New Build CAD & Animation £700 - £800

rahrah

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Oct 8, 2008
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Hey everyone!

Basically, this thread is for a friend of mine he's looking into building his own system for CAD & Animation for his University course.
He's looking for good amount of power and good for price to performance ratio. He's looking preferably into AMD Hex-Core along the 1090T / 1100T range. However, if Intels for price up comparisons can be met with decent performance benchmarks could be shown then it would give us more perspective in what to go for.

The £700 - £800 must include the whole lot so were looking at:

Power Supply
Motherboard
RAM
Graphics Card
Casing + Fans
Hard drive
Operating system (already have a copy win7)

Were looking UK only so places such as overclockers.co.uk, Ebuyer.com, Dabs.com and Scan.co.uk

Thanks guys, looking forward to see what you can come up with!
 

r0aringdrag0n

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You should use the AMD 6 core due to the fact that AMD has a cheap 6 core CPU, the closest Intel 6 core is $500 more expensive. I'm guessing you need a good Graphics card and CPU..so here are my specs:
(All of these are from Newegg.com)

CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1100T = 124 Euros
MoBo: ASUS M5A88-V EVO = 90 Euros <- AM3+ allows you to upgrade to Bulldozer CPU later
PSU: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 = 94 Euros
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series Model F3-12800CL9Q-16GBRL 16GB = 114 Euros
Case: Antc 300 w/ 120 and 140mm fans = 42 Euros
HDD: Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS = 103 Euros
Graphics: HD Radeon 6950 = 172 Euros
Total: 739 Euros

 
Take a look at these charts. They aren't exactly your friend's usage, but it shows comparisons for tasks other than gaming.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/ALU-Performance-SiSoftware-Sandra-2010-Pro-ALU,2408.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Cinebench-11.5-Multi-threaded,2407.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Encryption-SiSoftware-Sandra-2010-Pro-Overall,2410.html

AMD's build will cost less, but Intel will give you better performance. For CAD and Animation, he'll also want a strong GPU. I'm not familiar with either, but I would look and see if CUDA support makes a big difference. That will determine whether he should go NVidia or AMD for the GPU.
 

rahrah

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Oct 8, 2008
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Thanks for the information, its just a case he's on a budget we both understand that Intel would have superior processing power but its just a case of money. The statistics do prove a lot, but AMD can process especially when bulldozer comes out getting a AM3+ board may prove a worthwhile deal. Although, no benchmarks have been provided as of yet it would give a glimpse of upgrading for the the future.