Gaming and CAD

AFAIK you cannot mix discreet GPUs as your primary display...Intel is doing it with the intergrated HD2000/3000/4000 GPUs in their newer Mobos, but that's a different story.

You can have different cards, one as the dedicated display driver and the rest used for number crunching / mining / GPU rendering etc, but I doubt you can switch between them on the fly as your primary display driver. I guess if you are using display port or HDMI it is not that hard to just pull the plug and plug to the other, switching between your CAD/Gaming cards? Forgive my ignorance.

What I do know, is that the Quadro 2000 is a bit of a mediocre card on all fields.
For that money you can get a FirePro V5900 which will blow the Quadro 2000 away (performance wise the V5900 is in Quadro 4000 range), and might even game a bit - tho not as good as your 6870...

Also, ofc you will see some improvement with O/C your CPU...you hit 25%, simply because the regular modelling operations in Solidworks/3DS/Maya etc are not multi-threaded, so you are using only one of your four cores...25% is the ceiling unless something else in the background manages to occupy a bit more.
Edited by dtolios - 7/26/12 at 11:03am

I don't have any problems using NVIDIA cards in complex CAD software. I use UGS NX mainly though.

Your best bet is a HD 7950 or HD 7970 card. performance in profesional applications will be much better and gaming perf too will be better than HD 6870 CF.

here is a comparison of GTX 580, GTX 680, HD 7870, HD 7970 in specviewperf 11 bench which includes solidworks (sw-02)

http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-gtx-680-2gb-overclocking-review-win-some-lose-some/15322-4.html

HD 7970 runs at 925 Mhz and HD 7870 at 1 Ghz. HD 7970 (1 Ghz) will win all benchmarks.

here is a comparison of HD 7970M,HD 6990M, GTX 680M, GTX 675M
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-GeForce-GTX-680M-vs-Radeon-HD-7970M.77110.0.html

HD 7970M uses the Pitcairn chip used in the desktop HD 7870 while HD 6990M uses the Barts chip used in desktop HD 6870. You can clearly see the superiority of HD 7970M against the other chips

HD 7950 OC cards like MSI HD 7950 OC are available for as low as USD 310 after rebate. So if you sell both the HD 6870 cards for USD 200 and spend a little over 100 bucks you can get the MSI HD 7950 OC. 880 Mhz at stock. easily runs at 1 Ghz at stock voltages and 1.15 Ghz with voltage tweaking.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/amd-radeon-7950-review/18
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5625/amd-radeon-hd-7870-ghz-edition-radeon-hd-7850-review-rounding-out-southern-islands/19

here is a HD 7950 (1050 Mhz) at stock voltage

Metro 2033 1920 x 2100 Very high AAA

HD 7950 (1050) - 63
HD 7870(1200) - 50
HD 6870 - 31

Batman AC 1920 X 1200 Extreme 4x AA

HD 7950 (1050) - 88
HD 7870(1200) - 66
HD 6870 - 45

CF when it scales well is in the 80% range.So HD 7950 (1 Ghz+ ) is faster than HD 6870 CF. HD 7950 OC provides much better and consistent performance without any multi GPU issues like micro stuttering or CF profile availability.

HD 7900 cards are the only option if you want good gaming performance (better than HD 6870 CF) and leading performance in professional applications.
Edited by raghu78 - 7/27/12 at 1:59am

The reason the ATI does better in those tests probably has more to due with drivers than anything else.

The reason that the HD 7900 cards are ahead in professional applications is because their compute performance is much better. Also they have huge bandwidth with a 384 bit memory bus and 3GB VRAM which helps the performance when you run those professional workloads which are bandwidth demanding.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680/14

"as always our final set of performance benchmarks is a look at compute performance. As we saw with the launch of the GTX 680, Kepler (GK104) just doesn’t do very well here, thanks in part to NVIDIA stripping out a fair bit of compute hardware and memory bandwidth on GK104 in order to focus on gaming performance. OpenCL performance is particularly bad with NVIDIA almost completely ignoring it, but even DirectCompute performance often swings AMD’s way. This isn’t to say that GK104 doesn’t have its moments, but when it comes to compute it’s typically AMD’s time to shine."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-benchmark,3232-14.html

"As developers get better about identifying the aspects of their workloads able to benefit from a GPU’s parallelized architecture, and then maximize the performance they’re able to extract from the hardware, Sandra helps demonstrate that the potential of AMD’s GCN far outstrips Kepler as it is implemented in GK104. And with GK110 not expected on the desktop until 2013, our placing isn’t expected to change this year."


http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review--tahiti-s-boost-from-overclocking-and-drivers/16362-7.html

from the review

"We already know how HD 7970 is a compute monster and GTX 680 is not, no point beating a dead horse right? "

http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review--tahiti-s-boost-from-overclocking-and-drivers/16362-8.html

Its clear that Nvidia compromised on compute performance to get an efficient gaming chip. The HD 7970 / HD 7950 is a no compromise gaming + compute workhorse. anybody who doesn't accept that is simply not in sync with the truth.