Fusion drive vs ssd

[Anonymous]

I am purchasing a new iMac as my 2008 mac pro has horrible single core performance.  I am trying to decide wether to get a 3 tb fusion drive or a 256 ssd.  I will only be using this for work and already manage my drive for current vs archived projects. Space isn't an issue as I can get a thunderbolt drive later if I need it.  Here is a day to day work flow:

_I often have at least 10 .dwgs open

_several projects have deeply nested xrefs so if i have a sheet file open and the most base file there are often 3 xrefs in between that must update in the background

_projects have many nested and clipped blocks

_I always need to run safari, mail, spotify. imessage as well.

_Often i need to run a virtual machine of windows 8 for trueview so I can downsave .dwg or print/view dwf.  OR of snowleopard to run adobe cs2

_ I often have ArchiCAD open sometimes with 2 or 3 instances.

I'm sure either option will be good. I know the ssd can handle this work load.  Can the current fusion drive?

I have done alot of research but haven't seen anything regarding a heavy AutoCAD and bim work flow. 

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience and opinions.

[maxim_k]

Hi,

The first thing you need in your case is large amount of RAM - I think you need at least 16 Gb of RAM.
Hard drive speed Is on the second place as it affects primary only the speed of launching of applications and OS components. In fact Fusion drive is a good compromise: I tested AutoCAD for Mac even with DIY Fusion drive on the old Mac mini (256 Gb SSD + native 5300 rpm HDD) and everything works fast enough with such hard drive configuration.

Maxim