The Most Cost Effective Setup for AutoCAD

The question came up at my workplace: Will we benefit from having a workstation computer setup?

The computers we tested had the following specs:

Machine 1
  • CPU: Xeon E5 1650 V2 (3.5ghz)
  • Video Card: Quadro K2000 (later upgraded to K4000)
  • Hard Drive: SSD 
  • Ram: ECC ram
Machine 2
  • CPU:  i7-3820 (3.6ghz) 
  • Video Card:  Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost
  • Hard Drive:  WD2500HHTZ HD (single; not raided)
  • Ram: Non-ECC ram
The test we ran was the CADalyst benchmarks (http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test).

The results were surprising. The following were the findings (please excuse the loss of the graphs; images were lost from this blog):
  • There was no 2d graphics index difference between any of the video cards.
  • There was no CPU score difference between the CPUs as well.
  • There was a slight difference in the single loop test for file loading speeds. However, over several loops, difference evaporated.
  • ECC Ram did not seem to have any impact in any of the indices.
The upshot is that workstation CPUs, workstation graphics cards, and ECC ram all had no impact for Autocad performance, yet came with a hefty price tag.

Conclusion

In the civil engineering world, Autocad is mostly a 2D graphics application that rarely take advantage of multi-cores. As such, it favours CPUs with high clock speeds. Luckily, the best single-thread performance CPUs with high clock speeds are inexpensive. And since any mid-range graphics cards will perform 2D operations just as well as a workstation card, it costs very little money to set up computer systems for a civil CAD office. This is very good news for a CAD hardware manager.

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