System build for Autocad £500 available or thereabouts

samhain

samhain

samhain

Associate
Joined
10 Aug 2004
Posts
218
Hi,

Don't need power supply, atx box, DVD writer, speakers etc

I do need motherboard, cpu, fan, ram, Graphics card, hard disk.

For father in law and he tight as hell, he can afford higher spec but.....

He uses autocad wanting Autocad 2010 on which is really intensive so need good spec, I personally would go Core i7 but no way I can get near at that price even a self build.

He doesn't want to get rid of his VGA monitor, so graphics card would need to work with vga socket (not sure if DVI can get adapter?)

Budget £500

Suggestions welcome.

Thanks
 
Just over but would be very good set up, yes you can get DVI to VGA adapter
Edit: if he refuses to go over 500 then look at AM2 board and DDR2 RAM, though Id stretch the £30 if it were me

basket-3.jpg
 
Be carefull with the Sunbeam Core cooler as the clips can interfear with the chipset heatsinks as I found out on my Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P.
 
576intel.png


for an extra £67 an I7 can be had

The D0's are very OC frindly, mine is running a prime 95 test at 4Ghz at 1.25V, can autocad take advantage of more than 2gb of ram ie is it large addreas aware?

forgot the HDD dang, so it's an extra £100 roughly
 
Last edited:
What are people specifying a graphics card for?

Cad won't take any advantage of that at all, you either want onboard or the cheapest card you can find. Cad is entirely processor bound, the software is unable to use gaming cards.

Now, if you want to get a professional card, the computer will do enormous amounts better with cad and cost well over £500

You want the fastest clocked D0 i7 you can get.

The alternative is to get a geforce card and rely on modifying it into a quadro. I started a thread on how to do this, people had somewhat mixed success on this. It's hard to tell whether this was user error or that not all cards are capable of it. Nonetheless, my modded 8800gt gets far better benchmark scores than it did originally.
 
Last edited:
JonJ678 said:
What are people specifying a graphics card for?

Cad won't take any advantage of that at all, you either want onboard or the cheapest card you can find. Cad is entirely processor bound, the software is unable to use gaming cards..
Click to expand...

*bzzzz*

Wrong, AutoCAD gains plenty of acceleration from consumer gaming cards.

2009 runs faster on my 3500+ being accelerated by my 8800GS than it does on the Core2 uni machines with onboard graphics.
 
Got anything to back that up with? Google doesn't seem to support you, and here's my results on a 3.33ghz quad.

8800gt stock (don't remember what stock is for me, I'm taking this from an old thread)
3dsmax-04 7.55
catia-02 7.92
ensight-03 14.49
maya-02 13.06
proe-04 6.35
sw-01 12.44
tcvis-01 2.78
ugnx-01 4.95

fx3700 650 mhz core
3dsmax-04 8.35
catia-02 9.61
ensight-03 15.13
maya-02 13.05
proe-04 6.57
sw-01 13.91
tcvis-01 3.18
ugnx-01 5.23

fx3700 750mhz core
3dsmax-04 15.48
catia-02 14.05
ensight-03 21.96
maya-02 42.11
proe-04 14.32
sw-01 29.01
tcvis-01 8.69
ugnx-01 6.24

Testing was at 1600x1200, early results suggested strongly cpu bound at 2,83ghz. Annoyingly I use ugnx, and more annoying the quad core is on rma
 
Last edited:
Only the fact that AutoCAD showed me a big list of settings that are hardware accelerated when I first ran it, which the machines at uni don't do.
 
I just checked the autocad site and it said noting in the system requirements for a gfx card, can anyone find a link about gou acceleration

57678intel.png


lesser gpu and hdd now included
 
Found a few places which say gaming cards don't help, here's one http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=2787844 and a lot of old complaints about computers crashing.

"AutoCAD KB article "Using hardware acceleration for graphics" notes: "For graphics cards to use [hardware acceleration], AutoCAD-compatible drivers (HDI) must be supplied by the manufacturer of the graphics card." Certainly not the case with the gamer cards"

Not found anything supporting Kenai yet, so between google and the benchmarks I ran myself I'm pretty certain he's wrong. By all means, find something demonstrating otherwise Kenai, I spend a lot of time on cad and would appreciate learning something new.
 
I get 'No cards were found for specified criteria.' as the result for any nvidia cards, and a long list of features for quadro.
Same with amd cards. This is searching for certified cards. Choosing to display non-certified cards as well lists absolutely any card as working. Having trouble working out what makes a certified one different to a non certified. Only professional cards are 'certified.'

As far as I can make out, the site says that any card will be able to display the software, and the professional ones will accelerate it. The site doesn't offer a very precise definition for certified
 
Last edited:
Performance Tuner Results Log
Version: 17.2.0.1
Date of Last Tune: 24/04/2009

Machine Configuration
---------------------
Processor Speed : 2.5 GHz
RAM : 2048 MB

3D Device
---------
Name : NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS
Manufacturer : NVIDIA
Chip set : GeForce 8800 GS
Memory : 384.0 MB
Driver : 6.14.0011.7824

Your machine contains a 3D Device that is not certified.

As more graphics cards and 3D display drivers are tested, they are added to a list on the Autodesk website.

You can check for updates and download the latest certification list at any time. Run the 3DCONFIG command and click the Check for Updates button.

Current application driver: direct3d9.hdi

Current Effect Status:
----------------------
Enhanced 3D Performance: Available and on
Smooth line display: Not available
Gooch shader: Available and using hardware
Per-pixel lighting: Available and on
Full-shadow display: Available and on
Texture compression: Available and off
Click to expand...

Re: the site above - make sure to set it to 'all tested cards' and show drivers that are 'supported, recommended'. Tick for AutoCAD 2010 and Vista 64 bit. Gives me results ranging from 6800 at the top to Quadro VX200 at the bottom.

If it isn't the graphics card doing it, it must be the power of Voodoo shamans that make it run smoother on this machine compared to the Core 2's at uni or something.
 
Last edited:
Good man, thanks for that. So the 8800 is helping some functions and not others? It looks like your card is helping the 'gooch shader' but nothing else, as that's the only one listed as using hardware?

Sarcasm unwarranted mate. If I run dxdiag on the computers in our library it tells me its a dual core xeon running at 3ghz or so, doesn't make it true. In that case they're thin clients.
In the lab, its pentium 4s with 32mb agp matrix cards designed purely for cad. The otherwise painful pentiums do cad remarkably well

edit: same resolution? similar os?
 
why not get a gamer card and mod the device id to get access to the workstation drivers
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539&pgno=0

The is virtually no difference between a gamer gpu and a workstation card, just a little flash memory chip that says I am a quadro

it may be that gamer cards are supported as display only, no acceleration, anyone know of any benchmarks that can check this?
 
Last edited:
Close to what I'm recommending user1453. that method is only valid up to geforce 6800, later than that rivatuner fails to support it.
I've done something equivalent using nibitor but other people on here don't seem to have had enormous luck replicating it.

Sadly there are bigger differences these days :(
280gtx and fx5600 look very similar in most respects, but the latter has 4gb of ram. I'll try changing a 280gtx to a quadro in a year or so, but don't have the funds to experiment yet. Annoyingly 280s are starting to be very thin on the ground as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom