New Hardware, what to buy for Civil 3D 2007 ?

[Quincon]

Please Help...

To DELL Or Not To DELL....... We are starting a new civil engineering firm and can't figure out which system is best for using CIVIL 3D 2007..... DELL, HP or IBM. Also, what kind of video card should it have, harddrive, etc...this is just for the workstation. Also, what kind of server should we use, or stay away from & who has the best services etc, etc.

Any direction would be very helpfull!

Thanks,

Gary

[jpostlewait]

I wish I knew for sure.
Here is what we threw at or Civil 3D pilot project.
XI computers
AMD X2 processors, 4200 - 4600
2G ram
WD Raptor 10K Hard drives
Nvidia Quadro cards. mostly 540 or 550.
1 Pentium d with a Geforce 6600.
Added 2G Ram to 4 systems trying to stabilize.
Ran into huge memory leak problems.
Dual displays a must.
Gigibit switches and NIC's on everything.

Next workstation buy, probably going to try out Pentium Core 2 duo processors.
Most likely HP.

We have always used Compaq / HP servers.

John Postlewait
IS Department
George Butler Associates, Inc.

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

Below are a few threads that you may wish to browse...

ACAD dream machine - dual processors Vs single processor

Computer specification guidance, running Autodesk Civil products

Video GPU usage for LDT and Civil 3D

Video card recommendations, using Civil 3D

Ram Requirements/Recommendations for LDT2007

Have a good one, Mike

[Quincon]

Thanks John, what about service from HP?

Also, I was told to look at SUN servers and workstation, since I'm no hardcore I.T. guy I don't know what is a overall better system.

but I do like what H.P. has to offer over Dell

[Quincon]

Thanks Mike as well, and heading there now!

[Quincon]

64bit Workstation AMD Athlon™ 64 & FX Processor Based


Xi® MTower™ 64 SLI Workstation

Based on the newest and most revolutionary, 64 bit AMD Athlon™ 64 FX processors, Dual Core FX-62. Sporting 2x1MB (1024KB) multi-way associative L2 Cache and integrated DDR2 RAM Controller and motherboard, based on the NVIDIA® nForce™ 5 SLI™ chipset, with dual PCI Express video Interface and HyperTransport data transfer at 2000MHz. Expandable to 4GB of DDR2 800/1000MHz dual channel the Xi® MTower™ 64 SLI offers the highest level of computing power available today in a standard workstation and the only 64Bit Windows compatible processor in the world.. On board RAID 0/1/5/10 SATAII 300MB/s, 2x1394 Fire-wire, 2x1GBit (10/100/1000) Ethernet network. NVIDIA Quadro™ FX 1500/3500/5500 capable of SLI technology virtually doubling the video power.

Well do you think this system will fit the bill..?!?

[jpostlewait]

Just for grins, I went to the HP website to play.
Configured a wx4400 to see what the cost would be.

Core 2 Duo 6600 processor
2 G ram
Raptor HD
Quadro FX 560 video card.
DVD burner.
NO monitor selected.

2500 bucks.

Actually the box you have spec'd would be fine.
Personally I'd step the processor down to a better price point and not spend as much on a video card. But I spec boxes for an org. with 250 users. Makes decision making a little different.
I have a quarterly budget for upgrades and it usually makes more sense to seek out the most bang for the buck so I can upgrade one or two more people than spending on top of the line configurations.

John Postlewait
IS Department
George Butler Associates, Inc.