New computer rig for CAD & Gaming

[hArrkz]

hey Guys,

i am looking to building a new PC and plan on doing a few things with it. bare with me as this might be a pretty lengthy post. but the first and maybe most changes the build most if i decide against it is i want to dual boot it with Linux and a windows OS from an SSD. the 2 biggest things i want to do with this machine is CAD and medium to heavy gaming. (This is the starting point as i may go into 3D rendering later on) the windows OS i am also having a tough time choosing... as acad 2011,2012, and 2013 are not being supported on windows 8, as a matter a fact autodesk isnt going to offer windows 8 support for any earlier version of ACAD . That and not sure if many games have received patches to be played on windows 8. i plan on using Ubuntu as my Linux system and if i do windows 7 over 8 it might be windows 7 ultimate. thoughts? opinions?

also here are the parts i am looking at thus far for this:
MotherBoard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 Socket AM3+ 970 ATX AMD

- Case Form Factor: ATX
- Processor Socket Type: AM3+/AM3
- Max Processor Wattage Supported: 140W
- Memory (RAM) Type: DDR3
- Memory Speeds Supported: DDR3-2000 (O.C.), DDR3-1800, DDR3-1600, DDR3-1333, DDR3-1066
- Memory Slots: 4 x 240 pin DIMM
- Max Memory: 32GB
- 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots
- ATX Power Connector 8-pin

Processor: AMD FX 8350 4GHz AM3+ Black Edition Boxed

- Socket Type: AM3+
- Operating Speed: 4.0 GHz (max at 4.2 GHz)
- Number of Cores: 8
- Thermal Power: 125W
- Memory Types Supported: DDR3-1866

Graphics Card: ASUS GeForce GTX760 Overclocked 2048 MB GDDR5

- Manufacturer: NVIDIA
- Chip Set: GeForce GTX 760
- Memory Type on card: GDDR5
- NVIDIA SLI Support: NVIDIA 2-Way SLI
- 2 DVI connections
- 1 HDMI connection
- 1 Disploy Port connection
- Interface PCIe 3.0 x16
- Power Supply Requirements: 500 Watt Power Supply
- Power connectors: (2) 6-pin PCI-E power connectors
- Max Graphics card Power: 225W
- Width is a dual slot card
- Supported OS's XP, Vista, 7, and 8

Hard Drive: Crucial SSD 256GB SATA 6.0Gb/s

- Form Size: 2.5
- Drive Space: 256GB
- Supported OS's: 2000, XP, Vista, and 7

Slave Drive: WD Caviar Green
- Form Size: 3.5
- Drive space: 2TB
- Supported OS's: Windows XP, Vista, and 7

Memory (RAM): Corsair Vengeance Series 4GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) X2

- Memory type: DDR3
- Packs of 2
- Voltage: 1.5V
- Memory slot: 240-pin DIMM


this is only a few pieces that i am looking into and will prolly finish looking at other pieces tonight. i am only going to do 1 graphics card for now but i would like to SLI two cards together eventually. well let me know what you guys think. maybe if you have other suggestions?

 

[PP Mguire]

What's your budget? If you're that serious about CAD then I suggest an i7 over anything else. If not, then a 4670k would suit you better than the 8350. You can easily offset the small CPU price difference between the i5 and 8350 by getting a B85 board to start with, but if you want to SLI later on down the road then I suggest at least an ASRock Extreme3 Z87.
I say this because of your mix in gaming and productivity. The 4670k will undoubtedly give you a better experience due to the nature of gaming and does not slack in the productivity department. There is also still the possibility of Intel's next shrink staying on socket 1150. So you have the 4770k upgrade option or the possibility of a 2014 upgrade option which will be about 10% faster than the current Haswell line.
As to CADing between the two, the 8350 for sure will have the edge but the differences will be minimal if your program can utilize the GPU and offset some of that load. This is why I said an i7 above all, because you get the gaming performance superiority and the productivity superiority. Of course, not everybody wants to spend 300+ on a CPU and I understand that. So it's really up to you. Just know, that the 8350 is the last of its kind, and although marketed as 8 cores it's really 4 modules and a physical implementation of HT. There is no upgrade path besides APU lined out for AMD as of right now.

I would also suggest getting 16GB of RAM over the 8GB for your productivity as it can hog a lot of RAM, and since you're getting an SSD you can't have that pagefile enabled for the swap. If you will have a storage drive then that isn't so much an issue, but having more RAM for CAD and other rendering is always a major plus.

As to the OS's, there isn't a need for Windows 8. Although, you can play any game on Windows 8, if your software doesn't support it, then just use 7.

 

[stfu_donnie7]

What's your budget? If you're that serious about CAD then I suggest an i7 over anything else. If not, then a 4670k would suit you better than the 8350. You can easily offset the small CPU price difference between the i5 and 8350 by getting a B85 board to start with, but if you want to SLI later on down the road then I suggest at least an ASRock Extreme3 Z87.
I say this because of your mix in gaming and productivity. The 4670k will undoubtedly give you a better experience due to the nature of gaming and does not slack in the productivity department. There is also still the possibility of Intel's next shrink staying on socket 1150. So you have the 4770k upgrade option or the possibility of a 2014 upgrade option which will be about 10% faster than the current Haswell line.
As to CADing between the two, the 8350 for sure will have the edge but the differences will be minimal if your program can utilize the GPU and offset some of that load. This is why I said an i7 above all, because you get the gaming performance superiority and the productivity superiority. Of course, not everybody wants to spend 300+ on a CPU and I understand that. So it's really up to you. Just know, that the 8350 is the last of its kind, and although marketed as 8 cores it's really 4 modules and a physical implementation of HT. There is no upgrade path besides APU lined out for AMD as of right now.

I would also suggest getting 16GB of RAM over the 8GB for your productivity as it can hog a lot of RAM, and since you're getting an SSD you can't have that pagefile enabled for the swap. If you will have a storage drive then that isn't so much an issue, but having more RAM for CAD and other rendering is always a major plus.

As to the OS's, there isn't a need for Windows 8. Although, you can play any game on Windows 8, if your software doesn't support it, then just use 7.

Yeah, the 8-core AMD processors got me interested at first, especially for price and then I read up the differences between the i7's and AMD 8-cores. I must say the i- series is impressive. AMD does not support hyper threading so that was enough information for me.

 

[PP Mguire]

Yeah, the 8-core AMD processors got me interested at first, especially for price and then I read up the differences between the i7's and AMD 8-cores. I must say the i- series is impressive. AMD does not support hyper threading so that was enough information for me.

AMD has their own version of HT. It comes from their module system, being as each core isn't a full core. The 8350 has 4 modules which each have 2 physical cores that share resources. The information goes like this -=- which can have its advantages, but much like HT it's almost useless unless specifically being taken advantage of. The problem with the module system, is unlike Intel and HT, AMD took a serious hit to IPC when Bulldozer launched because of this system. Intel still has individual cores while having the virtual threads per core in the i7. So when you look at something like gaming performance, the single threaded performance is still there, but when you hit an i7 with a render it can utilize the extra virtual threads.

 

[stfu_donnie7]

AMD has their own version of HT. It comes from their module system, being as each core isn't a full core. The 8350 has 4 modules which each have 2 physical cores that share resources. The information goes like this -=- which can have its advantages, but much like HT it's almost useless unless specifically being taken advantage of. The problem with the module system, is unlike Intel and HT, AMD took a serious hit to IPC when Bulldozer launched because of this system. Intel still has individual cores while having the virtual threads per core in the i7. So when you look at something like gaming performance, the single threaded performance is still there, but when you hit an i7 with a render it can utilize the extra virtual threads.

Which still makes me want to choose i7 over AMD haha.

 

[PP Mguire]

Which still makes me want to choose i7 over AMD haha.

Yea, just extra reasoning for the OP

Personally, an i5 is more than enough. Life just decided to hand me a nice strawberry instead of a lemon when I got this i7. Not complaining, and it has its uses.

 

[hArrkz]

well i was looking at a max of $1500 and yeah i was looking at getting 16GB of RAM (i wrote X2 sorry it looked like it was part of the item name.) and i'll be honest also; yeah i was also torn with between an i7 and the 8 core amd... especailly for the price... i figure the HT would be more helpful when i get into doing the 3D renderings. so looking more promising for Intel then for where i am heading towards. though i want an understanding on why you suggest an i7 processor for doing 2d drawings when i was looking that direction for the 3D renderings? since the renderings would take up a hell of alot more of the processing power then working in regular CAD well in my opinion.

 

[PP Mguire]

Because the 4770k is faster than the 8350 in practically all production. The 4670k idea is a get me by, but still grant some good performance until you can afford either the 4770k or whatever supersedes it (granted if it's on the same platform). Like I said though, what you want to do is totally up to you. All 3 chips will give you good performance in all the things you want to do, so I was mentioning them as an option.