[SOLVED] What do you thing about this "budget" CAD config?

[scania471]

Hi everyone!

I would like to help my father to upgrade a CAD workstation at his office because he uses AutoCAD and in some substances, moving the drawing is lagging. We checked the CPU usage and it was spiking between 75-100%. Only 2nd and 4th core usually. That pc has a i5-2400, 16GB RAM and an old Quadro FX3800. I know it old, that is why we would like to upgrade it.
I couldn't check the GPU usage because it didn't show up in Task Manager.

Now, I know, AutoCAD is focused on single thread performance, so I went for the Single Thread Performance score on Passmark.

The selected config:
i3-9100 or i5-9400f , 16GB DDR4 RAM, Quadro P2000 or P400. (I don't know if he would have any advantage of the 3x more expensive P2000)

My father doesn't deal with huge projects, the largest one is about 4-8MB. No 3D, just 2D. If I know correctly, water/duct connections in a town, smaller cities.

I think, he doesn't need a multi 1000 dollar workstation and of course, he wants it to keep it cheap as he has a one person business.

Compared to the old config, what do you think how much will it improve the performance?

Thank you very much for your responses in advance!

 

[Obakasama]

The only comment I'd make concerns the upgrade of motherboard and RAM as well. Hopefully you'd be aware of that.

 

[scania471]

The only comment I'd make concerns the upgrade of motherboard and RAM as well. Hopefully you'd be aware of that.

Of course I upgrade the motherboard. That would be a GIGABYTE B365M DS3H and the RAM would be 4x4GB HyperX DDR4 2400MHz CL15 Fury.

 

[Obakasama]

That's good, not everyone is aware they may have to upgrade the motherboard. Err on the side of caution with the motherboard BIOS:
https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Motherboard/B365M-DS3H-rev-10/support#support-cpu

The oldest BIOS is F1, but some of the newer CPUs, like the ones you're considering, require BIOS F2. If the motherboard does ship with BIOS F1 then you'd need to update it for the CPU to work. I'm not entirely certain, but it would seem to support BIOS updates without a CPU (Q-Flash); so you may want to prepare a USB stick in preparation for it just in case.

 

[scania471]

That's good, not everyone is aware they may have to upgrade the motherboard. Err on the side of caution with the motherboard BIOS:
https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Motherboard/B365M-DS3H-rev-10/support#support-cpu

The oldest BIOS is F1, but some of the newer CPUs, like the ones you're considering, require BIOS F2. If the motherboard does ship with BIOS F1 then you'd need to update it for the CPU to work. I'm not entirely certain, but it would seem to support BIOS updates without a CPU (Q-Flash); so you may want to prepare a USB stick in preparation for it just in case.

Oh that is a good point. I checked the manual and it has Q-Flash. One more question. Which Quadro would you suggest for very light 2D drawing, P400 or P2000?

 

[Obakasama]

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with workstation graphics cards, so can't provide much insight.

What I am aware of is that in some modelling software (I'm a casual user of Blender) is the VRAM could be a factor in some workloads. Judging by what I could find the P400 may suffice (as it seems to be more powerful than the FX 3800), but you'd definitely want someone more experienced on that side of things to provide an informed opinion.

 

[scania471]

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with workstation graphics cards, so can't provide much insight.

What I am aware of is that in some modelling software (I'm a casual user of Blender) is the VRAM could be a factor in some workloads. Judging by what I could find the P400 may suffice (as it seems to be more powerful than the FX 3800), but you'd definitely want someone more experienced on that side of things to provide an informed opinion.

I understand, thank you very much for your help! 😀