Hardware requirements for Autocad computer

[Markfw]

So, my son has an HP H8-1360T with 10 gig ram, and Nvidia 630 video card with 2 gig ram, and a 3770 I7 processor. When he opens a second drawing, it comes almost to a halt and is only using 3.5 gig ram, and 20% CPU. So do you think its the video cards processing power ? the video ram or ?? Would a 2 gig GTX 460 be much better ? I think its the video cards processing power, so thats the way I am leaning that way. This is in the general hardware, as all the hardware must be considered for this problem.

 

[dbcooper1]

I haven't used Autocad recently but it used to be for the most part single-threaded.

 

[Markfw]

I haven't used Autocad recently but it used to be for the most part single-threaded.

The CPU did not appear to be breaking a sweat. Pretty sure its something to do with video.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Are you using a 32-bit application? What does Task Manager say? Does it have a "*32" next to the executable name? If so, that's your problem.

Edit: The "*32" would be next to the executable name under the "Processes" tab in Task Manager, sorry.

 

[Markfw]

Its windows 7 home premium 64 bit. Also it says using 33% physical memory.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Can you please answer my question?

Edit: Also, when he opens two drawings, is there one AutoCAD executable listed under "Processes" in Task Manager, or two?

Edit: What I'm trying to determine, is if AutoCAD is a 32-bit app, then it is limited to around 3GB of virtual memory. And if it opens two drawings in the same application process, as opposed to two separate processes, than that 3GB has to be shared by both drawings. If there are two entries under Processes in Task Manager, then it opens another copy of the application for each drawing, and then each drawing would have 3GB address space.

I'm not super-familiar with AutoCAD, does anyone know if it has it's own temp/swap/scratch file, like Photoshop does? If it does, then it may be paging out from it's 3GB address space to it's private pagefile, and that may be the cause of the sluggishness.

Edit: If the executable for AutoCAD doesn't have the "*32" next to it, then I'm probably going off on a wrong tangent here with my theory, and you're probably correct that it could be the video card's power in processing display-lists.

 

[Markfw]

ahhh. I see your point. I will not be back to his work for a week. But apparently all in his shop, many with laptops, and the same software don't have this problem. Hard to think that laptops have better video cards than a 630, but who knows.

 

[zir_blazer]

What version of AutoCAD is he using? Plain AutoCAD or a vertical integration one? Year? x86 or x64 install? What function lags, and how big is the project?
At least for 2D drawings, AutoCAD Hardware requeriments are the most absolutely overhyped thing I know of. After using or know people that used versions ranging from 2000 to 2013, I can say than AutoCAD runs on pretty much anything. I saw AutoCAD 2010 running in my school computers which had Core 2 Duo era Celerons and lame integrated graphics (Don't recall if it was Intel GMA or one of the VIA or SIS ones). IIRC, input lag was very noticeable when quickly zooming in and out and also when you see the preview of what you're about to draw when, for example, you click on the start point of a line then it previews while you're moving the cursor to the possible end point. 2013 on a Xen-based VM with the QEMU Standard VGA works surprisingly good, but my draws are small.
A thing is that AutoCAD officially claims that it likes professional Video Cards, like nVidia Quadro or Radeon FireGL/FirePro. It doesn't says anything about consumer Video Cards. They seem to work regardless, but at least on synthetic benchmarks the performance seems to be mediocre. If a GeForce GTX 680 is not even twice as fast as Ivy Bridge IGP, something is not going well.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/AutoDesk-AutoCAD-2013-GPU-Acceleration-164/
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/AutoDesk-AutoCAD-2014-Professional-GPU-Acceleration-504/

 

[inachu]

How much hard drive space is left?
I know that hard drive fragmentation can make autocad go to a crawl.

 

[dbcooper1]

The CPU did not appear to be breaking a sweat. Pretty sure its something to do with video.

That's what I'm getting at- if it's single threaded with 4/8 available, the highest it would get is 12/25% usage with 1/2 sessions, assuming each drawing used a different one. If it's lagging because of disk, it should be noticeable just by the activity light being on. Most functions don't require much of the video system; we need more info as to where the problem shows up.

 

[saratoga172]

Mechanical hard drive vs SSD? What does hd usage look like?

Is he opening the same exact files as others and experiencing the problem? Could also look into local vs network storage

 

[Markfw]

I need to get him to answer a lot of these questions, but I can say its a 1 tb hard drive, no SSD, and boots very slowly.

 

[Cerb]

So, my son has an HP H8-1360T with 10 gig ram, and Nvidia 630 video card with 2 gig ram, and a 3770 I7 processor. When he opens a second drawing, it comes almost to a halt and is only using 3.5 gig ram, and 20% CPU. So do you think its the video cards processing power ? the video ram or ?? Would a 2 gig GTX 460 be much better ? I think its the video cards processing power, so thats the way I am leaning that way. This is in the general hardware, as all the hardware must be considered for this problem.

1. What does Resource Monitor have to say? Watch the disk busy time when opening that 2nd drawing.

2. 20% CPU is too vague. An i7-3770 has 4 cores, each with 2 threads. Windows reporting 20% total could mean anything. Is one of the logical cores sitting at 100% (12.5% of total)?

 

[Markfw]

OK, a few updates. Its now has a 460 2 gig video card, and while some functions sped up, the problem with opening a second drawing are still there. Down in the lower right corner of the app, my son say "its going crazy, but I can't see what be means. Its "Autocad Lite", but everyone on their shop is using the same app, so I am not sure what going on. I also think it boots slow, and he needs to delete some "crap" software, and we did some, he just needs to get rid of more.

 

[mfenn]

1. What does Resource Monitor have to say? Watch the disk busy time when opening that 2nd drawing.

2. 20% CPU is too vague. An i7-3770 has 4 cores, each with 2 threads. Windows reporting 20% total could mean anything. Is one of the logical cores sitting at 100% (12.5% of total)?

:thumbsup: This is the sort of information we need in order to make a reasonable guess as to the cause of the slowness.