Hardware - Selecting a Workstation

[Anonymous]

Hi all!

We are looking to get a new workstation and have been going through the specs, looking forward to get your comments.

Main purpose would be Autocad and Revit 3D Modeling, low to none rendering on 50 to 100mb dwg files

Looking in the forums we understand that for modelling, both software's would benefit more from high core speed rather than higher number of cores, so we were thinking about it 8700 or Xeon 2186G, price seems to be similar, i7 to be a bit faster but Xeon able to use ECC memory, which one would you recommend? is it worth to work a bit slower but safer?

On the same path would be the question in regards of the graphic card Nvidia or Quadro?

Also, it would be great for a motherboard recommendation.

Thanks very much.

Kind Regards.

[Avaris.]

Are you in a transition to Revit? Do you already know how big the filesize of your Revitfile will be? Do you design large projects? In short: could you please tell us more about what you want to do?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply Marc,

Yes, we are in transition to Revit, models are around 500mb to 700mb, we design Temporary Works (Scaffold, Formwork, Falsework, Backpropping, Cranedecks, Facade Retention, Steel Beams...), some of the scaffolds/gantry/facade retention's are big in size if that is what you ask, we currently modelling in Acad, but it is nearly impossible to work with it when the model is too big that's why we are going into Revit.

Hope this clarifies.

Thanks.

[Avaris.]

And your budget without peripheral equipment? Because that will determine what the best is for your budget.

PS: Did you see these articles already on workstation recommendations?

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for your answer Mark,

We have been comparing budgets for the proposed systems and all are around £4.5/6k with 64mb RAM ECC/NO-ECC + 3no 512MB SSD + 2no 2Tb HDD, QUADRO P5000/NVIDIA 2086 so I suppose something around that would be acceptable.

Thanks!

[Avaris.]

Regarding your CPU, modeling is in nearly all CAD programs a single-threaded process, but loading links, vector printing, upgrading your file to a newer Revit format are all multi-threaded processes. Next to that Autodesk strongly recommends CPUs that include an L3 cache. Larger L3 caches of 3MB and beyond can provide performance benefits for computationally-intensive operations such as model regeneration. ECC memory is more stable, but only a little bit faster. CAD is not that vulnerable to memory errors. Only when you plan to use large Point Clouds, renders in large format or make extensive use of analysis capabilites of Revit. ECC is more expensive, but I would say it isn't worth it.

My advice for CPU would be the Intel Core i9-7940X @ 3.10GHz or Intel Core i9-7960X @ 2.80GHz, first one having a lower price and higher clockspeed, second one having a larger amount of cores and a little bit more L3

[Avaris.]

Regarding your GPU, you'll find spending a lot of money won't give you the superboost you might expect. GPU is mostly used for rendering and navigating within Revit. I would look into a 'cheap' GeForce 1080(TI) it will serve you perfectly and you don't waste your money.