I work at a small engineering firm where we do 90% of our work on AutoCAD. Our PCs come from Dell and use the Xeon class Intel Processors.
My question is what kind of things do you need to be using your workstation for to warrant the price of a Xeon Processor? I just feel like we could save a lot of money if each pc had a standard desktop cpu instead since all we do is Autocad anyway.
Thanks for the help ahead of time!
actually, an i5 would be the best for you. CAD is single-threaded as fuck.
I appreciate your quick response Commissar!
And, yeah that's what I was thinking. What kinds of applications would benefit from having an Intel Xeon Processor? Basically I know they are capable of running in a dual cpu set up and they have more cache.
The I5 4670k is a really good single threaded chip. I personally sprung for the I7 4770k. They both have the same single core power but the I7 has a little bit more cache and hyperthreading which is nice. CAD wont see any difference between the two chips as Commissar said, its almost entirely single threaded. Both these chips beat almost all other chips in single core performance. If you want more overall power the I7 is the way to go, for higher value the I5 has the crown.
If you have the E3-1275 v3 chip its really close to the I7 4770k. Slightly ahead of the processing power but slightly behind on value. I'm not really an expert on Xeons extra instruction set extensions so i'm not sure why one would choose Xeon over the i5.
Autocad is not single threaded at all. It used to be, but I can assure you, particularly during regenerations it uses more than 1 core. It isn't CPU intensive though...memory and efficient GPU setups are more important.
Plus, although the role of ECC ram is diregarded by most (including this person who is taking the piss with his assertion)
http://cadspeed.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/do-you-really-need-ecc-memory-for-cad-workstation-computing/
Anyone working in a professional environment tends to use Xeon's or Opteron machines with ECC Ram. Just to be on the safe side.
If you are doing CAD in your bedroom, for a laugh, then no....you can use an i5, no fucks will be given.
You can build a workstation with something like an Asus workstation board or get ripped off and buy a Dell Precision etc. Ideally. But if you aren't bothered about having the most reliable machine and risking the firm losing money....use desktop parts.
Very good BiffaBacon, exactly the type of input I was looking for. Thanks for your help.