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CAD and GIS workstation
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sand85
Posted 7/30/2017 21:02 (#6158350)
Subject: CAD and GIS workstation


C IL

Looking to add a CAD and GIS workstation for the consulting work I do for farmers when I am not in a tractor.

 

Currently limping along with an old i7-640M 2.8GHz processor with 3MB L3, 4 or 8GB RAM, 7200rpm hard drive and Nvidia NVS5100 graphics with 1GB DDR3 memory.  Seemed adequately big at the time .... 6 and 7 years ago.  My CAD use is spooling back up and since the USDA Geospatial Data Gateway imploded I am working with larger datasets now inside GIS - countywide instead of small clips.

 

I am looking at a Dell Precision T5610 workstation with a Xeon E5-2643 quad core 3.3GHz, 64GB RAM (non ECC), solid state boot drive and second hard drive, and Nvidia Quatro 600 graphics with 1GB memory.  This is refurb workstation.  About $1600. 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA68F5BJ4660&Tpk=9SIA68F5BJ4660

 

From what I can tell, this workstation has about double the single-thread performance of my old machine, and since CAD is mostly still a single-thread process, that is a significant performance bump.  Can go faster with an i7 on single threads but i7 isn't the workhorse Xeon is.  And Xeon goes to 8 threads with Hyperthreading, better system cache as well.  Also can use 40-50GB of RAM in larger drawings, or tabbing back and forth between CAD and GIS.

I don't do much 3D modeling other than basic surfaces with Civil3D, so I am assuming this (dated) graphics card is sufficient for that.

 

Questions:

Am I dumb not to have ECC memory?  It's a new thing to me.  I haven't computer shopped for 7 years.

This seems more expensive than I remember for computer desktops, but it also seems like way more PC than a consumer-grade desktop.  I bought commercial-grade hardware before and it has held up well for many years.  Is a Dell Precision the commercial grade hardware here?

I can build a PC from scratch, if I stop to think about it.  It's been 20 years.  Am I going to get significantly better performance for my money if I do that?  Any sources to get to ready-to-assemble kits?  Especially if they are CAD-certified hardware/drivers?

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