Computer Specs

[Tony.Wu]

3132 here

I'm running 3DS Max 2010 on my personal laptop. No problems, rendering is a breeze!

Dell StudioXPS 1645

Intel Core i7 Q720 1.60GHz turboboost 2.10GHz
6GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon 4670 1GB
500GB SATA 7200RPM

[big1boom]

This year most of the teams CADing is done on my computer

Custom Built
Antec Skeleton
Biostar Tpower x58 motherboard
12GB DDR3 RAM from OCZ
Intel i7 920 running stock speeds (currently)
Dual nVidia 9800 GTX+ in SLI
3.5 TB storage space.


This is a big step up from what we were running last year with 3 year old tablet PC.

[spacegy4]

Desktop custom built by me

Processor:
Pentium D 930 overclock to 4.05 ghz on corsair liquid cooling
Memory:
3072 mb of OCZ gold + AMPX ddr2 667 at 5-5-5-12T at 2.3V
Hard Drive:
320 gb SATA
Video Card:
ATI HD5970 overclocked to 850 mhz core
Monitor:
up to 3x 20-22in LCDs (3 as one big screen in eyefinity mode)
Sound Card:
Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Operating System:
Windows 7
Motherboard:
MSI P7N Platinum Nvidia 750i sli
Computer Case:
Antec 1000 w/windows in both sides

Picture (lol the 5970 barely fits)

Originally Posted by spacegy4

Desktop custom built by me

Processor:
Pentium D 930 overclock to 4.05 ghz on corsair liquid cooling
Memory:
3072 mb of OCZ gold + AMPX ddr2 667 at 5-5-5-12T at 2.3V
Hard Drive:
320 gb SATA
Video Card:
ATI HD5970 overclocked to 850 mhz core
Monitor:
up to 3x 20-22in LCDs (3 as one big screen in eyefinity mode)
Sound Card:
Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Operating System:
Windows 7
Motherboard:
MSI P7N Platinum Nvidia 750i sli
Computer Case:
Antec 1000 w/windows in both sides

Picture (lol the 5970 barely fits)
*clipped the image*

If you don't mind sharing, how much did all that run you?

[spacegy4]

Its really hard to measure because I made quite a few small upgrades and cooling tweaks over time.


The most recent upgrade was the 5970 and liquid cooling.

which was $650 for the 5970 and $98 for the liquid cooling ($78 for the liquid cooler and $20 for better fans)

Surprisingly most of the parts I was actually able to procure by winning online drawings related to the distributed computing project: Folding@Home

I got the case, power supply, some of the RAM, fans, and processor for free.

But I believe my best guesstimated total of money that I have put into that machine is: approximately $1100

There is approximately $150 or so of parts included in that that I upgraded that are not in the machine

also it is important to note that $700 out of the 1.1k was all from my most recent upgrade.

[-42-]

1 GB DDR1, 256 MB Nvdia, and a dual core.

It's a school computer, what can I say?

My home compy ain't great either.

[O'Sancheski]

Originally Posted by Formerly Famous

So I was thinking about how I have gone through 3 upgrades on my computer in order to run CAD decently. This last upgrade should makes everything run smoothly.

But that got me thinking about what everyone else uses to run CAD and how well that works for them.

The computer specs for the computer I will be using (when the parts come in...)
Windows Pro 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce 9800GT Graphics Card
6 gigs DDR3 RAM
Quad Core 2.8 Ghz Processor

This should run quiet well see as its quiet the step up from the last computer.

What does everyone else use, and how well does it work?

hey i have the same video card... hows it running for you

[Trent B]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

If you don't mind sharing, how much did all that run you?

The rest of his comp is pretty old the 930 was released over 4 years ago, in a sense I think the GPU is severe overkill unless your software you use is heavily graphics accelerated and uses the GPU as a CPU for some processing.

Your cpu is probably acting as a large bottleneck, so I would look into upgrading it (the original post)

Got a 24" monitor about a month ago. Nice screen boost.

[NullEntity]

We use our school's computers. P4s with about 2GB RAM. I think some of them might have been upgraded, but the point is we can have a ton of people working on different parts at once.

[spacegy4]

Originally Posted by Trent B

The rest of his comp is pretty old the 930 was released over 4 years ago, in a sense I think the GPU is severe overkill unless your software you use is heavily graphics accelerated and uses the GPU as a CPU for some processing.

Your cpu is probably acting as a large bottleneck, so I would look into upgrading it (the original post)

Got a 24" monitor about a month ago. Nice screen boost.

I didn't want to upgrade anymore on the old core-duo/quad platform. I will be building an i7/i9 machine and will drop the videocard into it. Also the cpu isn't bottlenecking it much at all. It can easily run any game including Crysis at 1920x1200 all maxed settings and 2x anti aliasing.

I use stream supported applications which are greatly optimized by the card. I like to do a lot of rendering and most rendering I do is heavily gpu accelerated.

[Trent B]

It surprises me it isn't bottlenecking given that the Pentium 4/D series wasn't that great, I had a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 and it really chugged in lots of encoding and rendering related tasks. Maybe your D is a later architecture that they improved to catch up t the athlons.

i5/i7 is a good jump, I may have to end up upgrading to a desktop as my laptop feels like it chugs at times in inventor with lots of parts.

[spacegy4]

Originally Posted by Trent B

It surprises me it isn't bottlenecking given that the Pentium 4/D series wasn't that great, I had a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 and it really chugged in lots of encoding and rendering related tasks. Maybe your D is a later architecture that they improved to catch up t the athlons.

i5/i7 is a good jump, I may have to end up upgrading to a desktop as my laptop feels like it chugs at times in inventor with lots of parts.

The pent Ds never caught up to the athlons lol. Also my overclock certainly helped a bit.