Graphics card for SOLIDWORKS 2026: from the NVIDIA RTX A400 and A1000 to the RTX PRO 4000

The graphics card SOLIDWORKS 2026 asks for

For SOLIDWORKS 2026, Dassault Systèmes names no minimum of GPU memory and no class of card. The graphics row of its system requirements says "Certified cards and drivers", and the certification list behind that row holds computer models, each with one graphics card and one driver. Among the cards we supply, the list has rows with desktop workstations for the NVIDIA RTX A400, the NVIDIA RTX A1000, the NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation, the NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell, as read on 10 November 2026.

A card for a SOLIDWORKS seat is therefore chosen in two steps. The first is to find the workstation model in Dassault's list, with the card and the driver named beside it. The second is to pick the memory size by the work the seat does, from 4 GB for drawings to 24 GB for large assemblies with rendering. This guide stays with the five cards up to the RTX PRO 4000; the 32 and 48 GB cards and the other CAD systems are the subject of our GPU for CAD guide, and Autodesk's products have their own article on the GPU for AutoCAD, Revit and Inventor.

How to read the SOLIDWORKS hardware certification list

The list on Dassault's hardware certification page has seven columns: System Vendor, System Model, Operating System, Graphics Card, Solidworks Version, Recommended Driver and Test Notes. Each row stands for one computer model with one graphics card. A card has no certificate of its own, so a sentence such as "the RTX A1000 is certified for SOLIDWORKS" is only true with a computer model attached to it.

With the version filter set to 2026, we read the first page of results for each card on 10 November 2026. The table gives examples from those rows.

Dassault Systèmes, SOLIDWORKS Hardware Certification list, version filter 2026, first results page per card, read 10 November 2026. The list is undated; the models are examples and no complete list.

Three things in the list are easy to misread.

The same name covers desktop cards and laptop GPUs. Under RTX A1000, RTX 2000 Ada Generation, RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell and RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell the list holds rows with towers and rows with mobile workstations. NVIDIA sells laptop GPUs under the same or nearly the same names, with less memory: 4 or 6 GB for the laptop RTX A1000, 8 GB for the laptop RTX 2000 Ada Generation and for the RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell Generation, 16 GB for the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell Generation. The list has no column for the form factor, so the system model in the row tells which product was tested. The rows we read for the RTX A400 were towers only.

The driver belongs to the row. The column is headed "Recommended Driver", its link names the branch R580, and the cell adds a minimum supported version: "R580 U7 Version 582.16" in the tower rows with Blackwell cards, "R580 U5 Version 581.80" in the rows with Ada and A-series cards. A different computer model can carry a different version, so one driver number for a card does not exist.

The RTX 2000E Ada is not in the list. The NVIDIA RTX 2000E Ada Generation has no entry among the card names of the filter. That means not listed and nothing more; no Dassault page we read says anything about the card.

We supply the cards in this guide across the EU; send us the workstation models and the number of seats and we reply with a written quote within one business day.

What Dassault leaves open: memory, RealView, virtual machines

The system requirements page gives 16 GB of RAM, with 32 GB recommended, and for graphics nothing beyond the reference to certified cards and drivers. It names no GPU memory, no OpenGL version and no DirectX level. Any figure of the kind "SOLIDWORKS needs so many GB of video memory" therefore comes from someone other than Dassault, and we give none.

On RealView the certification page offers a graphics patch for the case that a professional card is not recognised for RealView and Enhanced Graphics Performance. A list of cards that enable RealView is not part of the pages we read.

For virtual machines the requirements page states that SOLIDWORKS and eDrawings require a GPU for optimal performance. None of the five cards is on NVIDIA's vGPU list of 2 October 2026; we plan them for physical seats. Virtual CAD desktops on shared GPUs are a different design, described in our guide to a GPU platform for engineering firms.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2026 states figures of its own

Visualize, the rendering product, is the one place where Dassault prints GPU figures. Its 2026 requirements page describes GPU support for the renderer 3DS Stellar Physically Correct in two modes.

Dassault Systèmes, System Requirements for SOLIDWORKS Visualize, help release 2026, read 10 November 2026.

Without an applicable GPU, Visualize and Visualize Boost fall back to the processor. The page gives no recommended memory size and says nothing about several GPUs.

Set against the cards: the RTX A400 has exactly the 4 GB that the page names as the minimum, so it has no reserve above that line. All five cards carry RT Cores by NVIDIA's datasheets, second generation on the RTX A400 (6) and RTX A1000 (18), third generation on the RTX 2000 Ada (22) and fourth generation on the two Blackwell cards. The driver number 538.78 on the Visualize page is a lower version than those in the certification rows above; for a seat that runs both products, we would follow the row of the certification list.

Five cards from 4 to 24 GB

NVIDIA datasheets: RTX A400 (3279761, May 2024), RTX A1000 (April 2024), RTX 2000 Ada Generation (2999417, January 2024), RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell (5322351, June 2026), RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell (5323450, June 2026); power cables from NVIDIA's quick start guides.

Dassault publishes no table of assembly sizes per card. The assignment below is our recommendation from the figures in the table and from the Visualize minimum; the largest assembly a seat opens in daily work remains the test.

RTX A400, 4 GB. A card for drawings, detailing and part modelling, and for seats that review models others have built. It drives four displays at 4096 × 2160 and 120 Hz. With 4 GB it sits on the Visualize minimum, so we would not plan rendering on it. Card pages: RTX A400 specs, buy the RTX A400.

RTX A1000, 8 GB. Twice the memory and twice the memory bandwidth in the same 50 W and the same single slot. This is the card for parts and small to medium assemblies in a compact workstation, with some room for Visualize. Our comparison RTX A1000 vs RTX A400 sets the two side by side; the card pages are RTX A1000 specs and buy the RTX A1000.

RTX 2000 Ada and RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell, 16 GB. The step for larger assemblies, for 4K screens and for rendering beside modelling. Both draw 70 W from the slot, without a power cable, and both take two slots at 2.7 in of height. The Blackwell card has 4,352 CUDA cores against 2,816, GDDR7 at 288 GB/s against GDDR6 at 224 GB/s, and DisplayPort 2.1b outputs. The Ada card remains the order for fleets whose images are validated on it. Details: RTX 2000 Ada specs, buy the RTX 2000 Ada, RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell specs, buy the RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell, and the three-way comparison RTX A1000 vs RTX 2000 Ada and RTX PRO 2000.

RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell, 24 GB. For large assemblies with many appearances and textures, for Visualize scenes that outgrow 16 GB, and for seats where a second GPU job runs beside CAD. It is a full-height card that takes one slot and needs the 16-pin power cable; an adapter from one 8-pin PCIe cable is in the box. Details: RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell specs, buy the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell, and RTX PRO 2000 vs RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell.

Published SOLIDWORKS measurements for these cards

Among the cards named in this guide, we found measured SOLIDWORKS results for the Ada cards only. SPEC's results summary for SPECapc for SolidWorks 2024, last updated on 26 November 2024, lists whole workstations at Full HD.

SPEC, SPECapc for SolidWorks 2024 results summary (spec.org), updated 26 November 2024, Full HD. The HP system has a Core i7-14700, the Dell a Core i9-14900K, the BOXX a Ryzen 9 9950X.

The two rows from the same HP chassis are the useful pair: with the RTX 2000 Ada the GPU composite is 4.71 against 2.90 with a T1000. The other rows differ in processor as well as card, so they compare systems. In SPECviewperf 15.0, an HP Z6 G5 A with an NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation reached a solidworks-08 composite of 184.42 at Full HD in a run of 16 April 2025. A search of SPEC's pages on 10 November 2026 found no result for a Blackwell card, the RTX A1000 or the RTX A400. For the 24 and 32 GB Ada cards see the RTX 4500 Ada specs and buy the RTX 4500 Ada, the RTX 5000 Ada specs and buy the RTX 5000 Ada.

NVIDIA's own statements come without test conditions. For the RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell its blog of 11 August 2025 states up to 1.6x faster 3D modelling, 1.4x faster CAD performance and 1.6x quicker rendering compared with the previous generation, without naming the baseline card. For the RTX 2000 Ada its blog of 12 February 2024 states up to 1.5x the performance of the previous-generation RTX A2000 12GB in professional workflows. Third-party engineering tests of the Blackwell cards are recorded in our GPU for CAD guide.

Slot, power cable and driver in the workstation

Four of the five cards are 2.7 in high. NVIDIA's own documents call the RTX A1000 and the RTX A400 low profile; the RTX 2000 Ada and the RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell are half-height (2.7 in), the format usually called low profile, and need two slot widths. For the RTX A400 and the RTX A1000, NVIDIA's datasheet gives a maximum power consumption of 50 W and names no auxiliary power connector. The two 16 GB cards run without a power cable by NVIDIA's quick start guides. Only the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell needs a full-height slot and a cable.

All five run on the NVIDIA RTX Enterprise Production Branch driver. NVIDIA describes it as a rebrand of the former Quadro driver for enterprise with the same ISV certification, and says of certified combinations that they are formally tested against criteria set by the application developers. The current Windows releases are 621.14 (R620, 4 November 2026), 597.30 (R595, 22 October 2026) and 582.99 (R580, 21 October 2026), and all three list the five cards. The certification rows name the R580 branch with minimum versions 581.80 and 582.16, both older than the current R580 release. For a fleet we would therefore roll out one R580 release at or above the minimum of its rows to every seat, until Dassault's rows name another branch.

Seats that still run Windows 10 should know one date in advance: NVIDIA's release notes for 621.14 state that Release 620 will be the last branch to support Windows 10. Our article on the NVIDIA RTX Enterprise driver for Windows 10 and 11 covers the branches.

RTX 5000 Ada and the other larger cards in the list

The same list has desktop rows for the RTX 4500 Ada, the RTX 5000 Ada, the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell and the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell. It does not separate the 48 GB from the 72 GB RTX PRO 5000, and it does not separate the Workstation Edition of the RTX PRO 4500 from the Server Edition. For the RTX 4500 Ada and the RTX 5000 Ada, SPEC's SOLIDWORKS results are quoted above. Which of these a seat needs for very large assemblies, GPU rendering or simulation is worked through in our GPU for CAD guide.

Where Quadro P and T-series cards are replaced in existing SOLIDWORKS towers, the slot and power questions of that step are in our article on replacing Quadro P1000, T400 and T1000 cards. If the seats differ, tell us which assemblies each kind of seat opens and which chassis it has, and we quote a card per seat type in one offer.

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