AFMG Network Forum

stebadham · Member

Dear all,

OK, so I know this thread rears its ugly head every once in a while, but I am currently considering an upgrade, and the chips available at the moment fall into two distinct groups.

I think I will end up with Intel Core 2 Duo, but my question is, for EASE, would I be better off with a Q6600 (which is a quad core, 2.4GHz) or an E6700, which is only a dual core, but runs at a slightly higher clock speed (2.7GHz). Just for the heck of it, would a dual Xeon (eg a Mac Pro running Windows) run any faster, or would the relatively "single-threaded" nature of EASE gain no benefit?

The other question is graphics capability. My current machine is a "workstation" with an FX1400 graphics card. However, a "gaming" machine with a card like a geforce 8800GTS looks like it would trounce the performance of my FX1400, but if you compare a machine like a Dell Precision 390 (workstation) to a Dimension 9200, you seem to pay a lot for the workstation-class CAD certifications - the cheaper machine has plenty of brute horsepower. Is there any reason why I should buy another workstation over a bog-standard desktop?

Thanks for your time.
Steve.

Bruce · Member

Hi Steve,

Generally, a Dual Core will be the best choice at the moment given price/performance, I believe.

Regarding the Graphics cards, there is no real need to get the workstation class boards. I have a couple of them here, both ATI FireGL and nVidea Quadro, and although they are very nice boards, I notice no real performance differences with the normal ATI or nVidea boards.

See some additional comments posted by Stefan in the Windows XP 64bit and EASE 4.1 and Hardware recommendations postings.