Are Dual Xeons Obsolete for CAD?

[russkeller]

I've noticed that AutoCAD is still using one giant process on one core and really isn't taking advantage of multiple cores.  The only benifit comes in the fact that the Operating system is more distributed leaving AutoCAD to have a core all to itself. 

I understand why everyones default position is to stick with Dual Xeons but since the standard for processors now is multiple cores on one chip do we still really need Xeons?  Anyone know of any sites that have done comparisons and benchmarks?

It might be that Xeons vs Multicores are like the AMD64 vs Pentium 4 where even though it never really took advantage of 64 bit processing power at the time the AMD64 was just a better chip in general.

[pendean · Accepted solution]

Processor raw speed matters for AutoCAD above all else: 3Ghz is the recommendation. Find that and you're a good way there IMHO, 8Gig RAM; add to it as your production needs warrant it (3D, huge files etc.) from there on.

[GilesPhillips]

www.cpubenchmark.net offer comparisons of all types of processor (Xeon, Core, Phenom and opteron) that have been done with passmark software. It's difficult to say if this is an accurate simulation of the performance under Autocad, however it's the only comparisons I've found that cross boundries, and isn't afriad to compare workstation class components with regular ones.

As far as Autocad's usage of processors is concerned, I think the siutation will improve (i.e. tend towards distributed processing), but slowly.

There are other advantage of Xeon processors, beyond multi processing, though largely these apply to vigourous 24/7 full load applications, namely durability and extreme specifications (10 cores x 8 processor motherboard with 4 TB of ram - good for rendering, but a bit much for Acad!)