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
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.
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.
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.
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.