3D Workstations?

[awarren]

To all my CAD uber Geeks, I have been tasked with looking at new workstations for a customer of mine. They want something powerful (as cheap as passable of course ~$6,000) but 3D CAD Quality! Need something to handle mainly 3D AutoCAD (verticals of course). Any suggestions? I have always been a Dell or HP man because of corporate guidance, but open to anything... Suggestions anyone?

[dgorsman]

I've recently had cause to investigate HP offerings. Oy who sells a system with dual-channel RAM that can hold 4 sticks/16GB max and the maximum they provide is 10 GB??

Dell is better, you can go the spendy workstation route (T3500's aren't bad, if a bit overpriced) or the cheaper Alienware route (might get a bit of blowback from management over suggesting "gamer rigs").

$6K per station seems a little pricey though, unless you are talking outside of North America?

[awarren]

Looking for a higher end workstation. We have looked as Dell and HP just trying to see if there is something better for the money. So far I found those two I can get: dual intel i7 quad processors, 24 GB 1333 RAM, Duel Nivida 2GB Video Cards and 500GB 10,000rpm HD for $6k or so.

Can I get simliar by going Xi or Boxx for less money? What I could tell the not as much hardware for the same money.

I have been tasked with finiding the "best" Workstation for the least amount of money.

[cadtag]

Looking for a higher end workstation. We have looked as Dell and HP just trying to see if there is something better for the money. So far I found those two I can get: dual intel i7 quad processors, 24 GB 1333 RAM, Duel Nivida 2GB Video Cards and 500GB 10,000rpm HD for $6k or so.

Can I get simliar by going Xi or Boxx for less money? What I could tell the not as much hardware for the same money.

I have been tasked with finiding the "best" Workstation for the least amount of money.

Dual quad core processors used for AutoCAD makes no sense from a bang/buck perspective. Unless you are planning on doing a lot of rendering..... For normal usage faster processor beats multiples for Acad, since the Adesk folk are unwilling/able to do a multithreaded iteration or run their GUI eye candy on a second processor or GPU. A decent amount of RAM is good, as is fast hard drives. (Might think about an SSD for the C: drive and the 500Gb for a D but if you're spending much over 2K, it is not going to pay off.

HP is getting out of the pc business, so i'd scratch them off the list. Dell -- personally I've been unimpressed witht their quality and service. Boxx I've no experience with, but Xi now, they seem to have a clue about hardware. better quality componenets than dell, and a pleasure to deal with.

no financial interest, just a satisfied customer. Heck, i spent my own money there.

[dgorsman]

Agree with cadtag. I've been pricing out an uber-box for design review and rendering here at work, and it comes out ~$2.5K (Canadian Tire money) for an overclocked i7-2600K based system with equivalent supporting components. One thing to note is if you are working on files on a network I don't think the 10K RPM drive will do much, unless the support files are all local.

I've had good experience with Dell, service-wise. Their latest crop of default keyboards and mice are pretty primitive, though; invest in something more reasonable if you go that route.

[sinc]

Looking for a higher end workstation. We have looked as Dell and HP just trying to see if there is something better for the money. So far I found those two I can get: dual intel i7 quad processors, 24 GB 1333 RAM, Duel Nivida 2GB Video Cards and 500GB 10,000rpm HD for $6k or so.

Can I get simliar by going Xi or Boxx for less money? What I could tell the not as much hardware for the same money.

I have been tasked with finiding the "best" Workstation for the least amount of money.

Who's offering "dual Intel i7" machines? According to Intel, the i7 line is not capable of being used in a dual-processor system - that's what the Xeon line is for. So I'm a bit confused...

Although as others have said, if you have a second processor, it will just sit idle while using Autocad, except for rendering in 3DS Max or Revit. So a dual-processor system is worthwhile if you plan on doing lots of rendering, but won't help you with anything else, and won't benefit you at all if you just want to use plain Autocad (2D or 3D).

You also won't see much return for your dual video cards. Autocad doesn't actually hit the graphics card very hard, and while you can spend tons of money on video cards if you want, you'll see minimal return for the investment. It is very confusing as to why Autodesk focuses so much on Quadro or FireGL cards, when their software doesn't use anything that isn't supported by a quality "gaming" card like one of the GeForce 400/500 series.

You WILL see a benefit from having a fast primary drive, especially an SSD. However, Win 7 x64 can really eat up your primary drive fast, so I wouldn't go with any SSD smaller than 120GB. If you do nothing but CAD, you can go with an 80GB SSD, but no smaller. For the old-style mechanical drives, a fast drive like a Velociraptor or 15K SAS drive can help. Putting two of the fast old-style drives in a RAID0 works better.

Most people store drawings on a server, so if that's what you plan on doing, a secondary drive is somewhat irrelevant. You might be able to eke out a bit more performance by setting your pagefile to a secondary drive, but if you have lots of RAM and a fast primary drive, that may not make any noticeable difference.

8GB minimum is good for RAM, 16GB is better. Most users of Autocad or its verticals see no benefit from more than 16GB of RAM. Revit users are the most-likely exception, or maybe C3D users if you work on REALLY REALLY large Civil 3D projects.

I would second the opinion that if you spend $6000 on a CAD workstation, you're probably wasting a lot of money. Checking out Xi Computers, you can get a screaming OC'd i7-2600 with large SSD and tons of RAM for around $3000. You can spend more on a machine, but it won't run Autocad (3D or not) any better.

[BeKirra]

My machine comes with i7, Win7 pro 64bit and 24Gb of ram.
I have a factory assembly drawing and it runs OK in Inventor.
I then save it to stp file and insert it to AutoCAD.
It hangs up.