i7 3770 with 2GB nvidia 645 or i5 3330 with 4gb nvidia 640

[NathanBurkholder]

Hi,

I am looking at getting a desktop for Architecture class running Revit and Sketchup, also to do some renderings and photoshoping as well as a media center for after school.

Which system would be better? The i7 is about $70 more, is it worth the extra $$$?

Thanks in advance.

 

[okcnaline]

i5 with 4GB nVidia GTX 640. It's got 4 GB.

 

[Bad_Kitty13]

seeing how revit is multi threaded the 3770 would have better performance. sketchup is single threaded and the rendering and photoshoping depends on what programs you are going to use. if you use revit often it is worth it.

4gb would only come into play when using rendering programs or anything that uses alot of vram. if your already using 1-2gb vram and not experiencing any crashing /freezing then its not needed

 

[dustinhunt78]

Also, if you are hand picking CPU's, go with the newer i7-4770. Nothing really wrong with the 3770, it's just a year behind. The 4770 is about 10% better in performance. I know it doesn't sound like much, but consider it to be a bit of a "future proofing" of your build. That's a lot of money only to find it 3 years later being "not good enough." Here is a good comparison between the two:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDgQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomshardware.com%2Fanswers%2Fid-1799919%2F3770k-4770-performance.html&ei=Q-wkU8yfC8rr0QHn5IHwDw&usg=AFQjCNFM0DL0DxU8QrmJLWamkGyMDPADEg&sig2=JMQL_OcMaOfQSxNydwQAHA&bvm=bv.62922401,d.dmQ

 

[cst1992]

yes. okcnaline, 4GB is just too much VRAM. The 640 is not a powerful enough card to use all of it.
I personally use the 650, which is a faster card than the 640 and only one game I find uses all of it and doesn't slow the card to a crawl: GTAIV.
I know we're not talking about games here, but the point is that the 640's GPU is powerful enough to use only 1GB of RAM; 2GB if you're using RAM-intensive applications. Anything more than that is just gimmicks designed to extract more money out of your pocket.

@OP If you're buying premade, then go for the i7 build. If not, then go for a better graphics card if you can afford it.