Re: best cpu
 

im not sure if it matters much but i figured i'd just throw it out there. you dont need to spend lots of cash on a machine to run inventor. on my (dont kill me) p4, HP pavilion, 512 RAM, i've been able to run inventor with not a single problem. given i havent tried MASSIVE tasks with it, it runs projects just fine. now if you're looking to run BOTH inventor and 3ds max at the same time (or just power hungry) then feel free to do what you want. i would beef mine up a bit depending on the project but not a whole lot (just RAM and video card...im using my on board nvidia to run inventor and a couple high demanding games [ORB, Neverwinter Nights, etc.]).

Re: best cpu
 

You could easily spend 5-600 dollars (no monitor) and run them pretty comfortably. To run them at pretty much peak performance, think upwards of 1100. Then to really run them, a system like this guy speced, at 1500. As you pay more and more, the increase in performance is less and less. Basically, when i buy tech stuff, i try to get stuff that is just over the first big bump in performance. After that, you are just spending your money on getting newer stuff. Personally, i dont think you should ever buy anything close to top of the line. You can always run any software on middling computers, you just need to upgrade more often, but it still comes out cheaper if you stay away from top end stuff.

Re: best cpu
 

If you are looking for a good cost/performance system - i'd say go with following:
Intel P4 2.6 or 2.8ghz (those are getting pretty cheap now). They perform on par or better than athlon64 3000+ at rendering while costing less, and they have hyperthreading which is really a big plus if you are running two application side by side. I also noticed that hyperthreading allows you to launch two rendering jobs in 3dsmax at the same time with very little speed loss for each one, nearly doubling the effective rendering speed.
1gb pc3200 ram (512 is really okay too, but 1 gb is worth it in many cases)
video: radeon 9600pro or even a geforce ti4200. There is no sense in paying $300+ for a video card when performance difference mostly shows up only in games. Plus, its not like you are going to use AA or AF in 3dstudio.

This is by no means a minimum system, or even a low end one for 3d studio or inventor, but it costs about half of what high end systems do, with maybe only 20-30% performance loss.

Re: best cpu
 

um, limits on ram is set by the motherboard and chipset, not the processor. i think PII chips could have something ridiculous like a lot of GB, off the top of my head i think it clears 20GB, not too sure.,...covered it in my A+ class at school....


as for what kind of cpu and rig you want. i would suggest that you dont worry too much about just upgrading the RAM, or vid card, or processor. spread it around if you want to. as for the cpu itself, if you are on a budget, you can often get a cheaper celeron processor, then add some L3 cache to make up for the difference. not sure what cards are best for rendering since i havent done the animation team for quite some time, but just spread things around for this new PC, and you should be fine....

Re: best cpu
 

I'll avoid repeating things that have already been said, but I'll offer you a comparison between two computers that I have running inventor which serves a useful purpose.

One of them is a (roughly) 1.5 gHz P4, nice Ti-4200 GeForce grfx card, along with 512 mb ram. Another is a (roughly) 2.0 gHz P4, some 128meg (I think)ATI card, 768MB ram, but the hard drive was completely full. The 1.5gig ran inventor much much smoother, and I'm not certain, but I'm quite sure that Inventor uses a paging file of some size on your hard disk and benefits from an uncluttered drive. Although this is not the main concern, it might help you to consider clearing your hard disk as well as these other things... defragging each week won't hurt. Aside from that, I do recommend a good graphics card, but I can't honestly say I know that it will make a difference. As far as AMD versus Pentium, I've gone Pentium in the past, but don't ask me.

Re: best cpu
 

Hi i have built many computers for the team in the past couple years and seen many different cofigurations that would work the best for a FIRST team. Assumuing you would run 3Ds Max/Inventor/Photoshop/Premiere or other image or video editing softwares.

This is the optimal configuration i went for depending on the budget and needs.
The most important thing would be ram
atleast 512 Mbs is must, higher the better you applications will run smoothly with very minimal crash or freeze. DDR would be good because SD is old now:)
19" monitor works well when you do editing and use multiple tools and application. pretty much alot of workspace.
processor, well i personally would gofor the P4 2.53 C(800bus) why? because i think its enough for most applications these days, cost effective and would stay in the market for couple of years. AMD no problem, actually would work out to be cheaper and would mostlikely give you the same preformance. i personally think you dont need to go beton 2 ghz. if you are doing hardcore 3D animation and rendering then a better CPU would be nice.
Graphics card, after a certain point for video rendering it doesnt matter how good the card is. Honestly companies like Nvidia and ATI have their High end graphics card for mainstream gaming which a team does not require unless you play CS after robotics. The best graphics card for rendering and CAD is a workstation graphics card liek the Nvidia Quadro or ATIs FireGL and they are optimized for 3dsmax and other CAD rendering softwares. BUt you dont need to get one of those, a Nvidia Ti series Cards are good, i recommend the FX 5200-5600 or ATIs 9000-9600 no more no less should do the job.
standard onboard sound is enough.
Make sure when you buy a motherboard you have a USB2.0 and firewire port onboard very helpful when you attach cameras/printers and other things.

I recently built 2 comptuers for $1300 for the team. one was p4 2.5 and one was AMD 2.0 ghz Athalon. we have been using them for cading and animation ever since and run great. the pentium is more reliable.

PM me or email me if you would like me to suggest any configuration or advice on these things. Many comptuers built in the last couple of years, so i know whats good for your money.

Good Luck!
Akshay DOdeja

Re: best cpu
 

I know that the orignal question asked about CPU, however, one of the best things that we have done is to connect a projector to the machine that we use for Inventor. Brainstorming with the entire design team you can project onto a large white board and draw on the white board or design in Inventor at the same time. Ideas can be CADed up on the fly and new ideas can be evaluated to see if they will work.

Re: best cpu
 

As an Inventor user, I would caution against getting an ATI card. ATI has a reputation for not being friendly with Inventor -- within Inventor circles, they've come to be known as "Always Trash Inventor". I really have no idea as to why ATI cards have a tendancy to behave this way, but from my own experience using a radeon 8500, I did have problems running Inventor correctly, which forced me to change my Inventor hardware settings to conservative (yuck :P) to get things to work correctly.

Re: best cpu
 

I have a Radeon 8500 and Inventor runs great for me. It could be the processor though, Athlon xp 2600+
This summer windows 64-bit is comming out so an Opteron for a workstation or an Athlon64 might be a good choice for your CAD needs.

Re: best cpu
 

It works really well on my computer with:

Athlon 1700+ XP (1466 MHz)
512MB DDR400
ATi Radeon 9600XT AGP

No glitches at all, I even ran it with 256MB RAM and a Radeon 7200 PCI, so it should run quite well on middle end hardware.

Re: best cpu
 

Yeah, 64 bit windows might be on the way, but it doesn't matter unless your design software also supports it. Also, I can run Inventor with my radeon 8500, but only on conservative settings. You may be able to run it fine on your ATI card, but they just have a reputation for having compatibility problems with Inventor; that's all.

On the memory front, esp if you're going to make drawings of large assemblies (.idw), you'll need at least 1 GB of ram. Autodesk recommends that some users enable 3 GB page files, which just shows how much memory you'll need to do large drawings (tip: don't have more than one sheet in such drawing files). When modeling (i.e. working parts and assemblies), however, you won't need as much RAM (seems strange that doing 2d drawings of your parts and assemblies would require more memory than working on the parts themselves, but that's how it works. I'd like to find out for myself why that is). Realistically though, you should probably just go with 1 GB of RAM. If you're running on a tight budget, 512 MB of RAM is ok, but not preferrable.

Re: best cpu
 

As long as you have a decent cpu, lets say 2.6 and up and 512 ram you should be fine using inventor and 3dstudio. only professioanal work requires very fast cpu's and gpu's.

Re: best cpu
 

2 gb of ram is OVERKILL!!! espically if its ONLY running 3dsmax or mya... 1gb-1.5gb is all you need... a jump from 1gb-2gb will go un-noticed... save the money!! (and look at the benchmarks if you dont belive me =D)


also shouldn't he go with a Quadro card instead of a regular gfx???

Re: best cpu
 

Awright,

It looks like you intend to work with Inventor and 3dsmax on this system you hope to build. Am I correct?

Autodesk Inventor does not require very much technological firepower to run. Pretty much any computer that boots will be able to use it. I run Inventor 5 on a Pentium 166mmx with 64mb of ram and a PCI Radeon 7500 (32mb sdram). In wireframe mode, it is very very usable.

To run Inventor well, that is a different story. I would recommend a P4 of at least 2.8ghz, preferrably on the Northwood process (.13 micron) or an Athlon XP of at least a 2500+ rating (Barton core preferrable, the extra 256k is good for inventor). I have never used an Athlon 64 myself, but I have heard only good things about their performance. I believe than an Athlon 64 2800+ or a 3000+ will be very good for Inventor-ing. To support either the P4 or Athlon XP/64 system, I would recommend a lot of good, fast ram. Nothing unnecessary here (CL2 ram is unnecessary IMHO), but PC2700 or PC3200 DDR would be excellent. 512MB of RAM should be enough for about anything today.

I would recommend sticking with a good, reliable graphics card. I have had only good experience with the Radeon 7500 and the Radeon 8500. In my desktop right now, I have a GeForce4 ti4400, which was very unstable at 4400 speeds. I have downclocked it to ti4200 speeds, which helped with reliability.