Fry’s has a killer deal on a system but it has the Gt640 card with 3gb of DDR3 ram. This would be a new desktop system for me and I would run Rhino and Autocad both on the system…I know the Quadro cards are better but the boss will not spring for a $2000 plus new system. Below are the system specs. Not bad for under a grand. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8
CPU
Intel® Core™ i7-4770
Chipset
Intel® H87
Graphic
Nvidia GT640 3GB DDR3
Memory
16GB
at 1600MHz
4 x DIMM
Storage
2TB SATA hard drive (7200rpmRPM)
hardware looks fine, but any chance you can have windows 7 pre-installed instead of 8 will be one of the biggest performance improvements you can make. Sadly 8 is still DOA, in my opinion. Usability just stinks.
Well, I don’t agree here, running 8 on two workstations, prefer it to 7. You do need to spend some time setting it up though, mainly shutting off most of the Metro apps. The start screen just becomes navigation central and for that it works fine. Install Start 8 and OblyTile and go to town…
Mitch, glad to hear you have it working out for you. I am just enough of a late adopter that I could not get past all the ridiculousness of 8 trying to be a touchscreen/app centric OS. I’m sure someday I will have to give it (or whatever is new and improved at the time) another shot.
Well so far so good with the new system…I didn’t even want to mess with Windows 8 so I just went ahead and got Windows 7 Pro to install…I also added a 250 gb ssd drive…My old desktop only had a 150 gb harddrive anyway so I’m used to keeping the older jobs cleaned out…Still under $1400 OTD and the boss gets a $75 rebate… I have been snowed in here at home for the last 2 days so I brought the system home to set it up…Man this thing screams compared to my 6 year old desktop that cost 4 times as much.
I’ll up date my findings in a week or so after I put it to real work…It sure will be nice to have Rhino running well on my desktop again…Time to give the old laptop a rest.
I’m aware of a lot of haters out there, but there is no doubt whatsoever that windows 8(8.1) IS equal or faster in almost all aspects of day to day business. With the current 8.1 Release and some miniscule changes you won’t even notice that crappy UI. There are improvements in a lot of areas that are important for 3D people and developers alike (multi monitor setup-> taskbar on every monitor, extremely functional task manager).
Disk space for the windows installation is not an issue when you’re working in our field. It’s basically free compared to other components.
While maybe there is no need to upgrade just yet, If you buy a new workstation you will benefit from W8 in the long run.
Again, most of this is my personal opinion, but it’s backed up by years of experience.
Peace.
Agree with Adam.
Just upgraded Win 8 to Win 8.1 at home and it is nice!
Switched on “boot to desktop” and now if feels almost like a well thought through GUI.
I agree that the taskmanager is superior, and I would not mind upgrading my Win 7 workstation.