AutoCAD 2008 System Requirements

A

Astra

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 27, 2004
Messages
208
Hi!

I would like to know real life system requirement for AutoCAD 2008 System Requirements. Not the System Requirements from AutoCAD website.

Anyone who is supporting the s/w or using it?

I know that the min is 1G RAM and Video card 128M. But how much do you need in reality for comfortable work. The work includes 3D imaging, although not too complicated.
I was told that 1G RAM and Video card 128M is quite sluggish.

What do you think?

Thanks.
A.
 
I have a few clients that run it, as well as architect focused products....

The things I've learned over the years in supporting their machines...
*Sticking with ISV certified workstations makes for smooth running and far less issues than non ISV certified workstations
*ISV certified workstations will include video cards designed for this work, nVidia Quaddro, or ATI Fire to start with. As for how much RAM on your vid card, or what model, what size screen are you working on? Also seek DVI, not VGA.
*Stick with proper drivers, including for the plotters

Stuff it with RAM, RAM is cheap

Fast hard drive with lotsa cache. 2nd hard drive with the pagefile moved over to it seems to help too.

Since the C2Ds came out....they've noticed a nice jump in smoothness over prior Core Duos and going back to HTs. Since the dual core CPUs came out, Xeons don't seem to have as much of a performance gain for this work anymore.
 
Screen size/resolution 17", 1280x1024

I have a class full of Stone Computers.
CPU - 3.2G
RAM - 2x512M
Video - sapphire radeon x300E 128M
HD - Seagate ST3120827AS Barracuda 120GB 8MB SATA

Teachers complain about sluggishness and they asked me to help them to justify a request for faster PCs or an upgrade.
I believ an upgrade to 2G RAM would be helpful and cheap (I am sure 1G is not enough, because when I open two different autocad applications without doing anything in them, I get 130M free RAM, meaning that the moment a student starts to work in it, it will be a constant swap) but what about Video card? I have a feeling it is a bottle neck and 128M is not enough?
 
17" is small for CAD...so worrying about DVI isn't an issue.

What vintage 3.2? Is it an HT?

Yeah just 1 gig of RAM is a bit light, and I'd question that choice of video card.

From the components I'm guessing these are cloner built or mom-n'-pop shop built rigs. Seriously, spend a bit of time looking at "ISV Certified Graphics Workstations". HP makes some, as well as Dell....some of their Precision models. It's all about solid, compatible hardware with specific drivers designed for graphics software.

Don't get fooled by letting someone talk you into it by selling you some budget hardware with "motherboard and video card of the month club" components.
 
No one would buy anything special.
I will look at "ISV Certified Graphics Workstations" for myself, just to learn what it is.

I am just trying to help some teachers to persuade IT Services that they need new workstations or in the worst case scenario a good upgrade that would include not just upping RAM 1G->2G, but also better video cards.

If I am not mistaken it is HT enabled CPU.
 
Astra said:
I will look at "ISV Certified Graphics Workstations" for myself, just to learn what it is.
Click to expand...

A quick blurb for ya...it's an old article, but the definition is still the same.
http://www.workstationplanet.com/features/article.php/3086501

Note the importance of the video drivers, mentioned several times in that article above, OpenGL and CAD related functions.

If those workstations are just P4 HTs....they're over 3 years old...time to budget to phase 'em out. Some Dell Precision T3400 workstations starting at about 600 bucks....they have a nice deal right now....800 bucks with a new 20" flatpanel monitor.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_t3400?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
 
I guess it really depends on what you are willing to live with as far as minimum specs go. I use Autocad 2007/2010 every day for work and have a seat of 2010 at home on both my main quadcore rig and my netbook. Yes I said that, Autocad 2010 runs on a netbook, sure it is a bit hitchy when doing complex things but it runs cad and can do fairly complex 2d stuff and even some moderately complex 3d.

If you have a small budget for a computer then shoot for $6-800 and get a Dell Vostro, we have several of these here at work and they run flawless.
 
I run 2D all the time on a Dual-core (2 gig?) with 2 gigs of memory, and on-board graphics.....boggs right down in 3D though..BADLY.
 
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