iCore 7 - 870?

[jaberwok]

Optiplex 980 only has a 255w power supply.

How can they get away with that?

I've just thrown away a 350W ps because I thought it would never be of any use again.
I have 750W in one machine and 850W in the latest. They also happen to be the quietest supplies I've come across - which is good.

[sinc]

Egad!

With those kind of constraints, I'd be looking at getting a computer somewhere other than Dell...

[dgorsman]

Optiplex is the desktop line, so I'd be hard pressed to see a need for a 600W+ power supply on a typical engineer/secretary computer. Still, 225W must be struggling on some of their top builds for that line.

We're currently deploying the T3500 as our standard designers workstation. It seems to be very stable. If I was purchasing I'd prefer the i7 over the Xeon but...

[ctwith3]

Well, thanks for all the input- I bought a T3500 Precision Workstation.

[chris.newman0]

how'd that work out for you?

We're looking to upgrade our dell's for 2D, ACAD 2010. I've been trying to decide which is going to have faster open, save, loading and multi-tasking operations.

Xenon Processors found in the upper end Precision machines

or

Intel i series in the precision 1500 series.

Is Dell releasing another type of Optiplex unit?

Would one of the home computers have better options?

We're working mainly off a server, small office 5 computers, only 2 using CAD.

Thanks for the info!!!

-Chris

[sinc]

Xeons are a waste of money for Autocad. The only reason I can think of to go that route is because you're doing lots of rendering, and you want a multi-processor system.

Right now, best bang for the buck for Autocad is probably one of the new 2nd Gen i3/i5 systems.

Most people keep drawings on a network server, so to speed up DWG open/save times, you have to look at the disk drives on your server. And hopefully you have gigabit (CAT6) ethernet.

If you want to maximize system start time and application startup time, look at using an SSD for your primary hard drive on your CAD stations.