Upgrade PC for AutoCAD 2006 use

[Pontoon]

I've been doing my homework and decided to try for an upgrade for the PC I've got here.
I want it to run AutoCAD 2006

I'm going to need a new motherboard and CPU (Thinking a 2.5 - 3GHz)
1.5 or 2 Gig Ram
and probably a new graphics card, thinking a low end NVida one, but not sure how low I can go before performance will become an issue.

I wanted to know, if I was aiming too high/low for working with 2d? (need to save the pennies), if I'm aiming about right, where should I go to buy them?
I've been looking online, and there are thousands of places, but I'm not sure where is reliable and the price they say isn't too far from what you pay.(tax and shipping can almost double the price of some things I've looked at.)

I would rather not spend much as this is just a learning tool at home and I have a pretty high spec PC at work which can cope with the fancy stuff if i needed it. Once I'm up to speed I will be able to earn a bit more so I can afford to go for the higher spec stuff.

All info is greatfully received.

[jaberwok]

For 2d work in A2006 a £50 nVidia card and 1 gig of ram will do well enough unless you have files of whole drilling or production platforms.

[Pontoon]

Joy, that was getting me worried as I was finding so many and had no idea what price range I should be looking for.

as for the drilling or production platform drawings. Nah those can stay at work

ThanQQQQQQQQQQ

[Glenn Pope]

The places I order from online are NewEgg.com and Mwave. Both are very good and never had problems returning items to them. Not sure how they are with shipping over seas though.

[Mike.Perry]

The places I order from online are NewEgg.com and Mwave. Both are very good and never had problems returning items to them. Not sure how they are with shipping over seas though.

Hi

For the UK I would recommend somewhere like...

ebuyer

OR

Insight

Both have pretty good reputations. I have personally bought a number of items from ebuyer.

I agree with John, 1G of RAM should be good.

Personally I would look at the ATI cards.

Is the new motherboard going to have a PCIe or AGP slot ? This will affect the type of Graphics Card you can go with.

What Operating System are you going to run ?

Have a good one, Mike

[Buffeldrek]

OOhh yeah, that graphic card market is changing - inteand to go to PCI express, but that has little or no advantage over AGP at this time.

So for normal homeuse, and when still have a motherboard with AGP - stick with it

I have an older AGP GEFORCE3 64Mb an Nvidia offcourse - and i use it for 2D and 3D
(autocad inventor) and performance is good. The nice thing about the Nvidia is that you can tweak any nvidia card with RIVA TUNER from 3DGURU to get a softquardo. and that gives you more performance on 3D.

Anyhow, in autocad, and if you are not using lots of heavy raster files too, a cheaper ranged Nvidia card will do, you also may wanna check on ebay

[CGM]

I've been doing my homework and decided to try for an upgrade for the PC I've got here.
I want it to run AutoCAD 2006...

Of course you do realise you will be leaving me yonks behind; I'm still stuck with 2004 . (Though I am at the moment thinking of going REVIT, on the advice of gravelin. We'll have to wait 'n see on that; need the cash for a new laptop first.)
Best of luck with the upgrade.

[Pontoon]

Hi

For the UK I would recommend somewhere like...

ebuyer

OR

Insight

Both have pretty good reputations. I have personally bought a number of items from ebuyer.

I agree with John, 1G of RAM should be good.

Personally I would look at the ATI cards.

Is the new motherboard going to have a PCIe or AGP slot ? This will affect the type of Graphics Card you can go with.

What Operating System are you going to run ?

Have a good one, Mike

I've got millenium at the moment, but that's becoming a pain so might have to upgrade to xp. Though I'd prefer to use a freebee like Linux, but I think I quized before and was told this was a nono for just now, esp as I'm not a techie wombat so might screw it up.

I wasn't sure about ATI as I've heard a few folk who weren't happy with them. But I'll keep them in mind when I do have time to go hunting. Would have hunted last night, but the damn thing crashed on my 3 times so I gave up, 128mgb RAM isn't enough especially with McAfee stealing all the resource

[jaberwok]

DO NOT USE WINDOWS ME !

If you can't do all the upgrades straight away just get 512 mbytes of ram and switch to Win 2000 or (better) Win XP. In either case, go for the Pro version if possible.

Good luck.

[Doodlemusmaximus]

one word comes to mind here DELL


for a little amout of spondoolies you'll get a reasonable PC. move the old one to a internet server on XP and link them. JOB DONE