need advice on CAD related HARDWARE

Hey guys,

I could really need your help on building a very specific system, aiming to improve on applications I got absolutely no experience with, so I'm greatful for any advice.

I am looking to switch some of my hardware to more, let's say 'rendering supportive' stuff and purchase a workstation laptop for my girlfriend. Basically she uses Autodesk's AutoCAD and Graphisoft's ArchiCAD.

My plan is to get her a proper laptop for her everyday work and upgrade my PC so she can render her stuff on my PC in a timely manner.

What I couldn't figure out at all yet is whether these two are taking heavy use of GPUs, and if yes, which one(s) to get? Also, how much do games like CS:GO, BF1,etc. ask from the CPU? If I got myself a better GPU, would my current CPU become a bottleneck? If I get myself a recent 6, 8 or 10 core i7 CPU, can common rendering tools, such as Cinema by Maxon (inbuild in Archicad) as well as most recent games effectively use all of the provided cores?

My current setup:
Asus ROG VI Hero z87
i7 4770k
R9 290x - MSi
16GB DDR3 1600MHz - Kingston HyperX
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 9, 950W

I thought about getting a Titan X and an Intel Core i7-6900K and everything else required for using these, or similar. Would it be worth it to go for the Titan or would it smarter to go for a GTX 1080 and an additional GPU such as the Nvidia Quadro or AMD Firepro series? Do any of you have experience with 8 or 10 core CPUs by Intel, and if yes, how much does the lower clocking on the single CPU cores affect the performance in Games compaired to decent Quad Cores?

And for the Laptop:
Do you consider a GPU a must have for a CAD Laptop? If yes, is a cheap gaming related one fine, since the rendering is going to happen on the PC, or would you still recommend a high end CAD Gpu? Beside that, is there any laptop you can suggest? (256+ GB SSD)

Thanks a lot in advance!
Comments
18
Can't help you, hopefully someone is able to help you out
If you want cpu power for rendering get some Xeon (ES) from ebay like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E5-2658-v3-ES-LGA2011-3-12C-Compatible-with-X99-i7-6850K-6900K-6950X-/162235363565?hash=item25c5fb30ed:g:SRsAAOSwqfNXjM1v you can use X99 for this most Asrock boards work fine for example. For games these Xeon's are not that great, but for rendering you would be in heaven.

You can also overclock that i7-6900K easily. Your girlfriend should know more about what rendering capabilities she really needs to determine the GPU setup, of course if you need the GPU's to render a lot, more is better. Titan or GTX 1080 depends for example if she needs double precision. AMD FirePro, Nvidia Quadro are really good but just remember they are very expensive and most consumer cards can do the same, just with less support and other drivers.

If you don't need it yet it can be good to wait for next year February and AMD Zen will be released by. AMD Zen also has 8C/16T and is probably not that expensive compared to Intel.
Wow, that came quickly :) Thanks!

Also thought about a Xeon, but how much does a Xeon really impact the performance of games?

Well, unfortunately she "doesn't have time" to determine that kind of stuff... Grills... However, she's in her 4th term studying architecture and the rendering explainations come with the next terms, but they don't go too much into details, unfortunately, from what I heard.

I don't have time to wait until February, since she quickly needs a new laptop and I get quantity discounts from my seller.
Parent
Xeon has an impact on every game that is using single core and less than 6 cores.
Parent
Lol psu 950w for what Johannes?xD
Used to have 2 GPUs wanted some backup
Parent
Aa ok my bad bro :D
Parent
u dont need an advice but a life LOL XD AHAHAHAHAH
charming as always :D
Parent
thx trying my bestest
Parent
dont get caught cheating LOOL
greatful :>
Alright guys: Here's what I ordered today

MSi X99A Workstation
Intel i7 6900k
Artic Liquid Cooler 360
Kingston HyperX Fury 2400Mhz DDR4 64GB
2x M.2 SSD 512GB which I am going to use in Raid 0

I'll keep my current GPU since her rendering applications are not capable of GPU rendering anyway, might upgrade to 1080 GTX or Titan X soon though for my own pleasure.
How much was it? Using RAID 0 for SSD not really needed tbh.
Parent
uhm, well, including the laptop (HP Zbook 15, G3 Workstation) it was around 4000€, so I guess around 2400€
Parent
At-least you won't have to upgrade anytime soon! If you are interested in watercooling for that set up let me know =)
Parent
Ive worked in businesses with solidworks and PTC creo. Both of them require single core performance, because the software doesnt work with multiple cores its useless to order a cpu with high multicore performance.

The 6700k has great single core performance, i would recommend that cpu.

P.S. dont use hyperthreading, it will only impact the performance in a bad way. (tip from PTC).
Thanks for your advice L4mpje, but I already ordered the stuff, as stated above :) However, from what I saw in benchmarks the 6700k's single core performance hardly differs from the 6900k's. Also I am choosing extremely strong cooling solutions, so I can upclock the CPU quite a bit
Parent
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