified Video card and driver or to update your video card driver, use this link below. On the page, Select the certified button, select a manufacturer from the pull down menu and select the “show passing” button. You will see each video card along with the correct driver to use for your operating system.
http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html
|
