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Need help with a desktop setup for Civil 3d

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Message 1 of 26
Funkychesta
988 Views, 25 Replies

Need help with a desktop setup for Civil 3d

My boss at our civil engineering firm is finally letting me upgrade 🙂

 

Our current setup is 5 years old

 

it's a dell T3400 intel core 2 duo CPU E8400 @3.00ghz and 3.5gb ram, nvidia quadro 600 video card got it in 2009 when i was running civil 3d 2009.

 

we are going to be running at least civil 3d 2013 with 3dsmax for our civil engineering projects. Some of our files are up to 41mb in size and are extremely slow, so im thinking 32gb of ram? and an i7 processor? i have no idea about the video card, not really sure what our budget is but (im guessing up to 2.5k more or less), but he says he wants a pc that he won't have to replace for 5 years or so. Please help out! or point me to the right thread for this post, thanks!

25 REPLIES 25
Message 21 of 26
BWYarger
in reply to: jmayo-EE

My budget is flexible, but I was expecting $5,000 (USD) for a desktop workstation not including monitors.  We could go higher if needed to get an increase in performance that would save the investment in terms of salary saved over two years.  I just priced an HP Z820 workstation at just under $10,000.  The problem is that they don't have the Xeon E3-1246 v3 @ 3.5 GHz which is blasing fast in a single processor, but reasonably priced.  They are using Xeon E5-2600 v2 series which are slower and really expensive.  I think I could save $3500 by going with the Xeon E3-1246 v3.

 

We don't do rendering or other flashy graphics and C3D is by far the most demanding software.  After that we also run traffic simulations, but that is entirely based on a single core processing speed.  Having fast hard drive helps a little, but the processor in that is the bottleneck.

 

Brad
LT, C3D 2005 - 2024
Windows XP, Vista, 7, 10, 11
Message 22 of 26
odoshi
in reply to: Funkychesta

FWIW:

 

I don't do a lot of heavy lifting in Civil 3D; that is to say I mostly work in smaller drawings, design and plan production. Not much visualization from C3D.

 

I travel -- a lot, so I prefer to not lug around a 20 pound 18" pizzabox sized laptop.

 

So here's what I tried out:

 

13" MacBook Air

Bootcamped to run Win 8.1 Pro

i5

4GB RAM

128GB SSD

Inter HD5000 graphics

Price: $850 new at Best Buy ($150 less than Apple)

 

 

The results:

I boot Win 8.1Pro in about 3 seconds

C3D 2015 starts as fast as my HP elitebook

Larger drawings with dynamic Input, Polar Tracking, Otrack, etc on may make the mouse sticky but all is smooth when they are off.

 

All in all, I'm pretty impressed.

 

I also installed Infraworks 360 and modeled Worcester, MA via Model Builder. I can orbit the entire city as smooth as glass.

 

Now, I chose this just for portability and I am still in Best Buy's 15-day return policy. But I aint givin' it up. I'm completely satisfied and impressed with how well it runs.

 

Would I recommend it for 8-hours/day of CAD use to my clients? - maybe not so much. But it shows that the right hardware will run C3D fine and you don't have to spend a fortune to get it.

 

As for the video card debate: NVIDIA Pro cards vs. Gamer cards: They have the same guts, different drivers. Go pro for CAD vector and antialiasing, go gamer for faces and framerate.

 

 

Mike Caruso
Autodesk Certified Instructor 2014
AutoCAD/Civil 3D Autodesk Certified Professional 2014, 2015, 2018
www.whitemountaincad.com
Message 23 of 26
Cadguru42
in reply to: BWYarger


@BWYarger wrote:

@Anonymous budget is flexible, but I was expecting $5,000 (USD) for a desktop workstation not including monitors.  We could go higher if needed to get an increase in performance that would save the investment in terms of salary saved over two years.  I just priced an HP Z820 workstation at just under $10,000.  The problem is that they don't have the Xeon E3-1246 v3 @ 3.5 GHz which is blasing fast in a single processor, but reasonably priced.  They are using Xeon E5-2600 v2 series which are slower and really expensive.  I think I could save $3500 by going with the Xeon E3-1246 v3.

 

We don't do rendering or other flashy graphics and C3D is by far the most demanding software.  After that we also run traffic simulations, but that is entirely based on a single core processing speed.  Having fast hard drive helps a little, but the processor in that is the bottleneck.

 


That is extremely expensive for not any real gain in C3D performance. Xeons are useless for C3D as they are slower than Core i7s. The Xeon E3-1246 v3 is basically the same as the Core i7-4790, but the Xeon is clocked at 3.5GHz while the Core i7 is clocked at 4GHz and clock speed is all that truly matters to C3D in regards to CPU. The hard drive is the bottleneck, not the CPU. SSDs seek times are in the 0.3ms range while HDDs are about 9ms, a 3000% speed increase.

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 24 of 26
BWYarger
in reply to: Cadguru42

At under $2,000 I don't think I would get anything better than the workstation class laptop I have.  I assume at under $2,000 that would be a standard desktop computer and not a workstation class computer.  In the past I have compared similar spec'ed desktops and workstations and the workstation blew away the desktop, but they were 3 GHz Pentium IV based machines with 3 GB of RAM each.  My goal here is to get a significantly faster computer than the laptop I have for rebuilds and sychronizing.  I use it 8 hours per day and my file size is 10 - 15 MB for the model.  Sheets are in separate files using xref and data references.  The problem with this set up is the need for synchronizing data references.

 

Brad
LT, C3D 2005 - 2024
Windows XP, Vista, 7, 10, 11
Message 25 of 26
BWYarger
in reply to: BWYarger

I just priced two more HP computers:

 

Workstation Z230

Xeon E3-1245 v3, 3.5 Ghz

32 GB DDR3-1600 ECC Ram

512 GB SSD

Nvidia Quadro K2000 2GB

$4,946 - 20% with ecoupon = $3,956

 

EliteDesk 800 G1

Core I-7 4790 3.6 GB

32 GB DDR3-1600 Ram

Two 180 GB SSD

Nvidia GeForce GT 630

$2,765

 

The processors are about the same speed in single threaded benchmarks with a 10% advantage to the I-7. Both are about 2/3s faster processor speed of my current mobile I-7, so that would be a big improvement. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html. The EliteDesk didn't offer the larger SSD so I went with two smaller ones. It also didn't offer a workstation class video card. I have a GeForce on another computer but it doesn't seem to work as good with the object viewer. Even though I get the same amount of RAM on both computers, the price is much lower on the EliteDesk, so I assume it is non-EEC RAM.

 

Brad
LT, C3D 2005 - 2024
Windows XP, Vista, 7, 10, 11
Message 26 of 26
autoMick
in reply to: BWYarger

For surface rebuilds and performance generally, you're better off with a higher CPU clock rate rather than more cores (all else being equal).

A SSD is a 'must' in my book. My two almost identical computers had 250Gb SSD's, (with file storage on a server, or a traditional HDD) but one of those computers (which also runs ArcGIS, Photoshop, as well as IDSP and a heap of other stuff) was getting a bit tight and I recently changed that for a 500Gb SSD. 

That same computer has a Quadro K4000 graphics card. The other has a GeForce GTX680 consumer card. I don't notice the difference between them (except for renders), even though the GTX was half the price.

I wouldn't go for two separate SSD's... too much mucking about making sure programs, support files, etc. all are installing in the correct place, whilst leaving approprioate freeboard on your drives.

If you spend over $3000 on the computer itself I reckon you're overdoing it.

A big monitor (or two) does wonders for productivity.

Cheers

- Mick

Civil3d user in Australia since 2012.

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