cpu for autocad

[Kokkinoskoufitsa]

Hello,

So I am building a computer for a friend and she is on a tight budget. She is an architect and she is mostly going to be using some architect programs and autocad for 2d applications. After some digging I realized that a gpu is not really required, so to further lower the budget I decided not to use one. So the options I have are the 1. ryzen 5 3400g 2. the i5-10400 3. i3-9400f + rx 580 8g. Obviously the last option is the most expensive. I am not really sure what would perform better for autocad. From what I ve read, autocad would need better single-core performace and I think the r5 3400g would provide that, but it only has 4 compared to 6 cores on the 10400. On top of that, 3400g has radeon vega 11 grahics which beat intel's 630 easy. If I choose intel i5 I am a little bit concerned that the graphics wont be sufficient for the 2d applications she works on. On the last option, I am not sure that the i3 will be good enough to give her the best performance since these programs require better single core perfomance(also no hyperthreading), but it has an actual gpu.

 

Her old computer was using an ati radeon x1600 and a core 2 duo from the same era so anything is pretty much an upgrade  

 

So what do you think would work better for autocad? If anyone has another combo in their mind, all info is well appreciated  

[Viper9]

Can you tell us her total budget and the currency please. 

[Kokkinoskoufitsa]

Hi, thanks for answer. Her budget is under 500 euros, but the lower you can go, the better

[MartinKweh]

Personally, i think autocad works on anything and so long as the project isnt that big, it will be okay on a dual core cpu.  Though , depending on the job, only the render times will tank if you use a slightly slower cpu. 

 

As an engineering student who uses it regularly for 3d rendering, i think even quad cores is enough. Though rendering times might tank especially on big projects. 

 

I suggest something like a 3300x or a 3100x plus any gpu in the budget. Or even a 2600 if cpu cores is needed since i think you can find those now in about sun $100

[Kisai]

29 minutes ago, Kokkinoskoufitsa said:

Hello,

So I am building a computer for a friend and she is on a tight budget. She is an architect and she is mostly going to be using some architect programs and autocad for 2d applications. After some digging I realized that a gpu is not really required, so to further lower the budget I decided not to use one. So the options I have are the 1. ryzen 5 3400g 2. the i5-10400 3. i3-9400f + rx 580 8g. Obviously the last option is the most expensive. I am not really sure what would perform better for autocad. From what I ve read, autocad would need better single-core performace and I think the r5 3400g would provide that, but it only has 4 compared to 6 cores on the 10400. On top of that, 3400g has radeon vega 11 grahics which beat intel's 630 easy. If I choose intel i5 I am a little bit concerned that the graphics wont be sufficient for the 2d applications she works on. On the last option, I am not sure that the i3 will be good enough to give her the best performance since these programs require better single core perfomance(also no hyperthreading), but it has an actual gpu.

 

Her old computer was using an ati radeon x1600 and a core 2 duo from the same era so anything is pretty much an upgrade  

 

So what do you think would work better for autocad? If anyone has another combo in their mind, all info is well appreciated  

Favor more cores/faster cores. And no, a GPU is absolutely required to use AutoCAD, the memory bandwidth requirements pretty much eliminate using iGPU's (iGPU's are between 18 and 24GB/sec). You need a GPU that is equal to a Quadro RTX 3000 at the minimum, or a GeForce RTX 2070. You can also get away with the previous generation P3000 or Geforce GTX 1070. If you pick parts that are less than this, then you will be hamstrung from the limited memory bandwidth.

 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-AutoCAD-2020-including-Specialized-Toolsets.html

Quote

Processor	Basic: 2.5–2.9 GHz processor Recommended: 3+ GHz processor Multiple processors: Supported by the application
Memory	Basic: 8 GB Recommended: 16 GB
Display Resolution	Conventional Displays: 1920 x 1080 with True Color High Resolution & 4K Displays: Resolutions up to 3840 x 2160 supported on Windows 10, 64-bit systems (with capable display card)
Display Card	Basic: 1 GB GPU with 29 GB/s Bandwidth and DirectX 11 compliant Recommended: 4 GB GPU with 106 GB/s Bandwidth and DirectX 11 compliant

You can kinda get away with 80GB/s of bandwidth (eg Quadro P1000/P1200 or GTX 1050Ti/1060) but you certainly notice the problem when you go below those.

 

Given I don't think your friend is going to be drawing a plant or skyscraper, so you might squeeze by with less. The minimum requirements however, are utter lies, and machines with weak GPU's/integrated-graphics just straight die.

 

[Enderman]

7 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Favor more cores/faster cores. And no, a GPU is absolutely required to use AutoCAD, the memory bandwidth requirements pretty much eliminate using iGPU's. You need a GPU that is equal to a Quadro RTX 3000 at the minimum, or a GeForce RTX 2070. You can also get away with the previous generation P3000 or Geforce GTX 1070. If you pick parts that are less than this, then you will be hamstrung from the limited memory bandwidth.

 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-AutoCAD-2020-including-Specialized-Toolsets.html

You can kinda get away with 80GB/s of bandwidth (eg Quadro P1000/P1200 or GTX 1050Ti/1060) but you certainly notice the problem when you go below those.

 

Given I don't think your friend is going to be drawing a plant or skyscraper, so you might squeeze by with less. The minimum requirements however, are utter lies, and machines with weak GPU's/integrated-graphics just straight die.

 

Lol absolutely not, Autocad runs on very old hardware, it does not need anywhere near a RTX3000 unless you're doing some very advanced simulations.

I used autocad on school machines that had integrated graphics like 7 years ago.

As long as you turn down the graphics settings it will run just fine.

 

I use solidworks now which is a more intensive than Autocad but it ran easily on my old GTX770 as long as I was using less than like 500 parts or so.

 

Also keep in mind this was all 3d. If OP is only using autocad 2d it will literally run fine on a potato.

 

I would recommend the AMD system vecause Vega 8 is a lot more powerful than intel.

[Kokkinoskoufitsa]

Hey Kisai, I understand what u are saying, but on the other hand she was making ends meet with a 2007  ati radeon x1600 until now... The quadros and 2070 are more than the hole budget alone  Also autocad is not her main work application. The main ones are much lighter

[Kisai]

11 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Lol absolutely not, Autocad runs on very old hardware, it does not need anywhere near a RTX3000 unless you're doing some very advanced simulations.

I used autocad on school machines that had integrated graphics like 7 years ago.

As long as you turn down the graphics settings it will run just fine.

 

I would recommend the AMD system vecause Vega 8 is a lot more powerful than intel.

There's a difference between "running" Autocad on a potato and actually using it for work. 

 

The requirements since 2018 have been based on the memory bandwidth alone. You may not need a RTX3000, but you absolutely need something that isn't rubbish. 

 

 

Unless all you're doing is single-room designs, AutoCAD is going to melt anything with a weak GPU. The sweet spot is always going to be around the 112GB/s mark, but you can get away with somewhat less, or don't use any AutoCAD tool newer than 2018 when the requirements changed substantially. 

 

[Enderman]

10 minutes ago, Kisai said:

There's a difference between "running" Autocad on a potato and actually using it for work. 

 

The requirements since 2018 have been based on the memory bandwidth alone. You may not need a RTX3000, but you absolutely need something that isn't rubbish. 

 

Unless all you're doing is single-room designs, AutoCAD is going to melt anything with a weak GPU.

First of all, autocad 2D is far less intensive than autocad 3d.

It's really just like solidworks drawings just a different software.

If you can run MS paint you can probably run this too.

 

Second, you can still run autocad on integrated graphics, you just need to turn off fancy visual effects like shadows or AO and whatever, and you won't get very high fps on it but it's still usable in 3D. Here it is running perfectly fine on a 7 year old quadro GPU and also on a mobile GPU:

 

You're really overestimating how much power you need for these applications.

[The Sloth]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

There's a difference between "running" Autocad on a potato and actually using it for work. 

 

i use it professionally and something like a 750ti is good enough for what OP is doing.  For OP, i would suggest going used a GTX 1060+ Ryzen 2600. No, you don't need quadro or RTX unless you are doing something very impressive. For complex renders, most big firms have specialized supercomputers or rents them. 

 

Overall, you need a supercomputer to do CAD is overstated. 

 

 

 

[The Sloth]

35 minutes ago, Kokkinoskoufitsa said:

Hi, thanks for answer. Her budget is under 500 euros, but the lower you can go, the better

Can you go used? a Ryzen 1600 should be around 100 euro, a cheap mobo should be 60, How is the GPU market? 

[Kokkinoskoufitsa]

14 minutes ago, Kisai said:

or don't use any AutoCAD tool newer than 2018 when the requirements changed substantially. 

That is actually very usefull information. She was using 2013 version if I am not mistaken. But when it comes to how complex the work she does on autocad is, I dont know. All I know is that she is mainly using other lighter programs to make sure buidlings wont fall  

[Kokkinoskoufitsa]

7 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

Can you go used? a Ryzen 1600 should be around 100 euro, a cheap mobo should be 60, How is the GPU market? 

I havent really looked into it, I am more intrested for new right now  maybe in a few days when I am desperate 

[Kisai]

32 minutes ago, Enderman said:

First of all, autocad 2D is far less intensive than autocad 3d.

It's really just like solidworks drawings just a different software.

If you can run MS paint you can probably run this too.

 

Second, you can still run autocad on integrated graphics, you just need to turn off fancy visual effects like shadows or AO and whatever, and you won't get very high fps on it but it's still usable in 3D. Here it is running perfectly fine on a 7 year old quadro GPU and also on a mobile GPU:

 

You're really overestimating how much power you need for these applications.

A k2100m and a 960m are still a giant leap over integrated graphics. The k2100m is 48, which is more that double that of an Intel UHD Graphics, the 960m is 80, which is slightly under double that of the k2100m. The problem is not the GPU's render capability, it's it's memory bandwidth on AutoCAD 2019+

 

The engineers I support, literately can not open their projects on integrated graphics, and on m1200m/p1000 laptops, the cooling fans are full throttle the entire time. They work, but they are just barely capable. As I've said to the people when they pick what machine they need, pick the desktop (which will have a Quadro 3000 or 4000 series part) over the laptop (17" laptops have 3000 series parts, 15" have 1000 series, and anything smaller has iGPU's) and we've had laptops fail from running autocad on the 14" and some 15" laptops. There's also been inevitable fan failures on 17".

 

Anyway to just press the point again, the system requirements of 2019 and later require higher GPU memory requirements, and while I doubt the OP's friend is working on massive projects, it's certainly something that you don't want to overlook if you're doing it professionally.

 

[Kisai]

33 minutes ago, Kokkinoskoufitsa said:

That is actually very usefull information. She was using 2013 version if I am not mistaken. But when it comes to how complex the work she does on autocad is, I dont know. All I know is that she is mainly using other lighter programs to make sure buidlings wont fall  

My goal here is to basically go "system requirements aren't static", I have experience with people who use AutoCAD going back go 2013 up to 2020, and the thing that people hate is when the GPU isn't detected due to rubbish displaylink docks and renders the GPU unused. You can literately see a night and day difference between CPU rasterized 2D mode and GPU rasterized 2D, never mind 3D. 

 

But as I've also said, they are working on absolutely massive projects which have lots of parts split across many files. So it's not just the CPU/GPU/RAM that is a bottleneck, which is why I didn't deep dive into RAM requirements because I know those 32-64GB RAM requirements at the office reflect some massive projects, where as your average single, two-story building might get away with 8GB minimum requirements if it's not massively complicated.

 

A typical house, small office, or corner store has a lot of small details, and at least one project at the office is closer to "corner store" than it is power plant.

[Enderman]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

A k2100m and a 960m are still a giant leap over integrated graphics. The k2100m is 48, which is more that double that of an Intel UHD Graphics, the 960m is 80, which is slightly under double that of the k2100m. The problem is not the GPU's render capability, it's it's memory bandwidth on AutoCAD 2019+

 

The engineers I support, literately can not open their projects on integrated graphics, and on m1200m/p1000 laptops, the cooling fans are full throttle the entire time. They work, but they are just barely capable. As I've said to the people when they pick what machine they need, pick the desktop (which will have a Quadro 3000 or 4000 series part) over the laptop (17" laptops have 3000 series parts, 15" have 1000 series, and anything smaller has iGPU's) and we've had laptops fail from running autocad on the 14" and some 15" laptops. There's also been inevitable fan failures on 17".

 

Anyway to just press the point again, the system requirements of 2019 and later require higher GPU memory requirements, and while I doubt the OP's friend is working on massive projects, it's certainly something that you don't want to overlook if you're doing it professionally.

 

"'ve been using AutoCAD for 2d structural engineering work (plans, details, notes for construction documents) for over 10 years and I've never had a work PC with a dedicated GPU. Granted, when i do work from home on my high end gaming PC, it's a better experience but not required."

 

"2d AutoCAD or simple SketchUp models, will be fine with iGPU."

 

"I've got an i7-7700K and the integrated graphics are really good. I see no lag at all in Inventor or any of my slicing software which is 3D-intensive."

 

"I have a Microsoft surface w/ integrated graphics and it can run solidworks but it gets frustrating."

 

 

 

My point is that it clearly is possible even with HD630, and Vega 8 is much more powerful than that.

For 2d stuff it will be a breeze.

For 3d it will be worse because working at 5fps can be a pain, but this is not a video game, you can still get stuff done it just looks stuttery when you pan or zoom.

Using low graphics settings helps a lot too, I ran NX on my two core i5 with just an iGPU and it was actually really smooth.