AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

Has anyone compared C3d 2013 's performance under wXP and w7 (64bit both)?

I recently met someone working in an Autodesk Training Center

who claimed that Autodesk's s/w (not specifically C3D)

performed better when running under wXP as it's "lighter" than w7.

Even if that's true, are there any disadvantages?

thank you in advance

[#2]

Hi,

I can't agree to WinXP is really faster than Win7. The only situation that might be possible is that you compare WinXP-32bit with Win7-64bit and both are working with low memory. 3GB for WinXP-32bit is a good situation for small (very small) Civil3D-projects, having 3GB for Win7-64bit will make a lot of troubles.

And yes, if you have not installed the same services in WinXP compared to Win7 it might be a little bit faster.

If you think about WinXP-64bit: make sure first that you have all drivers for that OS working (and take also care of these are stable). Most stable drivers you get is for WinXp-32bit or Win7-64bit (imho). XP-64bit is not really often used, so the number of (working) drivers are limited.

For me: Win7-x64 with >= 8GB memory (depending on the size of projects) is the more stable solution for Civil3D and I would suggest that.

- alfred -

[#3]

thank you sir,

I am aware of the drivers problem, too.

[#4]

I can't speak to the basic AutoCAD product but there are multiple posts on this D/G and various blogs comparing the performance for various operating systems.  Generally Win 7 is the best, Vista is second, and XP is considered the worst choice.  In all cases the 64 bit version of any O/S is better than the 32 bit version.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15444804&linkID=9240697

[#5]

We've run into problems with some newer software (not just Autodesk) where it would install on Win7 64bit without a problem but would not install on XP 64bit. XP 64bit was just not very popular so alot of software was never tested on that platform where 64bit really took hold with Win 7 release.

[#6]

thank you all for your responses,

it was just something that I had to cross-check

as I am happy with my system so far.

[#7]

I'm not sure there is going to be a huge speed difference between XP and Windows 7 because they both would be using the same processor. The difference is the amount of memory that can be used. Civil 3D likes/needs memory to hold the 3D model.

Windows 7x64 is the only OS you should consider for a new machine right now (11/6/2012).

Peter Funk

Autodesk, Inc.