Upgrading my brothers computer for his autocad/architectural DT

[Gabe]

Hi everyone, got a question for you. My brother needs a CPU upgrade I'm thinking because his architectural desktop 3D stuff is laging very badly. He has a P4 1.8ghz, 1gig of ram and a radeon x1650 I think(something around that) I have a amd athlon 64 supported motherboard from my old computer laying around and so we're going to buy a CPU for it, I'm good with computers, been doing it awhile, but since I don't use autocad or any of its brothers I wanted to ask if CPU cache has alot to do with running architectural DT well? I'm trying to decide between these two CPUs-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103053

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103588

As you can see the second one has twice the L2 cache, so is cache important in the performance or not very much?

[Noahma]

get the Athlon 64 X2 4200 processor. The Athlon is the top of the line for AMD processors. Make sure you have a GOOD video card. you might have a hard time finding an AGP card these days with the standard being PCI express. the 6800 ultra from Nvidia is a pretty good card (using one on this machine) you will need at an absolute minimum 2 gigs of memory with 3 being recommended.
anything that is graphic intensive is going to need lots of memory, and a great video card.

[Gabe]

get the Athlon 64 X2 4200 processor. The Athlon is the top of the line for AMD processors. Make sure you have a GOOD video card. you might have a hard time finding an AGP card these days with the standard being PCI express. the 6800 ultra from Nvidia is a pretty good card (using one on this machine) you will need at an absolute minimum 2 gigs of memory with 3 being recommended.
anything that is graphic intensive is going to need lots of memory, and a great video card.

Thanks for the reply, the athlon 64 X2's are not AMD's top of the line, the Athlon FX series is. You didn't really answer my question since I was referring to processor cache and if autocad likes alot of it. Like I said we already have a decent video card. If he had the money I would upgrade him to a pci-e like I have, and an AM2 socket for AMD or an intel core 2 duo. But since hes tight on money the quick fix is just getting a good CPU since the rest of his parts are par. I'm worried though when he needs to upgrade later on, hes going to basically need to build a whole new computer, because there wont be anything for him on old AGP.


BTW: the AMD opteron's are more of an overclockers CPU, they also have more cache then the X2's and also perform better and make less heat. Also notice the bigger price on the opteron and 3 times the amount of reviews compared to the X2.

[Noahma]

had just got off a 12 hour day from work when i reply'd. I still like the 64X2 over the other one. bigger price does not alwase = better item. Is your brother a big overclocker? if he knows what he is doing than get him the opteron. if he does not know what he is doing, he should stay clear of it, if you do too much overclocking, you will fry the processor. Overclocking does reduce the life of the equipment being overclocked, so you should also look at that aspect as well.
I do have one of the X2 athlon's, with a 6800 ultra, 3gigs of memory. and windows vista, and from my personal experience Autocad Architecture 2008 runs beautifully.

to help with the cache issue. you will be dealing with lots of computations. more memory, and higher cache will make the calcs move faster (due to the cache being able to speed up the access of the memory) But being that the X2 is a dual core processor, you would be able to process more information with lower overhead

wow, im not sure if any of that makes sense. lol ill try again tomarrow after i get some sleep

[Gabe]

had just got off a 12 hour day from work when i reply'd. I still like the 64X2 over the other one. bigger price does not alwase = better item. Is your brother a big overclocker? if he knows what he is doing than get him the opteron. if he does not know what he is doing, he should stay clear of it, if you do too much overclocking, you will fry the processor. Overclocking does reduce the life of the equipment being overclocked, so you should also look at that aspect as well.
I do have one of the X2 athlon's, with a 6800 ultra, 3gigs of memory. and windows vista, and from my personal experience Autocad Architecture 2008 runs beautifully.

to help with the cache issue. you will be dealing with lots of computations. more memory, and higher cache will make the calcs move faster (due to the cache being able to speed up the access of the memory) But being that the X2 is a dual core processor, you would be able to process more information with lower overhead

wow, im not sure if any of that makes sense. lol ill try again tomarrow after i get some sleep

Ouch 12 hours:(, well I was just saying what the reason was for the larger price. The overclocking aspect of everything would be all me, hes still learning computers and has never built one or overclocked, I have a lot of experience with it though. Only raising the voltage will reduce the life a CPU/fry it. You can always overclock without needing to raise the voltage at all, I have my opteron overclocked from 1.8 to 2.8ghz, and only have the voltage up .5v, 1.4v is default, 1.45v is my current which is nothing, things start getting unsafe at 1.6v+. Anyway, I think I'm going to go with the opteron since it has more cache and I will be able to overclock it much more then the X2.