Autocad 2006 + What graphics card?

Dundhoone

Im getting a pc to run Autodesk civil 3d 2006

Im fairly well informed about high end graphics cards but could do with some advice on what business end card I should get for autocad.

Its going to be installed on a fairly standard Hp P4 3ghz, 1 gig ram , 80gig hd
with some existing load of rubbish "intel graphics media accelerator 900"

Its a PCI Express slot card I need, and the supplier would like to give me what i think is a 128mb Radeon X300SE (€79)

Is this going to be much of an improvement from integrated graphics?
Anyone out there who buys Acad pcs who might have an opinion???

The autocad will be used mainly for 2d apps.

Nukem

Lot of rendering in that package? Use to have a Dell with 256mb Ram,Intel Extreme crapness gfx and a 2.8Ghz P4 for CAD and Pro Eng
As far as i can remeber those programs are CPU and RAM intensive not very gfx intensive. Used to get everything to 100% when rendering 3D - new machine laughs at it. How much you willing to spend. You could get a CAD specific card - Quadro or you a game player as well.

Nukem

EDIT: Stay the hell away from a x300se - bad card. Also do you have a AGP or PCI-E slot have ya checked.Integrated mobos usually dont have either.

Dundhoone

Thanks for the reply Nukem

Machine will be purely for work , no games, and nothing that will stress it any more than cad.

The min spec that Autocad requires doesnt mention anything about graphics cards in all fairness so I reckon the gfx card will help out, and it defo has a pci-e slot.

oooooh a 28ghz p4 I wouldnt mind someone time travelling into the future an getting me one of those ...lol sorry couldnt resist

Nukem

Found this , thought so not really dependant on gfx

4.2 What are the hardware system requirements for Autodesk VIZ 2006?
The hardware system requirements are as follows:
Intel® PIII or later, or AMD® based- processor at 500Mhz minimum (Dual Intel Xeon®,
dual AMD Athlon® or Opetron™ (32-bit) system recommended)
512MB RAM and 500 MB swap space minimum (1GBRAM and 2GB Swap Space
Recommended)
Graphics card supporting 1024x768x16-bit color with 64MB RAM. (OpenGL® and
Direct3D® hardware acceleration supported; 3D graphics accelerator 1280 X 1024
32-bit color with 256 MB RAM preferred
Microsoft Windows-compliant pointing device,(specific optimization for Microsoft
Intellimouse®). Wacom Intuos or similar pressure sensitive tablet recommended for
vertex Paint
CD-ROM drive
Autodesk® VIZ 2006 Questions & Answers
Optional: sound card and speakers, cabling for TCP/IP-compliant network, 3D
hardware graphics acceleration, video input and output devices, joystick, midiinstruments,
3-button mouse

Look for something like a x600/700pro 256mb should get to where ya want to go. Hope that helped

Nukem

EDIT:2.8Ghz fixed

Dundhoone

cheers Nukem,

the system requirements i found were a bit looser then those, i'll aim a bit higher than the x300 methinks.

Nukem

Totally forgot that ATI and nVidia do actual specific cards may be worth a look, the FireGl and the Quadro i think they are.

try www.ati.com and www.nvidia.com
also try if you want www.matrox.com for very good cad cards as i recall.

Nukem