Xeon Vs i7 processors for AutoCad Civil 3D 2013

[Anonymous]

Are drafting department has the following systems:

Dell Optiplex 990 minitowers

Windows 7 x64

128 GB SSD - primary
500GB HDD for secondary

Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz 8m, VT-x

8GB 1333 DDR3

nVidia Quadro 4000

The problem I'm facing is that our staff has many complaints about erros in Autocad and they feel it's caused by the hardware.

Our lastest issue is the "FATAL ERROR: Unhandled e0434352h Exception at fd91ac3dh" which I already have a thread open asking for help on that matter.

What I need help with is the hardware they are currently using.  Is this causing these issues or are the machines (above) not able to handle the work load? 

I have watched them open files within a minute or more with a file size of 43mb and higher.  Larger size files seem take little longer but they are being opened over the LAN on a file server. 

Our Drafting staff feel that the need the Dell Precision computers and that hardware, that those computers would not have so many errors or slowness issiue which they see on a daily basis..

So does the i7 processor and not using a Xeon workstation like Dell Precision cause these issue in AutoCad Civil 3D?

[dgorsman]

Short answer: NO.

Long answer: NOOOOOOOO.

😄

Civil3D (its not AutoCAD - small but important point) doesn't care or know about the difference between an i7 and Xeon process, there's a ton of operating system, BIOS, and other stuff between the two.  Civil3D is very RAM hungry, 8 GB RAM isn't great for Civil3D, and your files seem a little on the large side to boot.  You should have somewhere in the 12 - 16 GB range, and potentially more depending on what your motherboard will support and your typical files.

Everything works together, and that includes the data, work processes, and meatware as well as the hardware.  Optimize the work processes so your files are as small as practical without creating extra work.  Don't put in details that won't show up, like individual plant leaves on a model thats used to generate 1:1000 drawings.  Keep the annotation scales from piling up.

[alexius.sev]

Go away from autodesk

[braudpat]

Hello

My french Prerequisites for CIVIL 2013/2014 64 bits are :

SORRY but I confirm that a PC 64 bits with Windows Seven Pro  64 and ONLY 8 Gb

could be OK for trainings/workings on small/medium projects ...

For large/real projects, you will need 12/24 Gb depending on the size of the project !

A FAST Core i5/i7 running at 3 Ghz (or more) is enough ...

A Xeon will be a little bit faster (10-30%) but it is not very significant (at the same speed) !?

Bye, Pat

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone for all you comments and suggestions.

Read this on other forum.

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The Xeons also typically lag behind the i7/i5 in terms of performance (for C3D, anyway).  What Intel does is introduce the latest technology in i7/i5 (and even i3).  These chips tend to preceed the Xeons in CPU speed and performance.  Then in their next round of development, they put that tech into Xeons.  The Xeons are more-complicated, supporting more RAM than the i7/i5, and multiple CPUs, which are not supported for the i7/i5.

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 Second part I read is that Civil 3D does not support multi cores, and the only products that do are 

  2D Regeneration

  MentalRay Rendering