2012 OS and Machine Requirements?

[Peter Pepper]

Do any of you know what OS and machine (ram, processor speed, etc) are recommended for 2012. Just got the work that 2012 downloads are available, but don't want to waste time if if will not run of current hardware. Several users tank on 2011 even though XP is listed as a supported OS. Imagine 2012 will be worse. Thanks!

[rkmcswain]

Recommended by whom? Autodesk says = http://usa.autodesk.com/autocad/system-requirements/

What kind of work are you doing? 3D modeling needs more machine than simple 2D drawings.

If you have the budget (±$1700), I recommend a new machine with minimum: i7 processor, 12GB ram, decent video card, but most importantly, Win7x64. This should handle anything you want to do in r2012, and r2013, and probably r2014...

[Peter Pepper]

Why recommended by people like you who are in the know, of course

[rkmcswain]

Why recommended by people like you who are in the know, of course

We are running C3D 2011 on the specs listed above and it performs very well, so it may be a bit overkill for 2D AutoCAD, but maybe not in a couple of years. How long you plan to keep the hardware has to be considered also.

[BlackBox]

Why recommended by people like you who are in the know, of course

We are running C3D 2011 on the specs listed above and it performs very well, so it may be a bit overkill for 2D AutoCAD, but maybe not in a couple of years. How long you plan to keep the hardware has to be considered also.

RK - I too very much appreciate your comments here, and other threads on this topic. They have been very helpful in formulating both our 'moderate' and 'ideal' configurations... we'll see what management feels like spending shortly. :crossingfingers:

Cheers!

[Peter Pepper]

Thanks, R.K.

[heath.simone]

Patrick,

This is what we are looking for our basic caddie workstation for Revit and AutoCAD products which will cover 90% of the cad users for our company:
Model: HP Compaq 8200 Elite Convertible Minitower PC
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-2500 (3.30 GHz, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)
RAM: 8gb min
HDD: SATA Solid State Drive 160gb min
OS: Windows 7 64Bit

I'm still working on the graphics card with HP to see if i can get one thats not speciically listed for this model from them. I'm currently looking at the ATI Radien HD 6770 for our machines.

The biggest difference would be if you going to look at pre-built systems or if your going to be building the machines yourself.

We benchmarked the older setup we are currently using with the AUBench (http://revitinfo.com/Revit_Forum/Ent...ench-2011.aspx) and it performed a lot better than some people expected with an AUBENCH score of 200 (other results are on the thread in the link to compare):

Model: HP Compaq 8000 Elite Convertible Minitower PC
Processor: Intel® E8400 (3.0 GHz 6MB 2 Cores)
RAM: 4gb min
HDD: 250gb Sata drive
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5770
OS: Windows 7 64Bit

It really depends on what you want from the machines - a be all to everyone or just a workstation to get 90% of the work done with 1 or 2 grunt boxes to get the really chunky work done. Basic work/tasks are not very taxing on the systems, a decent cpu (3ghz or higher), a healthy amount of ram (and room to upgrade) are the biggies for the computers to work well. We are saving about $2500 - $3,000 (NZD) a machine compared to the workstations we where previously purchasing, when you consider we have Revit deployed to 250 machines it adds up fast. We have purchased some Z800 and Z600 machines for specific users / loan machines for times when certain users / projects require the massive computational power for different things. Just something to think of...