Buy for the short or long term?
I teach the 2011 versions of Revit, 3dsMax and Civil 3D in a public high school. We are running 5 year old Optiplexs with on Vista 32 bit with 3 GB RAM, and ATI graphic cards with 128 MB VRAM.As you can imagine our hardware falls short of being able to rendering for print. Our IT department has yet to understand that the the guy teaching courses in CAD, programming, and Photoshop has different needs than the rest of the district, so he buys the minimal- we have 3GB RAM because I used my entire budget to upgrade (after fighting and winning a long battle uphill). I do my design work at home to prep for work, and to print out better than "best for screen" student projects to put on display in the showcase in my hallway at work. If I don't render it for at least 180 dpi it fails to show the effort my students put into their designs behind the glass in the showcase, and motivates my students and creates interest in my technology program.
I am slightly better off at home because I run Win 7 64 bit with 8 GB RAM and can work on my 22" screen instead of the 19" monitor I have at work. My XPS 600 is also 5 years old and I have maxxed out it's usefulness (I can hear you chuckling).
Do you AUGI members think I should simply buy a XPS 9100 with an i7-960 and 12GB of tri-channel RAM for the suort term and keep upgrading every 2 or 3 years, spend the extra $1k for the same XPS but with the i7-980X for the same short term, or maybe it'll last long term, or just take advantage of cheap financing and spend the $$$ for a workstation for the long run- maybe a Precision with a single processor on a dual processor board so I can add another processor later?
I am a techie, but I have now looked at so many combinations that I am bleary eyed and have made myself in-decisive.
Also, being in my late 40's I like (read as need) a big monitor, so I may jump from 22" to 24", although I dream of a 30" monitor or even a 32" TV for display. I know a lot of people ask for opinions on builds, but this is for my ability to be the best teacher I can be, and to be able to print in 300 dpi (600 would thrill me). I have been rendering a 20 MB file on my 3.2 Ghz Pentium D with 8 GB of RAM for better than 10 hours and it wil be approximately another 5 hours before it's done.
I can't work at school because I am too busy grading, providing extra help for my business courses, and aiding the student who walks into my room during my lunc asking for help with a PowerPoint presentation for their English class, so I have to work at home.
I appreciate your help. I know that there are many professionals here at AUGI who can provide an opinion while I go take Advil for the headache I now have from trying to decide which way to go.
Sorry I was long winded- occupational hazzard!
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