Spec me a CAD + rendering workhorse

boYce

boYce

boYce

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Nottingham
I'm looking to build a new machine with the sole purpose of running CAD (solidWorks) and rendering (Hypershot and Maxwell).

I currently have a 4 year old desktop, AMD 3500+ and a 13" MacBook pro. Both of which can run the CAD software ok but take far to long to crunch through the renders.

It doesn't need to be pretty or future proof, I just want to best power for my money. I know the very top end processors are always disproportionally high priced so looking to get something good value around £500-600. As long as thats a good upgrade from my current machines. Doesn't need to include monitor, OS or extras.

The other thing I was thinking is maybe picking up something second hand, possibly a Dell Precision off an auction site?

cheers.
 
Possibly contraversial... Most people will tell you to get an i5, but I can squeeze an i7 860 in to the budget and its a pretty awesome processor.

I use my computer for pretty much the same stuff as you - autocad, vworks, cinema 4d etc and it's a massive improvement from my old AMD 4600x2.

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And you get free shipping which brings it back on budget:)
 
looks good, thanks.

wow, is a 1TB HDD really only £60 thats amazing!

You feel that a £40 gfx card is all thats needed? I thought some of the latest solidworks features required something a bit more specialised.
 
I'm not familiar with solidworks.

However, Autocad and photoshop are now hardware accelerated, so having a graphics card does help, a 4650 or something similar would be fine for that.
 
boYce said:
You feel that a £40 gfx card is all thats needed? I thought some of the latest solidworks features required something a bit more specialised.
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They do, a quadro fx or firegl/pro is recommended although you can get away with less but it will not be as smooth in the viewports. Rendering at present doesn't have gpu acceleration to the best of my knowledge plus I suspect that would be kept for the pro cards or the whole point of a quadro fx/fire pro is defeated.

Stupot_ said:
I'm not familiar with solidworks.
However, Autocad and photoshop are now hardware accelerated, so having a graphics card does help, a 4650 or something similar would be fine for that.
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Solidworks and photoshop are completely different in the way they use gpu acceleration, autocad is nowhere near as heavy duty as solidworks can be.

Personally I say you need a quadro fx/fire pro but your budget really doesn't allow for it so you have to go for the best you can get out of the consumer gpu's.

I use solidworks and 3ds max on a regular basis.
 
4Gb is enough unless you're working on massive multi part designs. Another 4GB can always be added later down the line if needed.
 
8800gt running a bios that lets it use quadro drivers is as close to the real thing as you can get on a budget. Here. A second hand 8800gt is about £40. A 9800gt should work, an 8800gts doesn't. We concluded that a 280gtx probably will do in the future, but not until nibitor supports it and preferably we find an actual bios for one.

If its possible to get the i7 920 with one of the basic boards through a combination of sales and second hand this is the route to go down. Otherwise I'd suggest a q9550 second hand. Which components can carry over from the last build?
 
benchmarks mean diddly squat in 3D work, if you listened to the benchmarks an ati fire pro would run better than a quadro fx in 3ds max when they don't.

You can not reconnect the broken pathways on the gpu chipset to convert a geforce to a quadro fx.
 
No doubt. However some fraction of the performance improvement between geforce and quadro is tied to the drivers. What said fraction happens to be is harder to judge, I don't suppose you have a fx3700 on an i7 motherboard that you could run a benchmark through?

What I can say with confidence is that benchmarks in maya, pro engineer etc show considerable improvements with the quadro drivers relative to the geforce ones. I can also offer the subjective opinion that it's nicer to work with when using the quadro drivers, and seems to cope with more complex models before grinding to a halt.
 
JonJ678 said:
No doubt. However some fraction of the performance improvement between geforce and quadro is tied to the drivers. What said fraction happens to be is harder to judge, I don't suppose you have a fx3700 on an i7 motherboard that you could run a benchmark through?
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thats more likely down to the fact that a workstation gpu driver is focused on work software rather than games and as such is more highly focused on delivering the highest quality performance in set environments rather than x number of games. It's only reasonable that a gpu used for work has drivers which are better suited to that task than those from a gpu aimed at games.
And no I haven't got a quadro fx3700 + i7 to benchmark or similar at present, my x2's wouldn't be a fair test.
What I can say with confidence is that benchmarks in maya, pro engineer etc show considerable improvements with the quadro drivers relative to the geforce ones. I can also offer the subjective opinion that it's nicer to work with when using the quadro drivers, and seems to cope with more complex models before grinding to a halt.
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Like I said benchmarks mean squat, they're only useful for comparing like for like models in a range, you can't compare with last gen etc.
How much of your subjective opinion is down to the fact that you 'believe' it is faster due to the softmod.
Considering all 'benchmarks' I've seen for a softmod versus a full quadro show that the quadro is usually still twice as fast as the geforce with a softmod just proves to me you can't make a geforce into a quadro (you could with a gf6 series).
You've also got the possibility of additional issues being introduced as a geforce has like I said cut pathways compared with a quadro fx.


edit: fx3700 benchmark using a c2q (so slower) cpu is here - link
fx1800 (newer but 1 down pecking order) benchmark using i7 870 is here - link
your link shows sw01 as 39.42, these show 98.54 (fx3700) and 131.68 (fx1800) respectively

To the OP - you can pick up a quadro fx580 for around £140 if you shop around and this will give you around 3/4 of the performance of a real quadro fx3700 in solidworks
 
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3D modelling and rendering (product design and architecture) with like I mentioned solidworks and 3ds max (plus now starting to play with sketchup)
 
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@lsg1r you've made my day with that link, thank you. The best resource I've found for card specifications is techarp, which suggests the two are identical. Your link strongly suggests otherwise, so I agree the difference I've seen is down to driver optimisation.

I'll update the mod thread accordingly :)
 
lsg1r said:
3D modelling and rendering (product design and architecture) with like I mentioned solidworks and 3ds max (plus now starting to play with sketchup)
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cool cool. wud love to see some of your stuff - u dont have a web portfolio or anything by chance? ive tried sketchup but ive kinda stuck to max because i know it. its simple enough to use but never pressed myself to do a project in it. might save myslef a load of time to be fair
 
JonJ678 said:
@lsg1r you've made my day with that link, thank you. The best resource I've found for card specifications is techarp, which suggests the two are identical. Your link strongly suggests otherwise, so I agree the difference I've seen is down to driver optimisation.

I'll update the mod thread accordingly :)
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In the olden days with the geforce 6 series it was all the rage but nvidia caught on and disabled it from then on :rolleyes:

k3wt said:
cool cool. wud love to see some of your stuff - u dont have a web portfolio or anything by chance? ive tried sketchup but ive kinda stuck to max because i know it. its simple enough to use but never pressed myself to do a project in it. might save myslef a load of time to be fair
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I have but due to it being a work site I can't link to it :(
I've got the same view of sketchup at present, it could be good for architectural models but until I get fully upto speed with it it's quicker to work with what I know
 
lol, you lot always get side tracked and go off in a different direction dont you! Interesting discussion tho.

I can remember reading about people turning geforce 6 series into fx cards a few years ago. What sort of performance increase am I looking to get from a £140 quadro fx580 compared to a £40 consumer ATI?
Is it worth it just to make solidworks looks sexy when its running?

I don't think there's much I could take from the current desktop, its in a Silverstone Sugo case which is not something im looking to repeat! and if i keep is as one i can always pass it onto mum / brother.

@lsg1r do you agree with the spec posted by stupot?
 
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