so...looking to buy a new system and i got a question:

There used to be an optimal gaming system and an optimal cad system & these were not the same beast (graphics card or something iirc). Is there a difference now? I want a system to be able to run LFS is full pretty mode and to use as a cad system (revit if ya wanna know). Everywhere I look I find specs for a cad system or a gaming system but I want to do both. Any gaming/cad guys out there have any ideas.

(I have my guy pricing a system that he says should do both - I'll post the specs when I get them)

ive used cad a bit and it can depend on the software, how many cores it can handle etc and also can depend on how many monitors you want to run, i would recommend a good gfx card, a powerul dual or possibly quad core prossessor if the software can handle it and i would imagine alot of ram more than that i dont know this is just what i imagine you would want

As I understand there can be a big difference in the cards...vector graphics / raster graphics. Also OpenGL / DivX too I think?? Is there a good card that does both well.

tbh i cant tell ya

I think that CAD machines still rely more on Quadro cards than Geforce ones as far as nVidia is concerned, I'm afraid I can't tell you what the differences are though.

It's DirectX not DivX btw, DivX is a video codec.

D'oh yeah I type too fast smtims

the 2 cad tools ive used in the past couple of months (cst-mws and inventor) both worked just fine with ogl acceleration on a bog standard 7800gtx and 8800gt (why they put a 8800gt into a work computer is something ill probably never find out)
point being that whatever artificial limitations that disabled ogl acceleration in windowed applications before dont exist anymore... even antialiasing worked just fine in both these cad tools (when i say just fine i actually mean it worked as long as you dont enable 16x supersampling in inventor)

The company I'll buy from is a cad re-seller so they know cad machines as well...got the specs today, opinions please

Subject: AMD based gamer system quote

Basic Platform:
ANTEC SONATA III MID TOWER 500W (BLACK)
MB-MSI-K9A2-Platinum AMZ+.CF /FW/RA/GL/AUD LI-AUDIO/LAN ONBOARD
CROSSFIRE READY
LG SATA DVD-RW 20X Black
MS Vista Business 32

CPU Options:
AMD Phenom 9750 Q-CORE 2.4 GHZ
Ram Memory
Corsair TWIN2X 4096 8500CD5F KIT 1066, TOTAL 4 GB DOMINATOR
Hard drives
SEAGATE SATA2 500 GB 32 Mb cache 7200 RPM.
Video cards:
SAP RADEON HD 3850 PCI-E 512 MB HD/2 DVI/TV/
FOR CROSSFIRE ADD SECOND CARD AS ABOVE
SYSTEM PRICE: $1425

OPTIONS:

Video cards: FOR CROSSFIRE CONFIGURATION
SAP RADEON HD 3850 PCI-E 512 MB HD/2 DVI/TV/…………135.00


LCD Monitors:
Acer 22” 2223WBD Widescreen……………………………………………..$260 EA

looks good, will certainly handle lfs with ease, and should deal fine with everything else, dont know much about the phenoms tbh the only thing i dont like is it is ati graphics but thats more of a personal dislike i have

it helps with graphic rendering, basicly i understanding it as one card sorts the graphpics output one sorts the proccessing, i could eb wrong but the base idea is they share the load

that gonna help LFS out as well??....really though for an extra $135 wth

Crossfire is linking the two graphics card together to get a theorhetical double in speed - in reality it's more like a 70% boost.

TBH i'd never buy a Phenom / 3850 Crossfire system.

Ya I was talking to another supplier today as well and got the same warning about phenom's in general, he's gonna quote a different system (new specs to follow). Also there is still the discrepancy between cad systems and gaming systems based on graphic cards.

Says though that 2 cards are needed to run 3 monitors though, makes sense (I just didnt think it through ...1 card=2 monitors so 2 cards=4)

BTW thanks guys for the input I really appreciate it

Most graphics cards have 2 monitor outputs each - so 1 and 2 monitors can be run on one card, but 3 and 4 need either another card or something like a Th2Go.