Typical PC running 2011?

[brandonbw]

I am curious as it's been a few years since I had run Civil 3D. I think it was the 2008 version. What type of computer hardware is being used where the software doesn't slow to a crawl?

[sinc]

Civil 3D is a single-threaded app, so depending on what you're doing, you can always find C3D slowing to a crawl, at least for some operations.

But for best performance, the most-important factor is to get a CPU with the fastest single-core speed you can afford. As a single-threaded app, the new Turbo mode in Intel chips is beneficial, and can increase performance. So chips like the new 2nd-Gen i5/i7 chips (i7-2600, i5-2500) are the best right now. You can also get excellent performance from chips like the i7-870 or i7-960. You can also go with other i3/i5/i7 or Xeon chips, but performance is dependent on CPU speed; chips with clock speeds above 3GHz work best. C3D uses only a single core, so you get no benefit from hyperthreading or having tons of cores. Some of the high-end Core 2 Duos can also give good performance at a very good price.

In conjunction with that, it is critical that you use Win 7 x64 as your OS, along with 6GB minimum of RAM. RAM is really cheap right now, so I strongly recommend 12-16GB of RAM. (You must also be using C3D 2011 or higher to take advantage of this extra RAM, as there was no 64-bit version of C3D prior to the 2011 release.)

Xeon chips provide no real benefits, and they tend to be a fair bit more expensive than similar-performing i5/i7 chips. Xeons are only beneficial if you need a dual-processor system for some reason, and as a single-threaded app, C3D cannot even use all the cores in a single processor. A second processor will be completely ignored by C3D.

Fast primary disk drive helps a lot. SSD's work well, but are still a bit pricey. If you can stomach the price, then a fast SSD is ideal. I recommend 120GB minimum size for an SSD, since your primary drive can be eaten up quite quickly on a Win 7 x64 system. Otherwise, go with a fast hard drive, such as WD Black or Velociraptor drives, or vertical-write drives, or SAS 15K drives. Putting two fast drives in a RAID0 also works well.

Graphics is not critical. You want a card that supports decent graphics, so you don't want things like integrated graphics, or the Quadro NVS series. Most GeForce cards work quite well, and we've been getting very good results with the GeForce GTX 400 series. Quadro (not the NVS series) cards work well, but generally provide no real benefits for C3D over a GeForce. If you are into rendering or Navisworks or anthing like that, you may want a higher-end Quadro card, but for C3D, most Quadro cards perform about as well as a GeForce card that costs half as much.

[tonycarcamo]

I think as long as you are running a Windows 7 64 bit with at least 8 gb of ram and 512 mb video card and at least 2.6 ghz processor you should be fine. Thats the minimum requirements I would recommend. Autodesk has provided a link for their recommendation on system requirements. See link below.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...40697#section2


Tony Carcamo
Civil 3D Specialist
www.tonyscivil3dworld.blogspot.com

[sinc]

Keep in mind there's also a difference in architecture.

A 2.6GHz Pentium or Pentium D will be virtually unusable. A 2.6GHz Core 2 will be usable, but rather slow and frustrating. A 2.6GHz i3/i5/i7 will be no speed demon, but will be quite usable. A 2.6GHz "2nd Generation" i3/i5/i7 will be faster yet.