Spec me a PC for CS4, AutoCad and occasional gaming please

griffo_001

griffo_001

griffo_001

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Hi guys, as the title suggests I'm looking for a PC spec for CS4, AutoCad and the occasional game please [Playing Red Alert 3 in meduim or high would be nice, but not a deal breaker if thats not possible]

I'll be starting from scratch for the tower, but have an Asus 1920x1080 monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse that will be carried over

I think I'll run Win 7 64bit RC for a bit, so I don't need an OS either

Am I right in thinking Intel chips usually do better in the CS4 benchmarks? Is there a reason for that?

£800 is the absolute max budget [I'm a student, I'm not MADE of money :p]

For that I know I can get an i7 system [Just], but i've also been looking at various Phenom based systems. Speaking of which, what do you guys think of the new X2 550 BE? £80 for a possible tri or quad-core sounds like a bargin to me, which mobo's can unlock them?

While being a complete overclocking novice, I'm willing to learn :D

Suggestions always welcome guys, do me proud ;)
 
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if you are using cad maya 3dsmax ect ati cards are not supported as i found out myself,you will get many problems with constant crashed freezing up atifacts on screen and also the grids will do allsorts of weird things,as cad maya ect use open gl and cuda nvidia are the only ones they support these programs unless you have money for the fx range ect which start at arounf £150o,also you want to play games bit like me as well so your best bet is going for a gtx 260 upwards. hope this helps.
 
So i7 is the best for Photoshop and CAD? To be on the safe side I think I'll switch to the Nvidia GTX 260, its only £13 more. Is there anything more I need to consider? How much will the RAM affect the above apps? Cheers for the help thus far
 
im not using the i7 so cannot comment on that cpu see my sig below not had any problems at all with my pc apart from the 4850 i used have when using maya and 3dsmax,i havent heard any problems with i7 for cad work but i can find out with my mate from autodesk.
 
I would suggest going with a cheaper gfx card such as a cheap 4850 and buying a 2nd hand 8800gt and flashing the bios to make it appear to be a workstation card, which would then allow the cad program to be accelerated on a gpu see link
 
user1453 said:
I would suggest going with a cheaper gfx card such as a cheap 4850 and buying a 2nd hand 8800gt and flashing the bios to make it appear to be a workstation card, which would then allow the cad program to be accelerated on a gpu see link
Click to expand...

How hard is that to do, given that im a complete novice at that kinda thing, and how much do 8800gt's cost 2nd hand atm?

The CAD is AutoCad 2009 atm, but I will almost certainly need more for uni in the future....

My monitor is http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-014-AS&groupid=17&catid=949&subcat= if that helps

Cheers
 
speak to john in that link regarding the flashing but thats totally up to you,from what i have read autocad will run well with the gtx 285,i got the card coming tommorrow and also the same monitor as yours.me personally if your not sure still with the gtx 280 i anit got a clue when it comes to flashing hence i dedided to got with the 285

regarding the prices of 8800 there around 50 pounds or so secound hand,but im sure you cannot run a ati 4850 and a 8800 at the same time that i will leave for someone else anything about autodesk software im pretty ok with as i use them myself
 
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Alright thanks for all your inputs everyone

This is my attempt at a similar spec;

3606646745_83ac94d377_o.jpg


I've gone for the 700w just incase I do chose to go for a 8800gt and gtx 260 at some point in the future
Its also a bit lacking in storage atm, but I can survive for a bit with this spec, then add a couple of 1tb drives in RAID when I can afford it

Do you think the UD5 is worth £60 more than the UD3R? I hear its really easy to overclock?

Do you see any issues with this spec?
 
UD5 overclocks far better than the UD3R it appears. It's really easy to overclock a little bit, it gets steadily harder the closer you get to the limits of your hardware.

Flashing the 8800gt is not difficult, I'll email you the files you need if you can tell me the stock speeds of your particular 8800gt if it's factory overclocked. The entire process is booting from a floppy disk and typing nvflash -4 -5 -6 fx3700.rom then installing quadro drivers. As long as you have a floppy drive it'll take comfortably under 5 minutes.

We don't yet know which of a flashed 8800gt and a 285gtx is quicker for cad, I suspect the former but Rick hopes the latter. We shall see :)

Running 260 drivers and quadro drivers in the same machine may prove tricky. An 8800gt is still reasonably good at gaming, but rather outdated these days.
 
Should be quite an extensive list in your start menu. One of them runs through all the tests in sequence at 1600x1200, can't remember exactly what it's called. You can run any of them independently as well, but doing all at once is fairly low effort and will leave you with a html document with the results in. Only run one instance please, so the first screen will be lots of people juggling and not four identical windows of people juggling

I hope that's clear enough, doesn't help that I don't have windows in front of me at the moment. A load of dos command prompt boxes will appear on the screen in quick succession followed by various 3D models with luck :)
 
ok cheers john i will run the whole thing then least you get all the data how long does it take do you know

perhaps griffo would do one as well compare a few?
 
I hope so too, but he doesn't have the computer yet so it seems premature to ask :)
There's someone else I'm meant to be helping through the mod, but I can't remember who it was for the life of me.

How long it takes depends on how quick the computer is, it'll be in the region of an hour though. If its your only computer then it's probably worth setting it going when you go to sleep

Good man, thanks
 
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rick fowler said:
perhaps griffo would do one as well compare a few?
Click to expand...

I'd be more than happy to, but first I have to order this pc, assemble it, work out why it wont turn on, get everything installed, experiment with OCing, mess it up, go back to stock, start OCing again..... So basically by about Christmas I'll be ready willing and able to run a comparsion:p
 
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