Autodesk och gaming

Nej CAD-program skiter fullständigt i professionella grafikkort. Idag skulle jag påstå att ingen insatt autodeskanvändare köper ett proffskort för prestandan (man gör det för att ha ett kort som är på autodesks QVL för att inte bli nekad support vid renderingsbuggar). Mest prestanda just nu tror jag man får av ett 1080 Ti, visst man kan få mer prestanda om man betalar dubbelt så mycket men det är några procent. Generellt är Autodesk urusla på prestandaoptimering och multitrådning sker sparsamt.

Minne äter dock CAD-program, behöver inte vara snabbt, bara mycket.

Direct3D is WHQL certified on a _wide_ range of graphics HW, meaning workstation, consumer, game, laptop, and integrated-on-the-motherboard graphics chipsets. Essentially, using Direct3D, the only differentiator is performance. This is not true with OpenGL, where OpenGL graphics drivers actually _disable_ some OpenGL functionality on consumer, game, laptop, and chipset HW so you are _forced_ to purchase the more expensive workstation graphics HW, just so your OpenGL graphics works correctly.

In this new release of Inventor, we are now accepting this reality and any Direct3D graphics driver that is WHQL certified is certified for use with Inventor. Will there be some situations that arise that WHQL does not test? Yes, we did find _one_ specific situation in R11 and the Microsoft WHQL team did investigate the situation and the WHQL testing and certification suite for _all_ graphics HW on Windows now includes an additional test for the situation that we uncovered with Inventor.

Ultimately, we want to provide an Inventor product that is of the highest quality in terms of graphics _and_ that is affordable for a _wide_ range of budgets. For example, if you are no longer _required_ to spend $1000 to $2000 to simply have graphics HW that works, but can instead purchase a $100 to $350 game card ... then you can take the $900 to $1650 you saved and spend it on other system aspects that might have a _much_ more significant impact on your user experience with Inventor, such as having 8 GB of RAM instead of 4 GB (a _real_ 64-bit system!), having high performance Ultra SCSI SAS drives instead of SATA, or having top-of-the-line multi-core CPU(s) instead of a single lower cost CPU version. Or ... alternatively, if you so desire, you can purchase a lower-cost system in order to save some money and Inventor will actually work on it from a graphics point of view. Any student budget should allow you to purchase a low cost laptop that will work with Inventor becasue if you can play a Direct3D game, you can run Inventor, so far as the graphics are concerned.