Best processor for civil 3d 2017

[Anonymous]

My company is looking to upgrade my workstation and i am after info on processors. i keep coming across I7 or Xeon. Ive no idea which would work best with civil 3d. Does anyone have any info on how many cores/threads etc civil 3d uses and what people think is an ideal processor?

[M_c3d]

I use an i7 processor, runs really well.

Don't think civil 3d / autocad supports multiple cores

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Support-...

[AllenJessup]

Xeon processors also work well and are usually standard in more powerful workstations. Either way you want to get the fastest one you can afford.

[Pointdump]

Ted,

A benefit of using the Xeon Processor is that you can use ECC (Error Correcting Code) RAM. The ECC RAM is more stable, and is especially helpful with large datasets.

Dave

[apurba]

From my experiance, 

>processor with multicore supports the civil3d, but it is not necessary to have lots of cores (you can find the most suitable processor list on autodesk site on system requirment column)

>RAM playes a very vital role on the performance of Civil3D

>SATA HDD is preferable.

Hope, this information will help

Thanks

DELL precission T1700

Windows 10 pro 64bit

16 GB DDR3

1TB SATA HDD

[BushW]

Hello @Anonymous

I'm just checking in to see if you need more help with this. Did the replies of @AllenJessup, @Pointdump, and @apurba provided work for you?

Please hit the ‘Accept as Solution’ button if/when relevant so, that others can more easily benefit from the information and thank you for doing so. 

Best Regards,

Wendell

[Anonymous]

Hi,


some helpful info in the replies. I have my question with Autodesk tech support, who are going to come back with an answer. Once i have that info ill post on here

[Anonymous]

SATA better than SSD ??

[AllenJessup]

No. A true SSD is best. Be aware that some have a Solid State buffer in front of a physical disk, referred to as a Hybrid.

[dgorsman]

---

@Pointdump wrote:

Ted,

A benefit of using the Xeon Processor is that you can use ECC (Error Correcting Code) RAM. The ECC RAM is more stable, and is especially helpful with large datasets.

Dave

---

Technically yes, but with the current high quality of manufacture, failure of non-ECC RAM is virtually unheard of.  ECC RAM is used in places where Xeons are also typical: servers which are up 24/7 and cannot be easily taken down for replacement; and simulation of critical systems where error is NEVER acceptable, such as virtual nuclear weapons testing.  Neither of those situations will come up with Civil3D work.

Multiple physical processors used to be the only way to get more than 32 GB RAM, and you would only get those with ECC RAM.  Newer processors and motherboards now support anywhere from 64 - 128 GB non-ECC RAM on a single physical i7 processor, which should be more than enough, even for visualization work.

[BushW]

Hello @Anonymous

Thanks for replying back and once you receive that information please post back so, other Community members may benefit.

Thanks,

Wendell

[Anonymous]

I have a similar thread looking in to this and have been doing some investigating since we are getting ready to upgrade our systems, luckily my son is in his final semester of the hardware, computer engineering field. His opinion is that a Xeon is best suited for servers, because they are executing many tasks in parallel, and that we would be better off with a higher clock speed i7 or i9, since we would only be running maybe 4 or 5 programs on our PC simultaneously and less demanding than C3D. We also run MicroStation, which claims that they utilize multiple threads, but our main program would be C3D.

We are also moving toward working with photogrammetry and point clouds.

Best, J

[AllenJessup]

@Anonymous  Thanks for the update. We use Leica Cyclone and Cloudworx for Point Clouds. I find that uses a lot more resources than Civil 3D. It just about mandates an SSD.

[autoMick]

Hi, I'm just about to put together a new computer for civil3d (as well as other things). It'll have the following:

i7-8700K

32Gb RAM

500Gb M.2 primary drive as well as a few 4GB HDD for files

Quadro P1000 

Look at single thread performance specs https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html to get an idea of the relative performance of all the commonly available processors for civil3d and you'll see why I picked the i7-8700K.

Don't discount multi-thread performance entirely though. I often just switch to a different program and do something productive while Civil3d plods through whatever it thinks is more important than responding to my hopeful clicking.

Also don't scrimp on monitors. Get a nice pair of sharp monitors say 24" each  if you haven't already - major human performance boost to be had right there.

Also see specs in my signature below - I've been running that machine very nicely with Civil3d for over a year now.

Cheers

Mick

[Anonymous]

My personal ZBook 17 has two SSD, and they work great. The systems that we are building would be as listed above, the drives would be two, one 1 TB SATA SSD and one 521 GB SSD. Any comments are welcome.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

A quad core at least.  Professional graphics card (even if low-end), SSD, and plenty of RAM.

I'd recommend 3 monitors if you're constantly having to swap between word, excel, acrobat, google earth, GIS software, chrome and Civil 3D.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, we will be ordering one Z6 Work Station in the next couple of days, if it works we'll be getting (3) more. I'll let you know how they perform. 

From what I've been told HP Z6 only have the Xeon option.

Best, J