new workstations

We are currently undergoing a review of CAD stations as our 6 year old P4(3.2Ghz), XP, 3.5Gb are struggling with 2011. That being said they have done us a good 6 years! Most of the issues relate to the 128Mb ATI V3100's. We will replace & redistribute the stations to general staff.

Looking at:

Windows7 (64bit)

2x500Gb 10k Sata mirrored drives (dealt with too many HD problems over the years)

16Gb RAM

ATI V5800

i7-2600 (3.4) although Dell weirdly recommend sluggish low ranked Xeons (probably all that fits their motherboards)

Budget £1k/unit

Any thoughts/experiences/suggestions/mockery is gratefully received!

Usage is ADT/Civ3D, Revit and dare I say Microstation:glare:???

Edit: Welcome to CADTutor!

I use Land Desktop, Civil 3D, and (I regret to say) Microstation... Give this thread a read, as this was recently discussed.

HTH

Cheers Renderman. Microstation regrets (i've had a few lol). Currently being forced to turn to the dark side by UK Client that wants drawings done in MS. Maddening!

Saw that in your other thread. :wink:

Cheers!

"Quad Core Intel Xeon W3540 Processor (2.93GHz, 8MBL2, 4.8 GT/s)

Tower Chassis

16GB, DDR3 SDRAM Memory, 1066MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS)

FX1800 768 MB Dual DVI

Dual 160GB 10K RPM SATA

16x DVD reader

Integrated Intel Gigabit NIC

Internal Audio & Speaker

Dell USB 5-Button Premium Mouse

Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard

Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-Bit

4 Year Limited Warranty plus 4 Year NBD On-Site Service"

Was this a Dell build then?

Exact same Xeon they pushing me towards? Its only ranked 75, whereas the i7 is right up there?

Interesting you went PNY rather than certified ATI? The PNY is around £400, the 2Gb ATI V5900 is only £300?

How you finding it?

p.s. only trying to understand, certainly not thinking I know better!

No worries; actually we've not received any of them from IT yet. Those are just the stats from our internal requisition form. This configuration is for a Dell Precision T3500.

Additionally, I am issued a laptop as a work computer (see the Dell Precision M6600 stats). The new laptops are in, I'm just waiting for IT to finish setting mine up.

All I can say as to why those chose the configuration they did, is due to the massive number of computers we order... I work for a company that has +10,000 employees (and growing through acquisitions). We really have no input per-se as to what hardware configurations we can get. It took me almost three months to get Visual Studio 2010 Express (Free) installed. LoL

Seems we have the systems nailed down now.

Quad Core i7-2600 (3.4Ghz)

16Gb DDR3

2x1Tb WD Caviar Black

2Gb ATI Firepro V5900

Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Office Pro OEM

3yr onsite

£1634 ex VAT

and NOT via DELL! who wanted just over £2100 with slower Xeon E5645 (2.4Ghz), lesser quality drives & 12Gb RAM.

That sounds like it would be a great computer... wonder why you need so much hard drive space though? Don't you're files get saved to a network?

Seems we have the systems nailed down now.

 

Quad Core i7-2600 (3.4Ghz)

16Gb DDR3

2x1Tb WD Caviar Black

2Gb ATI Firepro V5900

Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Office Pro OEM

3yr onsite

 

£1634 ex VAT

and NOT via DELL! who wanted just over £2100 with slower Xeon E5645 (2.4Ghz), lesser quality drives & 12Gb RAM.

Looks good to me. I'd give two thumbs up to those specs.

Yes, networked.

hmmm, remember thinking that many years back when we purchased the Dell i'm using at the moment. I had a whopping 80Gb hard drive at the time!

These PC's will last a while and have to cope with usual demands of I.T's ever growing needs (the usual graphics/disc space/ram etc etc).

We could go cheaper, but then in 3 years we'll be hunting around and probably upgrading bits and having snags/issues (hence the 2Gb GPU), ultimately down time is money.

No I understand that, that's why we pushed so hard for getting these specs for our new CAD laptops. Although, working for a +10,000 employee company means a LOT of computers... I'm just saying, unless you guys are saving local, *most* of the disc space will go unused over the next 4-5 years (IMO).

Please don't misunderstand me, I think you're getting a better configuration than most of the employees at my company, regardless.

Cheers!

I use dell studio i7 works well. i hear all the big boys use macs though. runs graphic programs better. doubt you can get one for under 1,000 however.

The Ghz rating of a processor doesn't tell you how well it will handle CAD. Xeons do have significant differences in how they are made and handle data and are suited to CAD better than the i series. Intel says as much in their own literature. I only have recent experience with the "slow" Xeon processors and can tell you that it performs beautifully.