Computer for 3D CAD

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jdjoubert

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Hi guys.

My current PC is getting a bit long in the tooth and needs replacing.

The PC needs to be able to handle 3D rendering for the following sofware:

AutoCad
Revit
Google Sketchup
Caddie
I mostly do designing of houses, so the scenes are not as big as a big block of flats would be. (here is a sample of what I usually do onSketchup. Just scroll down to where the 3D pics are )

I use to only draw on CADDIE, but wanting to move over to REVIT, I found my old PC is not up to the task.

Even in Google Sketchup it takes me 48hours to render a scene.

My budget, however, is the problem.

I dont think I would be able to more than R10k and was hoping to get something for round about R7k.

I have got two LCD screens and the usual stuff like a keyboard and mouse that I can re-use.


I first thought I needed something like an Intel i5 or i7, but from other threads I read, it seems it is a bit overkill and waaaaaaaay out of my budget.

Any recommendations?
 
This is what I have:

Motherboard - MSI AMD 790X and SB710 chipset
HDD - seagate barracuda SV35 ST3500641SV , 500gb
DVD Writer - Samsung SH-S223F , 22x , Sata
GFX card - Force3D HD4870 256bit GDDR5 1GB
PSU - Coolermaster RS-460-PCAR eXtreme power plus 460w
CPU - AMD Phenom II X2 DualCore 545 [3000mhz] AM3+
Case - Antec 300 (Three Hundred) , black
Memory - Mushkin XP-996599r DDR2-1066 2x2048MB

The PSU could be higher spec'd.
The motherboard also support AM3 CPUs, so upgrading is not a problem.
I bought the above, with screen for a total of R9k @ prophecy.
Shop around, and you'll get the same for less.
The machine does it's job just fine, and I'm sure others will also have suggestions.
 
For what you need go with intel i7 and maybe a 4890 or 5850.

Amd offers no multithreading, don't even look at amd for this one dude, apart from the vga side of things.
 
Hyper-threading is Multithreading right? That really only helps you I believe when you do lots of rendering. Unless the new versions of those programs are now optimised for it.
 
killadoob said:
For what you need go with intel i7 and maybe a 4890 or 5850.

Amd offers no multithreading, don't even look at amd for this one dude, apart from the vga side of things.
Click to expand...

Slight typo there. An AMD CPU will multithread just like an intel does, but it does not have hyper-threading which provides additional virtual CPU cores. But anyway, for 3D CAD stuff, yes intel is probably the better way to go unless you really are trying to fit into a budget
 
The other day I was helping a guy with his CAD machine and I told him to buy a Quadro VGA card, instead of a gaming card. His old dual core machine is now faster than the new R40k HP Quad i7. You can get a Quadro FX580 for around R3400, an entry level Quad, decent RAM/MOBO etc for another three or four thousand; and I can guarantee that you will not be disappointed. The benefit is huge....
 
Our current CAD/C3D/Revit pc's at work are i7 860 which we are overclocking to around 3.4ghz, 16gb RAM and gtx 275/285 cards. We have done testing between the quadro's and gtx's and found that the gtx275 is smashing an FX580 in rendering time.
 
Get the following.

CPU : i5 750 - R1780
Mobo LGA 1156 - R872
Ram: 4 x 2GB DDR3 1600 - R2728
HDD: 1TB Samsung - R706.
GPU: ATi 4890 - R2039
Generic Chassis and 500w PSU - R800
DVD-RW: R181

There you go, an awesome PC for R9030.

Prices are from pcint.co.za.
I always use them, as no pc shop in SA can get anything close to their prices, and they ship.
If you're in Durban, use zones.co.za
 
Last edited:
czc said:
Hyper-threading is Multithreading right?
Click to expand...
No not the same thing. Hyper threading allows you to run 2 threads on one core concurrently, but with less than 2x performance gain (It's about 40% gain afaik). Multithreading is a more generic term used to indicate that a program is split into threads which can be run concurrently if the hardware is capable of it.

killadoob said:
Hyper transport what is that?
Click to expand...
Some intel tech. Related to the FSB somehow. Something sorta like quad pump afaik.
 
AnomalyNexus said:
No not the same thing. Hyper threading allows you to run 2 threads on one core concurrently, but with less than 2x performance gain (It's about 40% gain afaik). Multithreading is a more generic term used to indicate that a program is split into threads which can be run concurrently if the hardware is capable of it.


Some intel tech. Related to the FSB somehow. Something sorta like quad pump afaik.
Click to expand...

Hyper Transport is AMD.
 
Thanx for all the replies. It seems I dont need to go for the very expensive i7, and can get away with a quad core?

In the rendering of the drawings...... which one is more imoprtant? The RAM, CPU or Graphics Card?
 
jdjoubert said:
In the rendering of the drawings...... which one is more imoprtant? The RAM, CPU or Graphics Card?
Click to expand...

I would say all three :D

Render speed is CPU dependant while the complexity of the scene is RAM dependant.
So load it with RAM (8GB min) and use a 64-bit OS as it will help with the floating point stuff.

I would advise you to go the i7 route.

Is ATI such a good idea for rendering people? Just asking as I know most people in this field seem to prefer nVidia. Enlighten me :)

Some examples:
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...tegory&issCategory=/Workstations/ThinkStation
http://www.workstationspecialist.com/product_range/
http://h41111.www4.hp.com/new_workstations/za/en/index.html
http://www1.euro.dell.com/za/en/business/Desktops/precndt/ct.aspx?refid=precndt&s=bsd&cs=RC1078563
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/desktop-workstations/028393.htm
 
Last edited:
Of course AMDs do multi threading. Sigh. You people.

Hyper transport is AMDs inter connect architecture. Much more efficient and faster than fsb.
 
I realise you're on a budget.
You should go for a Nehalem Xeon setup to give you the best peformance, however, they're not cheap.

A dual CPU mobo - about R5-6K
Two Intel Xeons - about R10K per CPU
RAM 8-12GB
Nvidia Quadro GPU or ATI FireGL - R10-20K
with that a 1Kw PSU
 
PeterCH said:
I realise you're on a budget.
You should go for a Nehalem Xeon setup to give you the best peformance, however, they're not cheap.

A dual CPU mobo - about R5-6K
Two Intel Xeons - about R10K per CPU
RAM 8-12GB
Nvidia Quadro GPU or ATI FireGL - R10-20K
with that a 1Kw PSU
Click to expand...

Only missed the budget by about R60k or so ;)
 
PeterCH said:
I realise you're on a budget.
You should go for a Nehalem Xeon setup to give you the best peformance, however, they're not cheap.

A dual CPU mobo - about R5-6K
Two Intel Xeons - about R10K per CPU
RAM 8-12GB
Nvidia Quadro GPU or ATI FireGL - R10-20K
with that a 1Kw PSU
Click to expand...

rofl
 
PeterCH said:
I realise you're on a budget.
You should go for a Nehalem Xeon setup to give you the best peformance, however, they're not cheap.

A dual CPU mobo - about R5-6K
Two Intel Xeons - about R10K per CPU
RAM 8-12GB
Nvidia Quadro GPU or ATI FireGL - R10-20K
with that a 1Kw PSU
Click to expand...


Only problem wil be that my clients wil have to come to me, since I would have to sell the bakkie to buy the PC.


Someone mentioned to me that I should buy two Hard Drives of the same make and size, then you somehow merge the two. This apparantly wil give you double the speed when you open or save files. ?
 
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