3d work station

[eric123]

I want to build a middle of the road INTEL 3d workstation running Rhino, Solidworks and 3dmax.

1. Will I save money building a system myself?

2. Secondly I have a nvidia quaddro 3000 agp card and I’m wondering if I should use this in a new system, or should I spend the extra money on a new PCI graphics card.

3.I’m willing to spend $2500

Please give me advice about what system I should build.
Thanks!

 

[shadowduck]

I want to build a middle of the road INTEL 3d workstation running Rhino, Solidworks and 3dmax.

1. Will I save money building a system myself?

2. Secondly I have a nvidia quaddro 3000 agp card and I’m wondering if I should use this in a new system, or should I spend the extra money on a new PCI graphics card.

3.I’m willing to spend $2500

Please give me advice about what system I should build.
Thanks!

1) YES

2) Won't find a current board with an AGP slot, so you really don't have a choice.

3) More than enough.

 

[ArbY]

For a solid 3D work station, I'd recommend a Mac. And with that budget, you may even get one with decent hardware!

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

For a solid 3D work station, I'd recommend a Mac. And with that budget, you may even get one with decent hardware!

ROFL.. A Mac to do 3D CAD work..that's a good one..maybe if he was planning on using Photoshop or stuff like that..but real 3D CAD appz almost always come for PC only...3DSmax may be available fo both but i'm pretty sure SolidWorks and Rhino don't.

Also depending on what you do most with your computer ie: mostly rendering or mostly modeling, you would need to focus your money on different parts of your system. If you plan on using it to render most of the time, i'd suggest a DP system (either wait for LGA771 systems to come out or get a high end conroe instead) wtih a bunch of RAM (4GB min.) and get a decent mid-range FireGL or Quadro card of the PCI-express flavor, but if you plan on doing mostly modeling with only quick renders, a good dual core CPU, at least 2GB of top quality Ram, and splurge on a really high end GFX card since you will be working in your models most of the time.

Good luck with that.

 

[ArbY]

Well at least it was funny. :|

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

Yeah it was, but seriously i wasn't trying to put Macs down, or you for that matter, but just pointing out that for engineering and 3D Cad modeling software are often coded for PCs only... But if he was planning on doing design work with Abode's suites of software or web editing etc.. i'd go with you and recommend a Mac...Because just to even buy a Mac system capable of doing what he needs to do, he would have to spend at least twice what he intends on spending now.

Also just to let you Know i've read somewhere in these forums that you actually can trick GFX card drivers to enable GL specific optimization on High end gaming cards thus saving you quite a bit of money and still getting pretty nice performance.

Here's the link to the thread i was talking about. I don't know if you have a restricted budget or plan on using you computer only for work, but if you intend on playing some games on it, this can be a pretty good trade-off.

 

[eric123]

Thanks guys,