Several dual-fan models even over-clocked not requiring an additional power connection as e.g. the “MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GT OC” are available.
this was an answer to “gregnier” not you.
Thank you for the clarification.
Here I have the Nvidia GeForce 405. It’s been working fine consistently. My work is not commercial, but I’ve created a few wood and landscape models for my own use at home and actually finished the projects. About recommending it, perhaps you may want one that is more recent from the same company. Good luck finding one that works for you. Oh, my OS is Windows 10 (Insider edition build 15025).
What version of SketchUp are you using?
The Sketchup program I use is the current 2017 version. Sorry I left this out from my response in the forum.
Wow, I wrote the above response I thought came directly to me from Gregnier, and when I logged in here I see that the response was posted into the forum… Great!!! Probably and old feature I didn’t know about.
Well the “public” in public forum means “not private”. 
Does someone think posts in here are private? I try to post stuff that everyone can find useful. Who knows, things I write may actually help someone get their system working better.
The default behavior (unless the user changes it,) is to send an email notice about activity in topic threads the user is involved with, when logged out. So the new user may think that they’ve been directly emailed by another member, and when they click to reply, they may think they are replying privately. (I’ve seen some embarrassing posts due to this.)
I think you got the point across.
I did some testing with a large model in SU2018. It has over 10 million edges or something, lots of components/groups, big textures, etc. I used GPU-Z but didnt record anything too scientifically, just used a technique of spinning / zooming away from the current camera so the model would have to redraw a lot of pixels, then measured how long roughly the ‘lag’ was before it became smooth again. I watched the monitor to make sure it was indeed the GPU that was working at the time.
Quadro 2000 - (this is equivalent to a Geforce 1050) - not terrible but a bit slow to redraw after rotating the view a considerable amount, and shadows took up to 8 seconds to draw.
Geforce GTX 970M - useable but still took about 1 second to redraw and shadows took a few seconds.
Geforce GTX 1080 - almost seamless to redraw (well under a second) and shadows in about 1 second…
The CPUs in each case have similar performance for single thread operations. The 970M probably had the slightly weaker CPU. The CPU workload would spike from time so it’s hard to understand exactly what the role of the CPU is in this situation.
I think that a faster graphics card WILL make some difference on large/complex models but even a moderate powered card will be OK for a reasonable size model, especially if you use layers to hide/unhide things for speed, and use dummy components for rendering.
One warning: Video RAM does fill up!! So more VRAM is a definitely a good thing to have.
A 2GB card (960M) was insufficient for my model, when it ran out of RAM it really slowed down, 4GB was borderline and 8GB gave me a some headroom.
If you can go with a 1060 6GB model that would be good, otherwise a GTX1070 or better if you want to add a lot of cars, people and trees to a large-scale model.
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Great work! Your findings back up my previously published study of power supply requirements and graphics cards needed for Sketchup 2017 to work properly without crashing.
a GTX 1060-6GB should be sufficient for everything besides high-poly count models or if a render extension which renders on the GPU is required.
Traditionally the display workload in SketchUp has been divided between the CPU and GPU so that the CPU takes care of “geometry” while textures, shadows and other “raster” effects are assigned to the GPU. The biggest bottleneck is always the CPU.
The CPU spikes the power supply and filter capacitors during heavy
“geometry” changes. If spikes occur and are large enough the power
supply output Voltage will be reduced to a level unsustainable for
system operation. If that happens, a crash will occur. That’s why the
power supply output power capacity is as important, if not more-so, than
the Video Graphics card performance capability.
“MSI Computer Low Profile PCI-Express Video Card GT 710 1GD3H LPV1” bought and installed this on my 7 year old first generation Intel core i3 socket LGA 1156 motherboard system which was capable of supporting PCI-e 2.0 video cards.
Ultra low power consumption just a few watts above the built in video on the core i3 CPU.at idle and barely goes above room temperature. Finally, it was only $37 on Amazon. Get the 1GB RAM version as there is no need or benefit for anything higher.
Supports OpenGL 4.5 so it is somewhat future proof.
Cons: driver is 1.3GB!!, No other benefits to a typical desktop experience. Everything looks the same and my video editing program Corel VideoStudio X9 runs and looks the same as the video on the built in core i3.
Amazon MSI video card GT 710 $38 (still for sale as of 7/2019)
Note: my models in SketchUp 2017 are usually very simple so nothing I have done so far bogs my CPU or video card. If and when my models get fancier with lots of texture then I would likely see the benefit of the video card.
Question: does anyone have a downloadable project in SU that to test the video card / system?
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Only 10 million edges?