Hi, I have been asked to build a PC for a friend who wants to use it for CAD. I have no idea what is the best card for price/value for this purpose, I have only built for games before. I have an almost complete system that I could finish off for him:- 2.8Ghz P4 Prescott 1Mb Cache 800FSB HT ASrock P4i65G 1 Gb RAM 120Gb HDD DVDRW WIN XP 400 watt PSU Its an AGP board and looking to spend between £150 - £200 on the card Any help would be much appreciated.
I have two computers, and the one I am now has an SLI motherboard. I have only one NVidia PCI-e video card in it, and it runs AutoCad very fast. But, my backup computer has a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro, AGP card in it, and the refresh rates in AutoCad are fast, too. I guess it all depends what type of card that motherboard will take. I prefer ATI over NVidia. But then again, I am not a gamer.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts_ws.html that chart lists the best workstation cards, as to there availability on agp....i dont know. it does seem that some software works better on ati then nvidia, and vise versa. so maybe that should sway your choice.
I have 2 pc's also, I've just bought an SLi board off ebay and stuck a cheap card in it for my kid, with a view to upgrading it for myself when i get time/money. My PC is an AGP setup with an XFX 7800 GS extreme edition 256 Mb, which I think rocks. Anyway, whats the diff between CAD cards and games cards? Would my 7800 GS not be good for both?