This guide is intended to assist in the selection of a system for use of SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2023. The requirements in this guide are for SOLIDWORKS Visualize and Visualize Boost. These requirements are intended as advice for a general audience.
This is not a troubleshooting guide. If you have any technical issues with SOLIDWORKS Visualize, please contact a support technician through our website or call us at 1.877.266.4469 (USA) or 1.866.587.6803 (Canada).
This document is only to be distributed and used by Hawk Ridge Systems customers. Any other use is prohibited.
Contents
Support for Non-NVIDIA Based GPUs
Support for Non-Quadro or Non-Tesla GPUs
Support for Multiple GPUs/All supported GPUs
System Requirements
The information below displays the minimum system requirements for the general audience who are casual SOLIDWORKS Visualize users.
| Operating System | Windows 10 (64-bit) |
| Processor | Dual-core CPU. Recommandation : Quad core. |
| Memory (RAM) | 8GB RAM. Recommendation: 16GB. |
| Storage | 2 GB free disk space. Recommendation: 5GB. |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA graphics card: NVIDIA Quadro/GeForce/Tesla with at least an NVIDIA Maxwell Chip |
| GPU Memory |
4GB of video memory or more required for the Denoiser feature |
| Other |
For NVIDIA iRay GPU support: NVIDIA® graphics card: NVIDIA Quadro®/NVIDIA GeForce®/Tesla™ with at least NVIDIA Maxwell™ chip; Dual-GPU setup with at least NVIDIA Maxwell™ cards for the best experience NVIDIA driver support for CUDA® 11.0 or newer required Recommendation: NVIDIA driver version 451.48 (or newer) For AMD ProRender GPU support: Recommendation: Radeon™ or FirePro™ series workstation cards. If an applicable GPU is not found, SOLIDWORKS Visualize defaults to the central processing unit (CPU) and does not use the installed graphics card for GPU acceleration. Also, NVIDIA cards based on the Fermi™ or Kepler™ architecture no longer support GPU acceleration. |
System Recommendation
The information below are recommended system specifications for advanced users who work with large assemblies, heavy animations, complex lighting, and reflections, or need to increase their general rendering speed.
| Operating System | Window 10 (64-bit) |
| Processor | Quad Core CPU |
| Memory (RAM) | 32 GB |
| Storage | 5 GB free disk space |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA Pascal, Turing or Volta based GPU; Quadro P2000 – P6000, Quadro RTX 4000 -6000, Quadro GV100/GP100, Titan V |
| GPU Memory | 4GB or more |
| Other |
HDR Light Studio connection: HDR Light Studio v5.3.3 or newer, except v5.4 4GB of video memory or more required for the Denoiser feature |
Support for Non-NVIDIA Based GPUs
In the past, SOLIDWORKS Visualize defaulted to only the CPU for previewing and rendering when non-NVIDIA based GPUs were used. However, starting with the 2020 release, users can utilize AMD GPUs with AMD ProRender, a raytracing engine that can be enabled in SOLIDWORKS Visualize at Tools > Options > 3D Viewport > Render Engine. The GPUs will require OpenCLTM 1.2, and we recommend installing the latest available graphics card drivers found on the AMD website. AMD ProRender is supported on Windows 7 (64-bit) and 10 (64-bit). We recommend either the Radeon or FirePro series workstation cards.
Currently, AMD ProRender does not support Fast Render Mode and Visualize Boost.
Support for Non-Quadro or Non-Tesla GPUs
Cards from NVIDIAs gamer or prosumer products such as GeForce or Titan are technically non-certified for SOLIDWORKS products. However, SOLIDWORKS is still working closely with NVIDIA to provide benchmark data on these GPUs since they will work with Visualize. Benchmark data shows that GeForce and Titan cards perform the same if not better than Quadro cards. However, for users who use SOLIDWORKS CAD and Visualize on the same computer, the Quadro cards are recommended because they are fully supported for both products.
Support for Multiple GPUs
Visualize fully supports multiple GPUs and is recommended for improving performance. Combining different NVIDIA products has shown to be successful (Quadro + GeForce/Titan). For a full list of supported GPUs, please visit Supported GPUs.
Benchmark References
• https://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/visualize-hardware-benchmarks.htm
• https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-Visualize-2017-Quadro-GPU-Performance-Comparison-895/
• https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-Visualize-2017-GeForce-GPU-Performance-Comparison-896/
• https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-Visualize-2017-GPU-Scaling-Analysis-897/
For further assistance, please contact our support team at support@hawkridgesys.com, or 877-266-4469 (US), or 866-587-6803 (Canada).
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