[rescue] Sun Kit Needed for EE Student Here

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 10:02:38AM -0700, Don Y wrote:

> He won't need a "gamer" video controller for engineering work.
> (unless, like the neighbor's kid, here, he's trying to convince
> daddy that he NEEDS a new computer "for school" -- and to
> play all of the GAMES that he spends his "pin money" on...)
> 
> I do 3D CAD, solid modeling, PCB layout, etc. with a generic
> video card on an 800MHz machine.  Hardly "light speed" but I
> have found that the machine *still* ends up waiting for *me*
> most of the time (except photo-rendering complex 3D animation
> scenes -- which I let the machine do "overnight").

> Assuming he wants a *big* disk (some of my CAD files get
> pretty big... and the 3D renderings can eat disks faster
> than you can upgrade them!), then he surely wants to avoid
> SCSI, etc. in favor of "IDE" drives.

At work our cad guys wouldn't be able to live with the machine you
describe.  The 2D cad guys need very fast CPUs, but in theory they don't
require fast video cards.  Still, watching the software run on their
cheapo generic cards, I can't help but wonder if something like a
Quadro2 or even a Geforce2MX would make things faster (plus hopefully
allow them dual head).  And yes, the fast CPU really is needed for the
simulations and solvers that are used (alas, the stupid software does
support network solving or clusters.  Even having a loaded Opteron
system that could act as a shared compute monster shared by the cad guys
would be nice if only the software supported doing anything of the
sort. 

The 3D cad guy definately needs a decent video card, but something like
an older Geforce2 or Quadro2 is fine.  Getting a good video card rather
than a generic doesn't have to cost a lot of money. 
 
-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/