Simple office PC spec required

Xee

Xee

Xee

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Looking for a non-brand specific PC spec. For an office PC that will be running XP Pro, AutoCAD, Sketchup, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, and all the normal MS Office stuff and email software, as well as few other memory hogging apps.

What I'm wanting advice on is (taking into account these PC's may have to last 2-5 years, and we will need 20-30 of them)

What kind of CPU?
How much memory 1Gig or 2?
What type of GFX card?
 
I would suggest the following:

CPU: E6300 or E4300 both dual cores and should be good performers for a business. Consider 6600 for high end users.
Memory: 1GB minimum for XP running autocad, 2GB for high enders.
GPU: 7300GT 256MB should satisfiy your needs although for high end autocad work I would advise the Quadro range of cards from nvidia. Excellent for Autocad work.

The company I work for do ground works and use autocad. Our machines are running Pentium D 820 Processors, 1GB ram and either NVIDIA Quadro cards for the designers and 7300's for the assistant designers and just onboard GFX cards for the rest (An intel chipset).

Alf
 
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Thanks, Thats just what I was thinking, but wanted to see what others thought ;)
 
Yeah the Quadro FX series of graphics cards are optimised for AutoCAD and 2d/3d applications.

I would suggest the following:

CPU: E6300 or E4300 both dual cores and should be good performers for a business. Consider 6600 for high end users.
Memory: 1GB minimum for XP running autocad, 2GB for high enders.
GPU: 7300GT 256MB should satisfiy your needs although for high end autocad work I would advise the Quadro range of cards from nvidia. Excellent for Autocad work.

The company I work for do ground works and use autocad. Our machines are running Pentium D 820 Processors, 1GB ram and either NVIDIA Quadro cards for the designers and 7300's for the assistant designers and just onboard GFX cards for the rest (An intel chipset).

Alf
Click to expand...

For the spec E6300, 1gb RAM, Quadro FX 550 expect to pay around ~£600 for the base unit as a guide. stick with XP Pro for now, I dont think graphics driver support for Vista is matured enough yet to be reliable. Also for monitors 19inch monitors are pretty much the miniumum for the type of applications you mentioned.

Also check out the Dell Precision workstation series.
 
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electric ant said:
For 3D work /massive photoshop files i can understand. But windows/2D work....why?
Click to expand...

Saves having to use the swap file on the HD. I work at a software company and the recommended spec of our product is now 2GB of RAM. Way of the future...
 
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