Slow dual xeon - new build

hey guys, so i built a dual xeon comp and the first time i boot it up it works fine however when i go to render something on auto cad, it slows down like crazy however it's stable, no crashes or anything funny going on. i was considering swapping out the current gpu with a lower end quaddro or basically anything that will help it to run faster, any thoughts on that?

- supermicro mobo x9dre-ln4f

- cooler master m2 silent pro 850w 80 plus silver

- 2 xeon cpu e5-2620 v2

- 32gb supermicro ecc ram

- 2 supermicro heatsinks snk-p0048ps

- asus geforce gtx 660 oc edition 2gb

- 500gb hdd western digital

Is this about the live rendering of objects or the export rendering of objects?

Also, are your GPU drivers installed?

i'm not terribly sure since its actually not me that's using the computer. all i am aware of is that he is using autodesk revit and the 2014 suite for his school work and that every time he goes to render something in one of the programs, it slows down the comp a lot.

by slows down like razy I assume you mean becomes less responsive?

if its using all available threads and/or running in high priority then of course it will slow the computer down

if you limit the render threads to one less than what is available you will find that the machine remains perfectly responsive

then since the computer has two xeons in it, i would limit the number of threads down to 23? if so how would i go about doing it?

alright, more info came in. he's doing live rendering and the gpu drivers are installed and fully updated.

Yeah, well the GTX 660 is quite the weak spot compared to the rest of the system.  I would expect a quadro or GTX 770-780 in that system.

He may also want to look into a SSD as it makes the whole OS and programs you load onto it a lot snappier.

if he were to get a quaddro, which model should he consider? with the existing build it's already costing well over 2500 and he's looking to keep the costs down if possible.

LINK

If he does any gaming at all, he will want to stay far away from workstation cards.  It depends on how much he is willing to spend, since his current build is quite unbalanced.  TBH, he didn't really need that much CPU, and the live rendering in Autocad and almost any other program is 90% GPU horsepower.

you should optimize autocad for unsupported gpu's and performance. I did the same for autodesk inventor and it made a world of difference on a cheap pentium/integrated graphics machine

.. hope im pointing you in the right direction ... 
have you checked the cpu temps when you render ? I had a friend who had an issue while rendering it turned out to be a heat issue with the heat sink not sitting correctly.

*just a thought  

did check the temps and it was fine, perhaps a little hot but still running stably.

so there should be a optimizing section somewhere in the tools section?

Have you tried running the GTX 660 with a quadro driver? I know there are some slight mods that you will have to do to the driver but there are guides on the internet. 

i haven't tried that yet. thx for suggesting that

I would boot with 1 chip on the mobo (if you can) and see if it preforms better

*check to see if your mobo can do this before - I think most can

If you try it let me know how it works. I'm very curious myself what the performance difference is. I believe I read somewhere that NVIDIA/AMD artificially gimp the performance of their geforce/radeon cards in professional applications to force professionals to buy the workstation class cards.

YES. In Windows, the Power Options - "Power Saver" and "High Performance" - are like night and day. Be sure to select "High Performance" when performance and responsiveness is wanted.