Powerful computer

[Micah Chetrit]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

GPU's are often overlooked when making a decent CAD computer. I'd take a mediocre cpu/mobo/ram and nice gpu over the inverse.

Also, most geforces can be softmodded to quadros. Done it for a few of the team computers.

Adam, how do you softmod a GeForce into a Quadro? I personally have ATI so I can't test it yet, but we are looking into an upgrade or two so it would be real useful if you could give me a tutorial.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Micah Chetrit

Adam, how do you softmod a GeForce into a Quadro? I personally have ATI so I can't test it yet, but we are looking into an upgrade or two so it would be real useful if you could give me a tutorial.

There are lots of good guides you can google. The key thing is to figure out which quadro your geforce equates to. If it doesn't have an equivalent, I believe you're out of luck and can't mod it. It's interesting to see the difference in price between them.

[Trent B]

Granted softmodded quadros have less VRAM than the actual quadros but half the difference is the software.

I wanna say 8800GT, 8800GTS and 260GTX's are pretty common to softmod and all older and thus cheaper.

[sanddrag]

I haven't done any heavy CAD modeling on my new build yet, but in general I've been very happy with my Core i5 2500K overclocked to 3.8 GHz. I have DDR3 1866 RAM. With this combo and a good hard drive you hardly have to wait for much of anything. It is still usable even under 100% load on Prime95. Add solid state caching or a dedicated solid state drive and you'd really be flying. Additionally, the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 is not that bad really for being integrated. I run dual monitors and so far even with HD video on one and Inventor on the other (no giant assemblies yet) it seems to work alright. Whether or not it still would for an entire FRC robot remains to be seen. I purposely went this route on my new system, with a Z68 motherboard to save cost and avoid purchasing a video card until I determine I need it. So far I have not. You would probably be fine with a CPU from AMD at about half the cost, but I wanted to have close to the best available CPU at the time for the budget I set. There are often a lot of great deals on AMD processors and/or motherboard combos.

One other thing to consider is having the OS and programs on one hard drive, and all files and storage on another. This will avoid the hard drive read/write speed bottleneck when moving large volumes of files.

[daniel_dsouza]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

One other thing to consider is having the OS and programs on one hard drive, and all files and storage on another. This will avoid the hard drive read/write speed bottleneck when moving large volumes of files.

If I had two drives, one for programs and OS and one for file storage, would I have to set the separation in the OS? If so, how would I do so?

About getting video cards, there was a booth at the 2011 Arizona regional giving out NVIDIA graphics cards, one per team. I believe that we got a GTX 480. If you decide that you don't want to use an Intel graphics system, or can wait, then look for the booth next regional.

[mesamb1]

Originally Posted by daniel_dsouza

If I had two drives, one for programs and OS and one for file storage, would I have to set the separation in the OS? If so, how would I do so?

The simplest way to do it is to just select the hard drive you want for your OS and install your OS. Then install a second hard drive later.
I have to imagine there is a fancier way to do this, but when you install the OS it will create its folders on that drive and the OS doesnt want to move any of those.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

There are lots of good guides you can google. The key thing is to figure out which quadro your geforce equates to. If it doesn't have an equivalent, I believe you're out of luck and can't mod it. It's interesting to see the difference in price between them.

Adam, do you have any advice on specific models to softmod?

[Trent B]

It seems to be typically done with Rivatuner,

When I was looking to see if it was feasible for my card I noticed this site came up a lot http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539

[buildmaster5000]

I built a machine that has:

• i7-960 at 3.2 Ghz
• 8GB of DDR3 1600 ram
• average, not frills hard drives (one 500GB for programs/OS and a 2TB RAID 1 for file storage)
• GTX 480 graphics (total overkill, but the team gave it to me....)
• 1000W power supply

I will honestly say I have not really used CAD software on it, but I have streamed video and played online games at the same time with no problems at all. Honestly, I would bet that any quad core processor over 3Ghz will serve you fine if the rest of the machine is built roughly to the same standards (read: don't skimp on the rest of the components a good processor will be key). Also, prices have dropped so much it gets easier every week to build a machine.