Originally Posted by
cadtag
The sad reality is that "Your Milage May Vary". Certainly it's possible to benchmark individual components, but it's not possible to provide a realistic assessment of what the best hardware will be for you. Your environment is different than anyone else's, your IT group has different requirements, different standard software, antivirus, office suites, email etc etc etc.
PCs are only one element in a complex system, and the rest of the sytem will have a huge impact on the perceived performance you will experience.
that said, the basic rule of thumb for CAD stations hasn't changed in twenty years -- faster horses, bigger disks, better displays, more RAM.