Recommended SketchUp PC within $3.8k-$4.0k- Needs advice

utiler

Ah, it's getting Summer down under, Andrew, right?

You bet, Csaba... preparing for hot summer night, cold beer, prawn skewers and boardshort....

Krisidious

I have to disagree with the 42" not being good for rendering or computer usage, I use one and it's about 2 foot from my face. renderings look fantastic on it and I get better frame rates that my 3 Digital monitors, whats-more when working on 24x36 inch standard architectural drawings it's a wonderful thing to have it up to that scale. as for retinal burn... I spend many hours a day staring at all these screens. I haven't had any issues that I know of, I have astigmatism and have for many many years.

brodie

@krisidious said:

I have to disagree with the 42" not being good for rendering or computer usage, I use one and it's about 2 foot from my face. renderings look fantastic on it and I get better frame rates that my 3 Digital monitors, whats-more when working on 24x36 inch standard architectural drawings it's a wonderful thing to have it up to that scale. as for retinal burn... I spend many hours a day staring at all these screens. I haven't had any issues that I know of, I have astigmatism and have for many many years.

Hehe, nevertheless, reminds me a lot of this story I found a long time ago.

http://tosh.comedycentral.com/blog/tag/employee-of-the-month/

-Brodie

solo

I run on a 42" Vizio Edge Lit Razor LED LCD HDTV, and the color and image is superb, I sit 4 feet away from screen, I have a Samsung Syncmaster 24" also that is closer (L shaped work area)

I have now used TV's as main monitors for almost 5 years without any eye issues.

jeff hammond

@solo said:

I have a Samsung Syncmaster 24" also

so that's three people in this thread that own a 24" syncmaster (i have one too).

mine is a little over 5 years old and it recently quit working.. (still powered up-- just a blank black screen though) i had it fixed for $70..

so, when you guys' samsung takes a dive, consider taking it in for a repair instead of trashing/rebuying (or, if you know how to solder, fix it yourself for $5 worth of capacitors)

solo

@unknownuser said:

@solo said:

I have a Samsung Syncmaster 24" also

so that's three people in this thread that own a 24" syncmaster (i have one too).

mine is a little over 5 years old and it recently quit working.. (still powered up-- just a blank black screen though) i had it fixed for $70..

so, when you guys' samsung takes a dive, consider taking it in for a repair instead of trashing/rebuying (or, if you know how to solder, fix it yourself for $5 worth of capacitors)

Mine is also about 5 years old, so far the screen is fine, the hinge on the arm gave out after a year but that's no problem as I McGyvered it.

Gaieus

Mine is only 22" and just about 2.5 years old so I think I still have some time.

utiler

Just not for me guys, I think I'll stick to my 24' and be done with it. Interesting though that TV's work well as monitors....

Krisidious

@utiler said:

Just not for me guys, I think I'll stick to my 24' and be done with it. Interesting though that TV's work well as monitors....

24' damn that's huge... I gotta see it...

utiler

You know what i mean, Kris...... Bloody imperial!!!!

Krisidious

onzki

Hi, sorry to butt in again But thanks for all the advice in this thread, even the conversation on graphic card & monitors are cool:) Wow, seems like all you have a nice workstation setup. I can't wait to have mine in the future.
Just for update, I haven't finalize my choice yet even up to this moment and my boss is still bugging me daily to get the Alienware lol . Now my choice gets harder when our admin manager opened an option for a Mac pro (8-core version). But like what Solo & other guys mentioned above, Mac only offers ATI cards and after looking at different negative comments on web, It's difficult to take the risk.

Image below is my current short list, and here's my remarks, open for comments/suggestions:

Alienware ALX 51 - my office might get this, being tied to Dell since day one. I like the i7 980x benchmark but I don't need those cool light effects & vents. Does SLI boosts SKU performance? I also fear the common overheating issues discussed on web.
Dell Precision T7500 - this is a possible upgrade to my T3500, which is not performing well. Xeon x5675 is close in rank with i7980x benchmark. Quadro 4000 seems good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKP-bLcS2X4
Boxx 3970xTreme- I'm tempted with CPU @4.5ghz memory at 2133 and SSD. Does SSD boosts SKU performance? I'm worried for future maintenance parts/repairs. They only have reseller here in Hong Kong. I fear the very noisy fan as shown in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA_ys2kOsLs , my colleagues are seated just 2 feet away I hope being overclocked doesn't mean prone to overheat. I plan to use this about 14hrs, Mon-Fri.
Mac Pro - two processor is also tempting, though Xeon model wasn't specified. My worries on availability/price/compatibility with AutoCAD software and ATI's performance with SKU.
Shortlist:

brodie

My company is tied into Dell as well. That's why we went with the Studio XPS 9100 with the specs below. I just had a friend by the same model recently and I think they've bumped the CPU from the 980x to the 990x. I didn't look into any of those computers in particular. My guess is that there would probably be very little noticeable difference between them but I understand the fretting that goes on. All I can say is that I'm very pleased by the performance I have.

I don't know the answers to your questions but an SSD should help SU start up a bit faster. And if you need to access anything else on that HD it should be access it faster as well. But it wouldn't improve your viewport performance of course.

SLI would probably improve performance for rendering textures and shadows (the 2 things the GPU does - geometry is handled by 1 core of your CPU) but I can't promise that.

-Brodie

onzki

@unknownuser said:

SLI would probably improve performance for rendering textures and shadows (the 2 things the GPU does - geometry is handled by 1 core of your CPU) but I can't promise that.
-Brodie

Thanks Brodie, Our office ordered the Alienware, boss preferred it more. Might arrive in a week. I'll just hope for the best. Maybe in future SKU versions, GPU rendering will be one of the features so I can take advantage of SLI. Cheers:)

brodie

Cool. Be sure and report back after it comes in and let us know how it all turned out. I'm sure it'll work out great for you. At the very least you'll have the coolest looking pc at your office!

-Brodie

gistman

onzki... So what did you end up getting?

onzki

@gistman said:

onzki... So what did you end up getting?

Hi there.. I ended up with Dell Precision T5500 (Xeon X5690, 3.46 Ghz 12MB Cache, 12GB DDR3@1333Mhz, single Quadro 4000 graphics card, 1.5TB Sata, 21.5" Dell monitor). I guess it's an enhanced T5500 because the specs is better than T7500, though the chasis is T5500. (I wonder why:) Got it for about 4.2K USD from a Dell authorized dealer in here HK.

I've been using if for two weeks now and so far I think it's performing better than my recent T3500 in a way that it's more stable (lesser crash and bug splats) and computes things smoother (seen on progress bar of my common procedures like "flatten," "joint push/pull," "round corners", sandbox features, and others (obviously I'm not a techie as evident with how I rate it:).

By the way, as of this posting, Xeon X5690 ranks only at 5th place among other fast CPUs http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5690+%40+3.47GHz , and the i7-3690X on first in rank is a way lot faster and cheaper, unbelievable check it out.