Hi guys, I wonder if anyone can help me, this has been driving me crazy. I've recently got a new graphics card and it's really not performing as well as I'd hoped. It's an Nvidia Quadro P2000 and is certified for Solidworks, but only with a certain release of the driver. The problem is, when I try to install this specific river I get the message "This Graphics Driver could find compatible graphics hardware" I've tried all sorts of things - editing the .INF files, scrubbing the old drivers using the DDU tool etc. and nothing seems to work. I tried to speak to Nvidia but their LiveChat is useless - basically you get to the front of the queue then it resets. I spoke to my computer manufacturer and they told me to install a newer driver. This does work... but the performance is only slightly better than my four year old laptop, which is pretty disappointing after the cash I just dropped on this card! Has anyone else experienced this and fixed it? Any tips? Does using a different driver really have that much of an effect?
Hey John, First of all, Nvidia Quadro P2000 is a relatively powerful card and I'd expect it to run Solidworks on any driver. That, of course, doesn't mean that different driver versions don't come with different performance figures (and a different number of bugs). It would be helpful to inform us of what version number you are trying to install, your operation system (is it Windows 10 or 7?), and whether you are using a 32-bit or 64-bit system. All of these are very important otherwise we can't pick the right package. Once we make sure that you are using the right driver, we can then proceed to the lack of performance issue that you are reporting. As I said, the Quadro P2000 is a powerful card so there's no way your old laptop can compare to it. You are experiencing this due to one of the following reasons: Not using a suitable driver (most likely) Your CPU/RAM or PCI express is seriously bottlenecking your GPU The cooler is not properly installed and the card overheats quickly and enters throttling mode. The card is defective (less likely)
Hi, thanks for getting back to me. I don't know why I didn't put more details in the first post! I'm running Windows 10, Intel Core i7 8750H, 16GB RAM, SW is installed on the main SSD. I have the 390.94 driver installed for the P2000 whereas 386.07 is the certified version. When I try to install that or roll back to it I get the error message mentioned above, where the installer doesn't see the Quadro card. I spoke to my computer manufacturer (MSI) and they said just to use the 390.94 driver... In terms of the performance - it does work okay... but frequently on rebuilds SW freezes for a second, goes fullscreen (so my Windows taskbar disappears), then it goes back to normal. It's almost as if Windows Explorer is crashing and restarting. I'm also constantly getting an error message from Solidworks saying my system is critically low on resources and executing a certain command may cause SW to fail. This is strange because I barely ever (maybe once every few months) got that message on my old laptop with same SW models. That was just an Intel integrated video card (although it was approved) and also 16GB but I frequently ran SW plus Photoshop, plus Illustrator, plus a load of browser tabs at the same time and didn't get the same issue. I was running Windows 8 on that one - could it be that Windows 10 is using up all that extra memory? It almost makes me wonder if SW isn't using the Quadro card properly? I have the Nvidia control panel and in showing in the Device Manager so I think that the card itself does work. Any ideas? Thanks!
Ok, it is obvious that your CPU and RAM are not bottlenecking your GPU, so check that you have connected the card on the main PCI-express socket, and not on a lower one. If that's good, enter the BIOS settings and see if you need to disable the onboard card. Have you connected your monitor to the GPU card or your MB? Sorry if all of this sounds obvious, but we need to make sure that you have done the basic things right before going any further. If you connect the monitor to the GPU, it should automatically disable the onboard card. If not, check the settings on the BIOS. Next, and if all of the above is good, try using an even older driver. Something like 370 for example. If that still doesn't change anything, grab a Linux live CD and boot it to see how your card performs with the Linux Nvidia drivers (even the open source ones). If it does well enough, it means that you're having trouble with your Windows installation. If it is still underperforming, you either have a throttling problem or a defective product. Cheers
Thanks for the speedy reply. It's actually a laptop so I assume there's only one socket for the video card (sorry, I'm a bit clueless on this so please correct me if I'm wrong). Should I try to go into the BIOS and turn off the onboard card? I don't have an optical drive so can't boot Linux from that. Is there another way I could do it?
It's a laptop with an nVidia Quadro P2000? You can also boot Linux from a pen drive (USB stick). Check this out: https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#0
Why, isn't that common? I only just got it last week. Pretty disappointed after spending so much money! I tired to turning the on-board video card off in the Device Manager and the display still works (I assume on the Quadro card). I'll run it like that for a while and see if that affects anything. Is that roughly the same as what you're suggesting?
So the laptop has a Quadro card, but also had the CPU graphics enabled? Disabling them and reinstalling the drivers should fix it. If not, give the Linux live USB a spin to see how it goes.
Yeah, both were enabled. So I should just completely disable the on-board graphics (in the Device Manager?) I'll give that a try.
I've still had no luck and I've tried pretty much everything. I've downloaded an app that monitors GPU usage and this seems to be anything up to 15% when using Solidworks. I assumed it'd be much higher though - what might be typical?
