1100T good for AutoCAD/Revit?

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I need to upgrade my mom's work computer. She uses lots of AutoCAD/Revit, but her current rig doesn't render shit... of course.

AMD Athlon X2 7850. 4GB RAM. GeForce 6600GT. 500GB HD.

I'll replace it all, but wanted to know if it's reasonable to go with a Phenom II X6 build instead of Core i7. I read somewhere that it's all about cores when it comes to these kind of programs, and Phenoms are a lot cheaper around here than Intel offerings, and with more cores.
 
i havent had an issue with AutoCAD/SolidWorks on my 1090T, however i dont do anything super complex/big, dont see a reason why it would have issues though.
 
You should check benchmarks for that program she will be using. 6 core phenoms II were quite often outperformed by first gen i7 cpus even in multithreaded tasks.
 
My work laptop handles solid works with no issue. Has i7 and fx3800. Autocad should be less demanding. Revit, maybe slightly more. A ph ii x6 should do fine.
 
I know for a fact that the ParaSolid kernel used by SolidWorks is single-threaded, so you'll want an i7 for that.
Don't know about AutoCAD.
 
Unless she is running CAD simulations you probably won't see a difference with any more than 4 cores.
 
Guys, i am the one that mentioned solid works, NOT THE OP...and bwang, you are incorrect, SolidWorks can utilize Multi-Threaded setups for a few different functions. ( http://www.javelin-tech.com/main/support/solidworks_2012_hardware_faq.htm )


anyhow OP -- let me word it better --- For the cost upgrade, it wouldnt hurt IF you can drop it into your mobo....however, if you need to upgrade mobo/ram/CPU all together, your better bet is to pickup an i5 2400
 
coming from an x2 anything, an 1100T will do wonders for her. I have a system with a 1090T @3.8, i7 930 @4.2, 2 Q9550 @4.0 system's and the AMD rocks! If you don't want to spend a lot of money, it's the obvious choice. It'll feel like a brand new computer.

EDIT: Assuming the motherboard supports it fully
 
what motherboard is in that system. because honestly even a phenom II x4 955 is light years faster then the x2 7850, heck even the athlon x2 550 is. reason i even mention those 2 processors is just in case the board supports those and not the 1090T since there are a few AM2 boards that support the phenom II x4's and x2's but not the x6's.
 
1100t + 2ghz ram + 3ghz northbridge overclock + 4ish ghz core overclock and it'll start to look good. But for the most part, get a sandy bridge (this is from first hand experience). However, any modern CPU is going to toast what she has :p
 
Her MoBo is a ASUS M2N-SLI. DDR2... should I just drop a processor there and be done with it? My uneducated guess is that the extra bandwidth from the DDR3 memory is beneficial to her. Budget is really tight, but I wanted a noticeable upgrade.
 
You are probably out of luck, I doubt that mother board will support a hexacore
 
Her MoBo is a ASUS M2N-SLI. DDR2... should I just drop a processor there and be done with it? My uneducated guess is that the extra bandwidth from the DDR3 memory is beneficial to her. Budget is really tight, but I wanted a noticeable upgrade.

She won't notice the extra bandwidth; only very large sever/HPC apps benefit from DDR3 bandwidths.
That board will not support an X6. You'll need to find an AM2 X4 for it.
 
Even then, unless its a higher clock speed, she wont notice much of a difference w/o a full system upgrade


best suggestion, just save and wait a bit longer and pick up a i5 2400 or equivlant, will be better off at that point.
 
She won't notice the extra bandwidth; only very large sever/HPC apps benefit from DDR3 bandwidths.
That board will not support an X6. You'll need to find an AM2 X4 for it.

Yes, I know. If I go that route I might get an Athlon X4. They're cheap around here and easy to find.

But is it worth it? I can easily throw an Athlon X4 on it. (AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.1ghz X4 Cache 2 Mb Am3). US$ 120 (R$ 240...). My brother can use her old processor (he has a X2 4400+). I take his old one and use it to a tiny upgrade on our family server (running a 4200+). After that I sell the 4200+ for some bucks.

The cheapest i5-2400 combo I've found (Intel Core I5 2400s 2.5ghz. 6m Lga115 + Asrock H61m-vs) is around US$ 290. If I go that route I'll have to get some DDR3 ram (2x4GB for US$ 70).

edit: sorry, this is the 2400s. The same combo using a i5 2400 costs US$ 320.

Thoughts?
 
Athlon ll X4 will be a good Upgrade, didn't realize the board supported that
 
an x4 upgrade would be pretty good, but you wont be able to beat intel for performance when it comes to rendering, hyperthreading REALLY shines when rendering
 
out of ops budget, and suggested multiple times..

an x4 upgrade would be pretty good, but you wont be able to beat intel for performance when it comes to rendering, hyperthreading REALLY shines when rendering
 
oh its an m2n-sli deluxe motherboard.. yeah that will support up the phenom II x4 965. but be warned that when using the am3 phenom II processors the system will always boot at 4x multiplier which you will then have to go into the nvidia overclocking and change it to the correct multiplier. i'd highly recommend finding a used a phenom II 940 if you can, less of a pain in the ass to deal with on the board(as you can see in my sig below i have that board with a phenom II 940 so if you have any questions feel free to ask and i'll answer them). i will look into if the 645 also suffers the same multiplier issue or not, but if it doesn't then definitely go for that processor.


also you need this bios update to use those processors "Beta Version 5001". make sure you update the bios before changing processors.
 
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if it says it is officially supported then no you do not ahave to do that
 
What about the Athlon? do I still have to do this or it works just by setting the BIOS?

i can't find much on people running the athlon II processors on that motherboard. but given that i can't find much my best guess is they work perfectly fine. just make sure you use the correct bios version required for that processor and update to those bios before removing the x2 7850.
 
I am an architect and IT pro that uses Revit on large projects every day, so here is some advice from my experience. Revit v2011 and previous versions doesn't make use of multiple cores (there is an exception, but I'll get to that), so it doesn't matter how many cores you have. A fast processor is very beneficial, so that i7 is certainly not wasted. Revit v2012 has included more multitcore-utilizing features, such as generating views. In smaller projects you will not notice a difference, but larger projects can feel the difference. Fast processor = great. Many cores = good, but not important for small/medium projects.
On to memory: a small Revit project is around 100mb, medium is 200mb, large is 300+mb. We use a 20x multiplier to figure out the RAM requirement, so your 300mb project will run at 6gb of RAM. 12gb RAM is the minimum for a good Revit computer.
Revit will utilize multiple cores for rendering, as will any decent rendering program like 3dMax. If your Mother does much rendering, your multicores can come in handy.
Also note that Revit will only use your graphics card for rendering!
Hope this helps!
 
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