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Help me (IT Guy) build a couple of systems for my AutoCAD LT guys.


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We are about to upgrade becuase of graphics cards but 27mb CIV3D Dwg on I5 8Gb ram Intel 4000 graphics, 88 layouts of locallity, long and crossections works fine, ever so slight lag between layout changes. 12 streets in one design.

 

A couple of big hints to keep speed up, turn off images, check that your linetypes are not made up of hundreds of segments we had a problem with one that was dots 5 mins to generate. Say GAS linetype --G--- but tiny so G repeats. Like the other guys PURGE, -purge R for regapps also.

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great post, am looking to get new laptop for at home and these specs will help, wondering if anyone custom builds laptops in australia, i know can get a computer done easy as but not sure on laptops......

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JBHIFI, DICK SMITH, Harvey Norman, etc etc ASUS, HP sky is the limit basicly I7, Nvidia, 16Gb ram 128GbSSD if possible, my son just paid around $1600 for one it flys can not think of brand for gaming but specs are up there.

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great post, am looking to get new laptop for at home and these specs will help, wondering if anyone custom builds laptops in australia, i know can get a computer done easy as but not sure on laptops......

The thing about laptops are that they are built for portability and convenience and are not easily customised or upgraded. However many laptop manufacturers such as dell or hp will allow you to select a base model and tweak some options such as RAM or had when you buy on their online store.

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looked at dells and they expansive pieces of crap, compared to Toshiba, that is what i have now, but she an old girl think nearly 5, had a look at customizing a Toshiba maxed everything i could and came to $1500, was $300 savings with specials but even without that $1800 is great, paid $1600 for mine at the time....

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looked at dells and they expansive pieces of crap, compared to Toshiba, that is what i have now, but she an old girl think nearly 5, had a look at customizing a Toshiba maxed everything i could and came to $1500, was $300 savings with specials but even without that $1800 is great, paid $1600 for mine at the time....

 

Expensive, yes... Particularly for Precision models (workstation or laptop), both of which I've been using for the past 4+ years quite successfully... So, pieces of crap? Not a chance.

 

Also, FWIW, anyone can setup a business account with Dell - I did so as an individual back in college, without a Tax ID (just paid tax, but got all the discounts) - so anyone who thinks they need to pay retail is greatly mistaken. :thumbsup:

 

Cheers

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blackbox sorry but any dell i have the pleasure using has always let me down, so moved to toshiba and laughing, but for $1500-2000 for great toshiba, compared to $4400 for basic build dell even if dell was better cant justify spending that much, business account wouldnt bring it down by $2000 im sure.....

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blackbox sorry but any dell i have the pleasure using has always let me down, so moved to toshiba and laughing, but for $1500-2000 for great toshiba, compared to $4400 for basic build dell even if dell was better cant justify spending that much, business account wouldnt bring it down by $2000 im sure.....

 

I'm sorry to hear that your Dell experience +/- 5 years ago was unsatisfactory; I cannot speak to what specifications, or configuration you're comparing it against, but I assure you that it has not been my experience (and that is okay).

 

I'm part of a small shop now (my last employer was a large international firm that enjoyed a substantial discount)... *IF* I could find an alternative brand that offered me what I have for +/- half the price as you're suggesting, I would have procured that instead of leveraging our Dell Business account... I don't even pay what they're asking for Business pricing as a small firm, and negotiate everything (sometimes even after the sale + delivery), which is how I keep us being more productive, and spend less where we can.

 

I have no clue who you allowed to spec a $4400 'basic build' Dell, but someone's full of it, as I procured my most recent Dell Precision workstation, dual 24" widescreen monitors, and had everything overnight shipped for less than what a retail comparable Optiplex system unit alone costs (retail)... Point is, you can get a whole lot more, with the right person, quantity needed, and/or sales event... They ALWAYS want your money more than you want their equipment, so make them work for your business.

 

Also, a $4400 Dell Precision in the right user's hands will easily yield greater production than a $1500-2000 Toshiba. Just saying.

 

Here's hoping your next Dell experience is worthwhile! :beer:

 

Cheers

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I can second the recommendations for Dell based on my personal experience with them. I purchased a $1,000 Inspiron 17R Special Edition laptop from them about 1 year ago when it was on a heavily discounted special (older stock or EFY sale can't remember). Spec wise it was about $700-1000 cheaper than any competition I could find at the time. Ended up getting one for my brother and another for a friend before the sale expired. I guess it is all about buying at the right time, different brands have sales on at different times.

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bennyboy. I'm assuming that you're getting the laptop for CAD related tasks and your budget is around the $1500 (guessing based on your previous posts). Have a look at different brands to see what's available. You will want at least 8gb RAM (16gb preferable), an i5 or i7 CPU with a reasonable clock speed and a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. For the CPU the more cores the better, but don't worry too much as most of AutoCAD 2d drafting is single thread, the multiple cores and hyper threading of i5 and i7 CPUs come really handy when doing 3d modelling and rendering. As a general rule of thumb Nvidia graphics cards are better supported than AMD when it comes to professional graphics and CAD software. You should check out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to get a rough idea of the CPU performance. I will send you a private message with links to laptops currently for sale to get you started, if I post them here it may be flagged as spam :unsure:

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Yeah 3 Dells at home and just got 2 new ones at work. No issues what so ever. Now our previous Lenovo's were boat anchors for sure. I have tentative approval for a dept laptop (for CAD and Planning dept to share for meetings) and Dell will be my 1st choice.

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bennyboy. I'm assuming that you're getting the laptop for CAD related tasks and your budget is around the $1500 (guessing based on your previous posts). Have a look at different brands to see what's available. You will want at least 8gb RAM (16gb preferable), an i5 or i7 CPU with a reasonable clock speed and a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. For the CPU the more cores the better, but don't worry too much as most of AutoCAD 2d drafting is single thread, the multiple cores and hyper threading of i5 and i7 CPUs come really handy when doing 3d modelling and rendering. As a general rule of thumb Nvidia graphics cards are better supported than AMD when it comes to professional graphics and CAD software. You should check out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to get a rough idea of the CPU performance. I will send you a private message with links to laptops currently for sale to get you started, if I post them here it may be flagged as spam :unsure:

 

Unfortunately, higher clock speed is advantageous over more cores, as ALL AutoCAD products are still single threaded applications... The advent of Core Console allows for running simultaneous, yet independent tasks (i.e., not on MdiActiveDocument, etc.), and can be run in both series (sequential, single-threads), and parallel (multiple, single-threads), but is not to be confused with a true multi-threaded application.

 

Having worked with both i5, i7 and Xeon... Particularly for CAD laptops, I highly recommend the i7 Quad-Core with +/- 3.4 Ghz (if within budget, of course).

 

Separately, I've also had much better experiences with NVIDIA Quadro cards over any ATI equivalent, FWIW.

 

Cheers

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higher clock speed is advantageous over more cores, as ALL AutoCAD products are still single threaded applications...

Thanks for clarifying, that was the point I was trying to make about going for the best CPU within your budget but not worrying to much about the number of cores. Rather go for the faster clock speed which is the main factor affecting single core performance. However it's not the only factor! The cpu cache will make a big difference in performance as well. Try and get a good combination of clock speed and cpu cache. Also the cpubenchmark site I mentioned earlier has a single thread rating for each cpu.

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pixel8er, the AutoDesk certified hardware is simply hardware that has been offically tested by AutoDesk and has their stamp of approval. AutoDesk generallly only seem to test a limited number of workstation graphics cards (AMD firepro and Nvidia Quatro series) because they're assuming most proffesional companies using AutoCAD would be running workstations rather than gaming machines :) But that doesn't mean other cards will not work, obviously not eveyone has the financial backing of a company for their workstations or some people work from home using AutoCAD on a consumer computer rather than a workstation. Most modern graphics cards will probably work, except maybe the really cheap ones. Obvioiusly some would work better than others. Also older graphics cards might give you a bit of trouble as the drivers might not have been update for a while.

 

For graphics cards that don't have AutoDesks stamp of approval you might want to do an online search to see if there has been anyone else who has had problems running AutoCAD on that particular card. Try searching Name of card AutoCAD compatible. For the particular card that you mentioned it seems that it runs both 2d and 3d AutoCAD with out any worry. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960,4038-7.html

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Hi JamCAD. Thanks for your reply. Yes the pool of hardware tested seems pretty small - just made me wonder how the choice was made of what to test. I'll do a bit more of a search to find if anyone has any compatability issues with the hardware I'm looking at.

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It basically means you are taking your chances with the card AND Autodesk will not give you support if your problem seems graphics card/driver related, they will tell you you are on your on with the problem.

 

It also isn't testing, you will often see a different driver available on the Autodesk site than the AMD or Nvidia site, from my experience, the once on Autodesk site work better.

 

Like JamCAD suggested, do some searches for the cards you are considering and check CAD sites for those with problems.

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Just because your current version works with the graphics card does not mean the upgrade will as we found out, BUT we were running the onboard Intel 4000, the current offering of INTEL 4600 as the deault on most of the shelf brands, 2016 is an approved card but will it stop at 2018 ? Thats why we are going NVIDIA this time around.

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