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Upgrading Computers, Advice??

9 REPLIES 9
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Message 1 of 10
remyarchmerm
409 Views, 9 Replies

Upgrading Computers, Advice??

Hi,

 

The firm I work for has been in the process of reviewing over our equipment that we bought and installed back in 2007, and we are thinking very strongly of upgrading AutoCAD (2007) to the latest versions of AutoCAD, and possibly also getting Revit. In the process of doing this we are going to upgrade our computers, which are currently Dell Precision Desktop computers bought in 2007 and Dell desktops bought in 2002. I have been tasked with the job of finding suitable workstations to replace the ones we have, and have customized the following builds on CyberPowerPC, with whom I have experience with and have come to respect and love as a company, and the products they deliver. Anyway, I just wanted to post the specs of the builds and see what y'all say about the Core Components, and if you think they will be suitable for AutoCAD Architecture, Revit, Sketchup and possibly Rhino3D in the future. We do not do a TON of 3d modelling right now because of the limitations of the computers we have, which do not work well at all with Sketchup or any other 3D modelling programs including AutoCAD. However, with these new systems we hope to expand our 3D modelling, and other capabilities that AutoCAD and the related programs have greately.

 

Let me know what y'all think, I am open to suggestions. We are trying to spend under then $2,000.00 USD on each rig. We need 4 of them. Monitors, Keyboards, Mouses and other Peripherals are not necessary since the ones we have are perfectly fine. 

 

I have provided links to the files which are on my dropbox. There are 3 builds.

 

Zeus Evo Thunder 2000 Option #1 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/udz786714xpt0zf/Zeus%20Evo%202000%20Quote%2008-24-14.xlsx?dl=0

Zeus Evo Thunder 2000 Option #2 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/et6duot9nfvtece/Zeus%20Evo%202000%20%232%20Quote%2008-24-14.xlsx?dl=0

Power Mega Pro - https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfs0hsd9hhtwsvr/Power%20Mega%20Pro%20Quote%2008-24-14.xlsx?dl=0

 

Thank you for your time,

 

Remy Mermelstein

Gotham Design

 

 

9 REPLIES 9
Message 2 of 10
ntellery
in reply to: remyarchmerm

IMHO

quadro cards are crap because there are no special drivers anymore. I bought the 2000 and there was nothing special I could find. Last ones were for ACAD2011.  Love to hear different.  All seemed a big con.

I just use high end gaming card.  

16GB RAM if you are working on larger models. 

First drive should be a Solid state drive. Much faster response time.  You may be able to get away with a 128gb with storage on the N drive but you may have to shift your user folder or not have much else stored on it.  I am using a 128 at home with user to 2nd drive and my C is nearly full (again).  At work it's prob ok.

 

 

www.ausaca.blogspot.com
Do you know all about the Roof Object? Learn it's secrets
http://ausaca.blogspot.com.au/p/roof-object-video-links.html
Message 3 of 10
remyarchmerm
in reply to: ntellery

Hi, 

 

Thanks for the input. In terms of the Quadro cards...I know you said they are crap because of the lack of special drivers, but do they perform well? Or is a gaming card a better choice performance wise? Everybody I have talked to says the Quadro cards are amazing. 

Message 4 of 10
dgorsman
in reply to: remyarchmerm

Most people don't make a logical, quantitative evaluation for that "amazing" result (or they are using some other program which *does* make good use of it).  Most of the time it's because they switched to a brand new (clean) computer which doesn't have 5 years of accumulated digital crud, it has a SSD, and/or it has a more modern processor and chipset.  Or they switched from a low-grade consumer card to an entry-range card like the Quadro 2000.  I wouldn't say Quadro's are crap or a con - thats a little exagerated.  They perform well, its just that compared to a good gaming card they don't have a linear increase in performance to go along with the price.

 

They do have a place, just not with AutoCAD or AutoCAD vertical products at the moment.

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


Message 5 of 10
ntellery
in reply to: dgorsman

“I wouldn't say Quadro's are crap or a con - thats a little exagerated. They perform well, its just that compared to a good gaming card they don't have a linear increase in performance to go along with the price.”

Well said. Spoken more eloquently than I managed.
Purchasing the K2000 was the first time I spent significant money on a quadro over a gaming card and I didn’t do my research prior on the driver situation but it was very disappointing when I did. Working on simple housing, it was disappointing that I still couldn’t freely swing a shaded model around like I expected.

Also OP stay away from the low end quadro’s. They really are useless for CAD.

Perhaps the quadro might be of use for the other than Autocad programs but I would still go for a high end gaming card.
www.ausaca.blogspot.com
Do you know all about the Roof Object? Learn it's secrets
http://ausaca.blogspot.com.au/p/roof-object-video-links.html
Message 6 of 10
ntellery
in reply to: remyarchmerm

“Thanks for the input. In terms of the Quadro cards...I know you said they are crap because of the lack of special drivers, but do they perform well? Or is a gaming card a better choice performance wise? Everybody I have talked to says the Quadro cards are amazing. “

I suspect they don’t know the difference between a gaming card and quadro and just simply bought a new pc with a quadro and attributed the difference.
Bang for buck I don’t believe it but hey I could be wrong. As you would know now the hard data is very rare out there. Toms Hardware.com were good but you really need specific info. If possible, can you get your machine and try out both cards (if the shop is nearby) with the software you are going to use and your files. ie. do a render, a regen, an eye test of a shaded view etc and time them. Would love to know your results.
www.ausaca.blogspot.com
Do you know all about the Roof Object? Learn it's secrets
http://ausaca.blogspot.com.au/p/roof-object-video-links.html
Message 7 of 10
remyarchmerm
in reply to: ntellery

So, if I gather what you are saying I should switch to a higher end gaming card which actually will save me some money. I will probably switch it to a EVGA Superclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card, which should be plenty and it actually has more memory and better specs then the Quadro 2000.
Message 8 of 10
ntellery
in reply to: remyarchmerm

Well I was giving my opinion only and it would be great if we could get some better testing from Autodesk. I think they are quite unhelpful for whatever reason.
NVidia wants to sell their Quadro line for more than the gaming line for ‘workstation performance’ but I can’t see what difference that makes. Maybe for MAX ?
Actually going onto their site, they list an AutoCAD performance driver .... oops! no

Download Type: Quadro ODE Graphics Driver Quadro Performance Driver Quadro Partner Certified Driver AutoCAD Performance Driver 3ds Max Performance Driver Mosaic Utility Mercury Transmit Plugin
Language: English (US) English (UK) English (India) Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Japanese Korean Deutsch Español (España) Español (América Latina) Français Italiano Polski Português (Brazil) Русский Turkish Other

a.. No certified downloads were found for this configuration. To include beta downloads in your search,


So I guess not.

I paid more thinking I would get much better performance but was very let down.

I’m sorry I’m prob not being that helpful. I’m just tired of watching my son play his games on my pc and get full real time motion, action explosions and renderings that look real at a glance including lighting, shadows, human movement and compared to the crap I get to show my clients from Design Review I just don’t understand why. His games are stunning. Mine look like something from the 90’s.

Yes I’d probably spend the same on a high end gaming card. If you double up, you could run a 3rd and 4th monitor!
www.ausaca.blogspot.com
Do you know all about the Roof Object? Learn it's secrets
http://ausaca.blogspot.com.au/p/roof-object-video-links.html
Message 9 of 10
remyarchmerm
in reply to: ntellery

Yeah, that is weird that they would advertise it having those drivers if it actually doesn't have them. At home I have a really nice rig, i7 Core Extreme @ 5.4Ghz and 2 GTX Titan Z's, 4 500GB SSD, one 2TB HDD, 1200 Watt PSU, Liquid cooling, 12 case fans, Asus Maximum Mobo...3 27" Plasma monitors. Runs anything like a beast...I get 200FPS on my games easily highest settings...Anyway, so yeah I get what your talking about.

I dont think we plan on running for then 2 monitors, but thats a good point. if in the future we want to add another GPU we have space to do so.

Thanks!
Message 10 of 10
dgorsman
in reply to: ntellery

One reason for the limited testing on the AutoDesk side is numbers: the drivers for the workstation cards don't change a lot (which counts as stability) and there are relatively few brands and models.  Now take a look at the gaming card segment: N manufacturers multiplied by Y cards multiplied by how often drivers are released.  By the time AutoDesk got through testing even a fraction of them, they would be out of date.

 

Where were you seeing this download, nVidia or AutoDesk?  Either way, might be an idea to drop them a line so they know they have some outdated features.  The web dev teams (typically in the marketing department) don't always keep up with the technical departments.

 

As for the games - yeah, it would be nice.  The games have a huge advantage in being designed from the ground up for modern graphics hardware with minimal legacy code or data to support.  It wouldn't surprise me if there is a long term evaluation project in the AutoCAD development silo looking into a complete rewrite.  Once the benefits outweigh the hurdles (like making the investment after which most of the computing world is on cloud- and tablet-based systems, rendering the investment void) they will pull the trigger.

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


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