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juliekitty
Running dog
Joined: Jun 26, 2006
Posts: 1755
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 Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 12:02 am Post subject: Best computer for CAD programming? |
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Husband's thinking about the M6400 from Dell.
He says what's important in a computer for this is resolution and hard drive speed.
Comments? |
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pythagoras717
Butterfly
Joined: Oct 20, 2005
Age: 37
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 12:40 am Post subject: |
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I wouldn't know jack about retail computers and all the extras that come with them to make them sell, but I'm using a Frankenstein Pentium 4 pieced together from catalogs, overstock, and salvaged components. I did have to get an up-to date HP w1907 LCD monitor and a compatible graphics card. I'm running on 512 mb, have a 40GB hard drive and don't need anything more because I archive projects regularly (I don't like leaving things on the computer or magnetic media in general).
I run AutoCAD, IMSI turboCAD, Corel Draw and Paint shop, Word and Excel pretty regularly and simultaneously with no complications.
A lot of graphic folks are pretty stuck on the Mac, but I've always used a PC. |
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lau
Really nice person to know. :)
Joined: Jun 18, 2006
Age: 60
Posts: 9471
Location: Somerset UK
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| Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 10:03 am Post subject: Re: Best computer for CAD programming? |
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| juliekitty wrote: | Husband's thinking about the M6400 from Dell.
He says what's important in a computer for this is resolution and hard drive speed.
Comments? |
Resolution is essentially a function of your graphics card and display - neither have to be particularly dependent on which computer you choose as the base unit (unless you insist on a laptop).
Hard drive speed should be completely irrelevant. CAD is not movie editing, which is the only thing that genuinely can start to depend on hard drive speed.
Rendering an image requires processor speed, but you will probably only do that at the end of a period of design, so it's when you make your coffee. Laptops still take quite a hit in this area, as the cooling requirements tend to result in a need to run at lower speeds.
The M6400 looks pretty good, even though you are stuck with the 1440x900 resolution. A laptop's screen resolution is not optional, and these days, you seem to get stuck with the poor HDTV layout. An external monitor may help.
I'd certainly go for as much RAM as practical, even the full 16 Gbytes, maybe. Luckily, Dell will supply the M6400 with XP, plus you can always ditch that and use Ubuntu, for serious work. 
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Metal_Man
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Joined: Feb 04, 2007
Age: 42
Posts: 505
Location: Dirkadirkastan
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| Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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If it is for solid modeling (Solid Edge, SolidWorks, Pro-E, etc.) then you need the most powerful OpenGL card you can afford. NVidia's are the most popular. They are constantly coming out with new ones so I can't give you a model #. I've had good luck with ATI's FireGL cards and currently use the V7100. The more ram the better and the faster the hard drive the better. Since Microsoft is dropping support for XP the CAD software companies always follow right behind so unfortunately you'll have to use Vista. Only the high-end softwares like NX will run on something other than Microsoft garbage.
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Confucious say: Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse. |
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pakled
"Bless his Heart"
Joined: Nov 13, 2007
Age: 52
Posts: 6736
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| Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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| yeah, knowing what you have in mind for modeling type is important in what to recommend. You could just go with the old salesperson's (make me a fat commission) 'buy all the computer you can afford'... |
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wrongplanetmember
Raven
Joined: Oct 24, 2008
Age: 33
Posts: 100
Location: Brisbane, Australia
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 5:29 am Post subject: Vista AutoCAD |
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A word of warning if you're thinking about running Vista and AutoCAD 2009... we've found it to be embarrassingly bad at our office which runs about 20 CAD workstations.
If you're going to use Autodesk products maybe see if you can get XP and AutoCAD 2008. |
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juliekitty
Running dog
Joined: Jun 26, 2006
Posts: 1755
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| Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for your answers, guys.
WPM and MM, I've heard nothing but bad about Vista, and we will be avoiding it as long as humanly possible. Thanks for the confirmation that it doesn't work with this either. |
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drowbot0181
Phoenix
Joined: Dec 02, 2008
Age: 28
Posts: 667
Location: Broken Arrow, OK, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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I've personally had no problems with ACAD 09 and Vista.
As far as hardware, the resolution is largely a matter of personal preference. More important is the video card itself. You will need a decent one, I would say with an nVidia chipset. And more RAM is never a bad thing. Get as much as you can afford, but I would run with 4GB minimum. Hard drive speed is irrelavent. If he is only going to be working in things like AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Inventor, etc., then a decent dual-core processor should be fine, as the graphics card will be doing most of the work. If he is doing any kind of rendering, i.e. Maya or 3DS or something like that, then I would go with quad-core. A general rule of thumb, so to speak, that I like to follow is spend about the same amount on your CPU and graphics card. Having an imbalance either way kind of sucks. |
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Metal_Man
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Age: 42
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Hard drive speed is important if you are not working on a network and doing all of your work locally. If you are working across a network then hard drive speed is not very critical. When working with very large assemblies on a local drive I have noticed a big difference with a faster hard drive.
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drowbot0181
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Location: Broken Arrow, OK, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 9:43 am Post subject: |
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| Metal_Man wrote: | | Hard drive speed is important if you are not working on a network and doing all of your work locally. If you are working across a network then hard drive speed is not very critical. When working with very large assemblies on a local drive I have noticed a big difference with a faster hard drive. |
They all pretty much have the same speed, unless you set up multiple drives in a striped RAID array. |
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Metal_Man
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Age: 42
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 10:09 am Post subject: |
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I'm not a hard drive expert but I can say from past experience that some drives are noticably different. It really depends upon what kind of modeling you are doing. Large assembly modeling really puts a heavy demand on the hard drive and that is what I do the most. I've had some users recommend dual drives, one for the OS and the other for applications. They really swear by it but I've never tried it and I've never been able to convince the purchasing gods at work to buy it.
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drowbot0181
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Age: 28
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 10:19 am Post subject: |
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I could see there being a real performance difference if you are upgrading older PATA drives to SATA. And I don't have any statistics, but I assume there are still a lot of PATA drives out there and they are still sold at some places, I think. But when comparing brand new drives to each other, the difference isn't usually that great.
There are, however, high performance drives available, like the WD Raptor, that run faster than standard drives. But they cost a lot more per GB.
I'm not sure how the Inventor or SolidWorks function under the hood, but most applications make frequent reads/writes to the hard drive when there isn't enough RAM to hold everything in memory. But I could be wrong on this in regards to 3D CAD programs. |
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Metal_Man
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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It's been 3 years since I compared hard drives so they may all be very similar today. 3D modelers can very quickly use up all of your RAM and will create a very large swap file so a good hard drive is important.
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drowbot0181
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Location: Broken Arrow, OK, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Metal_Man wrote: | | It's been 3 years since I compared hard drives so they may all be very similar today. 3D modelers can very quickly use up all of your RAM and will create a very large swap file so a good hard drive is important. |
Very true. I have a pair set up in a striped RAID array, and it's very nice. The only downside is that if one drive fails out of the two, you lose everything. |
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gramirez
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Joined: Nov 10, 2008
Posts: 1019
Location: Illinois
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 4:45 pm Post subject: Re: Best computer for CAD programming? |
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| juliekitty wrote: | | Husband's thinking about the M6400 from Dell. |
How about the Performa 6400 from Apple?
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