Select the Right System Configuration for AutoCAD 2012
Whether you are an individual user upgrading to AutoCAD 2012 design and documentation software or a CAD manager/IT professional upgrading the entire company, selecting the right system configuration is essential. The wrong decisions can cause years of frustration for the user. To build a system with greater longevity and better performance, use the recommended system requirements over the minimum requirements. In addition, when buying new hardware, consider certified hardware from Autodesk hardware partners. This is the hardware used in the development of the product.
Processor
As AutoCAD functionality continues to expand, multicore functions have been incorporated into the product, most notably in background publishing and mental ray rendering. Every available core is used and rendering is cut to a fraction of the time required on a single-core system. When it comes to rendering, the more cores the better.
Video Card
In AutoCAD, graphics cards are most important if you are working with 3D models, particularly when applying visualization effects such as materials, shadows and lighting. That said, system stability can be greatly increased if you use AutoCAD Certified graphics and drivers. You will also notice better orbiting, panning and zooming performance with at least 256 MB of RAM.
Hard Drive
During operation AutoCAD writes multiple files to the hard drive. For example, when AutoCAD performs AUTOSAVES, it writes a temporary file to disk. We have seen performance degradation in the current generation of solid state drives. We recommend standard SATA drives (7,200 or 10,000 RPMs) because of their higher reliability and faster write times.
Operating System and RAM
Operating system and RAM go hand in hand. With Windows 7, Microsoft has made great strides in stability, memory use and general quality. All modern systems should excel on Windows 7 (64-bit), when using at least 4+ GB of RAM instead of the 2 GB that 32-bit operating systems are limited to. When working on larger data sets, you will see better stability as well as reduced load and interaction times. If you are looking for a little extra performance, we also suggest going with as much RAM as possible to enable your system to crunch those big jobs in a flash.
Author: Randall Young, Autodesk Lead Engineer, Hardware Certification
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good
good functions
but requirement hardware is very costly to student
Can you comment on this statement you make?
“We have seen performance degradation in the current generation of solid state drives.”
I’ve assumed SSD would be the way to go and have been planning on including them for my future CAD systems if I can get drives of the right size at the right price.
Hi Matthew, Performance degradation that occurs with any solid state drive is relative. After using an MLC/SLC SSD for some time, degradation (or “fragmentation”) occurs on all machines and the fix is to defrag using the OS provided tools.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you need additional info! =)
Angelo,
I was starting this response to question or fragmentation and degradation claims but a bit of research pointed me to info that answered my questions.
It looks as if drive manufacturers are working on their SSD performance issues so hopefully the huge performance jump that new SSDs have over spinning disk media can be maintained over time.
Thanks.
A few links that explained things for me:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/8
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9132668/Analysis_SSD_performance_is_a_slowdown_inevitable_?taxonomyId=19&pageNumber=1
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/features/article.php/3910451/Fixing-SSD-Performance-Degradation-Part-1.htm
I know this is an old thread, but do NOT defrag your SSD drives.
SSD firmware (software controlling the drive) include TRIM and wear levelling features. If you defrag your ssd, you’ll essentially LOWER the life expectancy AND performance of said drive. On mechanical drives, defragging makes sense, but on an SSD where seek times are virtually nonexistent, it’s a bad idea. Same goes for USB sticks and other tech of that nature.
SSD drives DO degrade over time however. In particular some Corsair models are known to have firmware which isn’t exactly doing what it was intended to. Affected models most often have updated firmware available on the OEM’s support page however.
I’m requesting for a clear explanation for autocad 2012 system requirements because I’m using a pentium4 G31motherboard ,32-bit operating system ,1GB memory ram ,Intel(R)Pentium(R)4 CPU 3•00GHz,2TB sata harddrive ,Service Pack1 ,
nice post. very informative look at engineering workstations. we http://www.psychsoftpc.com make these and most of this still holds today. we just don’t use SSD’s in our machines because of the reliability and mostly because of the price per meg, which is hard to justify