Quadro card for AutoCAD?

[Goi]

Hi,

My dad uses AutoCAD daily for work, but his knowledge of PC hardware isn't up to date. For some reason he thinks that Quadro workstation level cards are great for AutoCAD...probably from looking at reviews on CADalyst magazines. Problem is, he doesn't use any 3D on AutoCAD, it's all 2D only. And being the cheapo he is, he bought a 2nd hand Quadro 3450 from ebay, which is around 3 years old. He doesn't get it that hardware gets obsolete really soon.

Anyway, he has asked me to build a new system for him, sans the graphics card. I'm trying to figure out if it's worth getting say a HD4770 if it fits in the budget, or would the graphics totally not matter in this case?

Also, does AutoCAD support multithreading? Wondering whether to get a basic dual core or a quad core. Leaning towards intel now.

 

[BlueWeasel]

For normal or basic 2D AutoCAD, a Quadro is probably a waste of money. We run multi-monitor AutoCAD all day every day at my office with Nvidia 7100GS or 7600GS video cards. Our structural engineering drawings are basic 2D and simply don't require much graphical horsepower. For us, we benefit more in having lots of RAM for running multiple instances of AC. In fact, we run Sketchup6 just fine and it needs a faster video card than our AC requirements.

I'd think the 4770 or even the Quadro 3450 would be plenty.

I'm sure those that use the 3D or solid modeling features of AC will have a different opinion. My AutoCAD realm is different than others, but seems to be in line with your father.

The newer versions of AC 2007 and 2008 seem to be slow in general, but I don't think it's because of our video cards. Our workstations were built almost 3 years ago, some with single core CPUs, so that could be the cause.

I do think that newer versions are multi-threaded. For a basic 2D setup, I'd get a E5200 or E8400.

 

[Goi]

Thanks. I guess there's no need to "upgrade" the Quadro 3450 then, even though it's a couple years old.

I've never used AutoCAD before so I don't know how compute-intensive it is. I'm probably gonna get 4GB memory anyway, but would a quad core be any use here?

 

[BlueWeasel]

It really depends on how much multitasking he will be doing. If he's going to have 3-4 instances of AC running with a bunch of other apps, then a quad core might be useful. But for basic 2D, I'd prefer a faster dual core (E8400 or better) than a slower quad.