Specs for possible new system

[nigeld]

Intel Xeon X5550 CPU 2.66 ghz, 6 gb ram, 500 gb hard drive (7200 rpm), nvidia quadro FX1800 (768 mb) graphics card), windows 7 - 64 bit, for use with revit architecture and autocad 2010 software. Any comments appreciated on the pros/cons of such a system, particularly CPU. Thanks.

[patricks]

Sounds good... my machine is 3 yrs old running dual Xeon 5520's, but I just recently went Windows 7 x64 and 16GB RAM. The only bottleneck left in my system is the 128 MB graphics card that starts to choke with Revit and Windows Aero themes at the same time.

If you can afford it you might want to look into a solid-state drive for OS and programs, and a normal HDD for data (if you keep much data on your machine). You should see a HUGE increase in performance. Most SSD users would recommend one from Intel, probably a 64GB or 128GB model should be sufficient

[nigeld]

With such a quick machine , I see the CPU sitting there doing not a lot for the majority of the time, but when rendering in revit it would be pushed. 2.66 ghz or 2.93 ghz xeon?. Cost will dictate. Dont really want to go down the twin cpu path as I dont think I would benefit greatly from it.

[patricks]

With such a quick machine , I see the CPU sitting there doing not a lot for the majority of the time, but when rendering in revit it would be pushed. 2.66 ghz or 2.93 ghz xeon?. Cost will dictate. Dont really want to go down the twin cpu path as I dont think I would benefit greatly from it.

If you run multiple apps I think it would benefit. Revit uses up to 4 processor cores during rendering and wall join editing. Otherwise it will only use one, but you might want/need more processor cores available if you use other things like Photoshop or Illustrator at the same time.

I would go with either dual Xeons or maybe a single quad-core i7 system.