Graphic Cards Compatible With Flexsim

I am recommending a school to upgrade their card on desktop to Geforce graphic card. Please recommend a good graphic card that is still available in the market and is stable and good for runing Flexsim CT.

Thanks

David

I´m working with a Nvidia Quadro Fx 1800 and have no problems until now. Only thing I´m a little worry about is the single DVI port. There are 2 Display Ports on but I can´t work with them because I don´t got the right hardware. Ordered a adapter this week and hopefully can work with 2 monitors next year.

Just a quick note about cleaning up corrupted windows - sometimes restarting the windows shell will do it. To do this you need to kill the explorer.exe task in the task manager (which will remove the start/task bar etc..)and then start it again via the task manager with 'explorer.exe' via File->New task (Run..). It may help avoid having to compile or exit/reset Flexsim.

Jason

I have a new laptop equipped with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M. Have to run Flexsim with "Compatibility Mode" box in the Graphics Configurator checked.

The issue I am having when I uncheck the "Compatibility Mode" box:

When I click on an object in the Ortho or Perspective window, lines (grid lines, CAD drawing lines, etc) get thicker and the text (object names, Visual Tool text) gets fuzzy.

Danny

Laptop Specs:
Dell Precision M6400
8 GB RAM
Core 2 Q9300
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 1GB

Danny, are you sure that you have the latest drivers? Also look at nvidia direct.

If you have, you could try to go 1 driver back and see if that gives some relief.
I have a Quadro FX 2500M and have had some problems with it also (see my posts in this thread) Problems where only solved finally when a new driver came out (which was the 2nd in 2.5 years time or something like that)

I'll never recommend a quadro anymore but always go to a geforce card because the quadro's are simply not updated that often.

Steven

Awesome - very happy with version 5.0.

Thanks guys!

Kenny

Yeah, I wonder if we need to start this thread over again, because a lot of the issues mentioned above are fixed in v5.

So probably we should. I regulary got the problem to don´t know what Hardware I should order. Maybe there could be a Thread in which we don´t speek about the Hardware that doesn´t work. Only need hints for Hardware that works fine allways!

Thanks

I am suggesting instead of graphic card, may be we could start a thread to state the brand, model, RAM and type of graphic ram of the laptop that is suitable for Flexsim usage.

I have some problems with running FlexSim, when I want to move the model or to zoom on this, it take time before reacting. My notebook is a HP EliteBook 8540w with a intel core i7, a NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800M graphicard, 4 GO RAM and with Windows Seven 32 bit.

I have read that some people on this forum have problems with this type of notebook or this type of graphicards, but they don't say if they resolve them and how they make. If somebody knows what I can do to improve the situation, please tell me!

Thanks!

I did wrote what I have done to resolve the problems: Waiting!!

If you have, you could try to go 1 driver back and see if that gives some relief.
I have a Quadro FX 2500M and have had some problems with it also (see my posts in this thread) Problems where only solved finally when a new driver came out (which was the 2nd in 2.5 years time or something like that)

I'll never recommend a quadro anymore but always go to a geforce card because the quadro's are simply not updated that often.

So the only thing you can do is wait for new drivers either from the graphics card vendor, the graphics chip manufacturer or the laptop manufacturer. Or see if you can change your card for a (usually cheaper) gamecard.

Hi,

we have had some problems with nvidia quadro 1400 back in 2006.
We have achieved some improvements with vertikal synchronisation and depth buffering turned off. The right description might be different in english. It is just a translation from german.
Maybe you should turn off most of the individual 3D-functions in the advanced driver menu. The card has still enough power.

Jörg

I have tried turning off the 3D-function, but nothing change when I run FlexSim. I'm not really sure that the problem is the graphic card. Normally this card should be a good graphic card. Does somebody know if this problem could have other origin than the graphic card?

An easy check for your graphics card is to run Flexsim in compatibility mode and check what happens then. If everything runs fine but a bit slower and not so nice graphics, you can be pretty sure that the graphics card is the problem.

You can run in compatibility mode by going to the global preferences, select graphics tabpage and select compatibility Mode.

And no I don't see any other possible problem. Actually 99.9% of problems running flexsim has to do with graphics cards. Although after version 5.0 much less problems have arisen I think.

My customer changed the old note book to new Dell Note book Precision M4600 because of running Flexsim.

The graphic vard is NVIDIA QUADRO 1000M.
The note book has two graphic cards of intel HD graphics family and NVidia above.

The graphic driver is 2011-06-05 8.17.12.6883.

Graphic memory is 2GB and Main memory is 8GB.
Windows 7 64bit is installed in his note book.

But he met some strange problem I have not met before.
The problem is not to control to move the 3D view - operation screen by using left click of the mouse.
He set changed the Graphics option of the Global Preferences.
When checked Compatibility Mode, the fonts in the model become broken.
But unchecked it, the fonts display normal.

Not to move the screen is same in the case of the blank screen without any objects and in the case of the project model with many objects.

My note book to run the same project model is good.
My note book is Dell XPS 15z of two graphic card intel HD and NVidia GeForce GT 525M.
2GB graphic memory and 8 GB main memory in Windows 7 64bit.
Flexsim is very excellent in my note book.

What's the problem?

If someone uses the same model note book of Dell Precision M4600,
I want hear his experiences and any other solution.

Thank you.

First off all, i would not recommend a quadro card. So if your client asks always recommand geforce. Geforce is much more mainstream and is updated more often.

Anyway I looked at the dell side and there is a newer driver:260.19.29, A00 from juli

And on the nvidia site there is even a newer driver (from august). So first things first. Please update the drivers of the graphics cards.

Please, be aware that most of the recent laptops with an Nvidia GeForce Card have Optimus enabled.

Optimus is an optimization technology created by Nvidia to save battery life by automatically switching the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) off when it is not needed and switching it on when needed again.

When the GPU power is off, the driver redirects graphics commands to the integrated graphics chip (Intel for example). Currently only Windows 7 is officially supported.

If you run Flexsim with Optimus it won't use at all the nvidia discrete GPU, it will use the Intel integrated graphics instead. You can create a profile for using the nvidia GeForce card every time Flexsim is running or if you right click on Flexsim icon, choose between intel or nvidia.

This year (2011), Intel improved a lot his graphics. I can run the Flexim demo models with the Intel Graphics and with several layouts windows just fine. Previous Intel graphics were really terrible. Note that I always recommend nvidia over intel, especially with some really large models with lots of detailed graphics, but intel is getting better.

Actually having several layout windows opened, causes some freezing problems with nvidia, but not with Intel.
(EDIT: Not anymore!!! As Ralf suggested, updating the nvidia card driver to version 285.62 solved the freezing problems).

Running current Intel Graphics (with updated drivers) is much better than activating the Compatibiliy Mode within Flexsim, because all goes by software and skips the graphics hardware, slowing the model as the frames per seconds goes down.

I have a Dell XPS 15 with a GeForce GT 540m and the Intel HD Graphics, which works great with Flexsim.

Those of you who don't know what Graphic Card you have: open Flexsim, select Help > About Flexsim and take a look at the OpenGL line:

If it says GeForce or Quadro you have an Nvidia GPU.
If it says Radeon or FireGL you have an AMD GPU (the name changed from ATI to AMD)
If it says Intel you don't have a discrete GPU
If it says GDI Generic Microsoft Corporation you're using Flexsim Compatibility Mode.

Flexsim doesn't benefit (as far as I know) of Nvidia's SLI, a multi-GPU solution for linking two or more GPUs together to produce a single output. Just having one videocard is fine for Flexsim.

I solved this problem.
The solution is simple. It's not the new graphic driver.
It has been solved by setting the global setting tab and program setting the NVidia Control icon when click the Right button in the windows screen.

Global setting - NVidia processor
Program setting - Add Flexsim.exe

It's all and after only setting, Flexsim running and operation is good.
Not problem.

Thanks Toucet.

Hi All,

This summer I bought a new Precision Dell M660 with a ATI FirePro M8900 and now I experiencing some seriuos problems:
1) sometime when load models Flexsim hangup (consuming CPU) and I need to kill and restart.
2) selection problem: moving the mouse in a 3d view Flexsim highligh object that doesn't are 'under' mouse cursor (in the bottonleft corner of 3d you can see strange value of x,y,z coords)
3) when do a click on an object Flexsim take a up to 2-3 second to select the object

Issue 2) and 3) seem to be related to an opengl problem of ATI driver (GL_SELECT mode).
Anyone has experience with these kind of problems with ATI Firepro card?

Thanks
Luciano.

Luciano,

Do you have the latest drivers from Dell? Have you tried drivers from AMD (ATI)?

I'm interested in hearing more about other users with FirePro cards. We haven't done extensive testing with that type of card yet.