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Company looking to buy a new Workstation for Solidworks, Maxwell,

Don't really want to build unless savings/performance can justify potential of having downtime/problems that don't have tech support.

Budget would likely be $4000-$5000

At home I am currently using a i7 6700k 4.00 Ghz , for what its worth getting about 11 mins on benchwell.

Would want new system to be at least 2x as fast for rendering.

Any suggestions or recent purchases or builds,

Don't know whether to try and go for GPU or CPU ? GPU should be compatible supported with Solidworks

Any ideas or thoughts

My experiences about workstations:

Usage: CAD and CG

After two HP Z‘s Models I decided to try Dell Precision workstations. First a T5810 and now a T7910 with two Xeons. The T5810 with one Xeon was extremely fast for CAD and other software who only uses 1 up to 4 cores. For rendering it was too slow. I ordered both with Dell‘s Pro Support Plus Service which is pretty cool. Downtime = 1 day.

I can recommend Dell workstations especially for CAD. IMHO for CG you’re maybe better of with a custom built workstation. Especially if you want to use multiple GPU‘s. The Dell workstation are made for Quadro graphic cards. For GPU Rendering you want to use GTX cards (more Cuda cores, cheaper). But they need more power which is a problem for Dell‘s PSU.

I recently build my own Rendernode which actually was pretty easy. I think my next workstation will be a custom built by me.

I understand your concern about tech support but nowadays with the online shops and 1 day delivery it’s not that big of an issue anymore.

Boxx can sell you a decent workstation for $5K and will actually know what you're talking about when you ask about rendering speeds.

If I were to go with a thread ripper 1950 , what vid card would be same speed of faster in "simple renderings?

I don't seem to be able to see any comparative benchmarks for specific gpu vs specific cpu

Just for conversation , would I be able to use a quadro card for larger assemblies in solidworks and then use a ge-force for render in a second slot?

I would say the 1080 Ti is the best solution for GPU rendering right now (price/cuda). But you want to wait a little bit. In 2018 the ne series will arrive.

About mixing Quadro and GeForce
I did it once and I wouldn’t do it anymore. The system wasn’t as stable as before when using just Quadro or GeForce. Stay with one class only.

There are no benchmarks between CPU and GPU because you can’t really compare them at the moment. GPU Rendering isn’t „so far“ in terms of features as their CPU renderers. IMHO GPU in Maxwell is useless right now > no additive Layers and....

The best price/performance point at the moment is the AMD Threadripper 1950X and the accompanying X399 chipset supports 128GB of RAM. It's a great solution for Maxwell.

I think AMD 1950 it is with a CAD Card.

Will see where we land on a build or a buy .

Thanks for all the info.

Found these guys, looking at the 7980 XE

http://www.portatech.com/products/produ ... 96&o=96198

anything that looks like an issue?

the tech said the processor isn't over clocked it will at 4.2 when put under load , is this correct ?

thanks