I was wondering if there is a video game equivalent for sketchup in terms of processing power requirements.
While looking for new equipment I noticed that googling a gpu, will often give a result that describes how it plays for a certain game.
So I’m wondering which game is roughly equivalent to sketchup, so I can enter that and see how that game plays with that gpu.
Games are usually not equivalent to 3d modeling softwares. They work very differently. 3d modeling softwares use by majority OpenGL and a combination of CPU and GPU rendering. Trimble neither produces games nor does there exist a game based on SketchUp’s engine (though SketchUp’s engine is roughly based on Alchemy3d if that helps you).
You would best go following the hardware recommendations given in the system requirements article.
regardless if OpenGL or MS Direct3D is used for the accelerated 3D display output, the results of benchmarks will be almost comparable.
therefore check the PassMark High End Video Card benchmark for a comparison of of dedicated video cards suitable for SU (nothing below ~3,500 passmark points).
if a desktop system is used, you might want check the brand new nVidia GeForce GTX 960 (~200.- U$) as a mid range video card… preferably in a silent dual cooler configuration. If you wanna pay less, go for the GTX 750 Ti… if you wanna more power, go for the GTX 770.
Some games use OpenGL too, but they usually use only a small subset of the available functions, so playing a game is not a valid way of testing the 3D modeling performance of a system reliably. I would guess that if a game is available for both the PC and the Mac, it is more likely to use OpenGL than one that is only for Windows.
Anssi
Valve was even able to show that one of their OpenGL games had higher performance than its DirectX variant (though I believe that was highly optimized to support Valve’s purposes).
You would better search for graphic cards suitable for 3d modeling rather than games (Maya3d is a professional and very cross-platform one using OpenGL), or you search for ones that already mention their suitability for SketchUp.