3D Modeling/CAD Computer Components

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by Thad House

decent gaming graphics card, such as an R9 270 or a GTX 760 or above.

Those will do absolutely nothing to help your CAD performance. In fact the Intel HD integrated graphics included with the processor will perform slightly better as it shares its architecture with the Intel IRIS graphics which is optimized for CAD (I upgraded my HD 3000 integrated to a R9 270 so I've used both)

Even a workstation card won't make much of a difference in CAD performance besides rendering and in my opinion not worth the price if you already have Intel HD integrated graphics. If you do get a workstation card the AMD firepro V4900 is the best value by far.

[rcmolloy]

Originally Posted by mman1506

If you do get a workstation card the AMD firepro V4900 is the best value by far.

I can vouch for this as well. Not only do I have a 4900 but I have also recommended it to many people who also have great things to say about it. I have a decent mid level CAD station that I got together about a year and a half ago. I can certainly post up all the components that I have put into it thus far.

On a side note, it does display most games fairly well.

[sanddrag]

The FirePro V3900 is a little less $ and should give almost identical performance to the V4900 so long as you aren't running more than two monitors. Our two primary CAD workstations are i5-2400s with 16GB RAM and V3900s. We're very happy with the setup. One thing I should mention is that Inventor uses DirectX while Solidworks uses OpenGL. So Inventor most likely will work nicely with a gaming type card whereas Solidworks will not.

As for RAM, we maxed out 8GB with our full robot model. Our mid grade systems have Core2Quad processors, 8GB RAM and V3800s and work just fine for everything except the full robot model.