Autocad Revit Sketchup Lumion hardware advice

[reoninct]

Hi Everybody,
Anybody on here using some of the above who can give me advice on hardware based on actual use.

I am considering buying either a second hand Dell precision with a quaddro gpu or a new Lenovo Legion 540 with the gtx 1660 TI (from evetech ?)

For the same price the Dell cpu and gpu will have slower specs on paper than the Lenovo.

I have looked at the autocad forums discussing the pros and cons of quadro vs gtx cards and also the fact that autocad uses mostly a single core at a given moment.

My head is spinning though, any advice, preferably based on real world experience ?

Thanks
Reon

 

[_Blake_]

Hey Man.
Real World experience here - at my office i use a i7 7700. 16gb RAM, and a GTX 1060. and have had no problem on any of the above software.
At home im on a 7700k, 32gb ram and a GTX 1080 and its pretty much the same - only lumion seems a bit more responsive.
Im not sure how the Quaddro would do but the 1660 TI should do the job for lumion

 

[reoninct]

Hi,
Thank you very much for the detailed reply
I suppose the next issue would be to look at the overall system and its reliability - e.g. does one go for a lenovo legion or a more expensive workstation range, with essentially the same performance specs on paper, but different price range and aimed at a different market and user application.
At least now I have a real world baseline in terms of component specs, which is very helpful.

 

[Altforce]

Hi

What exactly would you be doing ?
2d / 3d ?

if you would be doing 3d, how big would the models be and what level of detail would you be using ?

Would you be rendering.

These types of questions would impact the hardware specs quite drastically.

Ranging from entry level systems to monster pc's

Bit of background

I work for civil / structural engineers
do part time structural detailing, rendering etc

 

[reoninct]

Hi,

Yes that is true.
I suppose one way of clarifying is that I am looking at a budget of around R20k for a laptop which will be linked to an external screen (separate budget). This gives me the option to be mobile on occasion.

I do mostly hard and soft landscaping drawings in both 2D and 3D.
It needs to be integrated with the architect and engineering drawings, coming mostly from autocad, for a particular site.
Based on my past experience and use, I suppose I require something entry to lower mid range, bearing in mind it should serve me for the next 5 years or so.

For that money, would I be best served with a second hand dell precision with a quadro gpu or a faster new system with a non autocad certified graphics card etc as explained above.

At the moment in terms of my budget I could pic up a dell precision with the quadro p600 4gb gpu as opposed to a new lenovo with a gtx 1660 ti 6gb gpu (with a slightly faster cpu as well, but probably not much difference in that regard).

When these two cards are rated the gtx surpasses the quadro significantly, but these ratings are mostly done for gaming applications.

 

[Ebrahim Ali]

I work for a design studio. When I profiled their software use, I found that Autocad and SketchUp use the a single core of the cpu when doing general work. Rendering with Vray for SketcUp uses a mix of CPU and GPU. Lumion doesnt touch the CPU for anything.

So going by that a good quad or 6 core CPU with high IPC and fast RAM with at least a Vega or RTX2060 for the GPU will be fine although professional graphics tend to jive better with software and you get less crashing.