Because it is hypothetical I decided to list the realistic specs that a CAD workstation would be built around these days. When talking about theoretical specs for a system in college work then you should really be looking at the current real world specs, rather than something that can just about run the application that in the real world would be impractical.

For budget the realistic minimum has to be £2000, although for a home based CAD designer or university student you could build a PC for around £1000 including monitor that would run AutoCAD at a reasonable speed.
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Right i'll have a look on Overclockers to see what i can find.
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Not really sure about lifespan or price. We are just researching possible options and specifying which one would be best.

I'm not sure if we actually have to produce a drawing, but if we did have to do one in AutoCAD it would most likely be done on the computers in the library which i think are dual core Intel systems, with 1280x768 monitors (probably either 17" or 19"). For this project, I would think that these systems would be quite suitable, but this is research into CAD packages and computers which would be suitable for this project and an expensive workstation would be suitable as well, as I'm sure a fast amiga running Cycas would be (We are doing a bicycle suspension which isn't too complicated).

Thanks for the information harrison.
*thinks about copying harrison's post into assignment to save work *

I know AutoCAD has a 64bit version so I can't see any reason why that can't be used. This obviously makes Windows 2000 useless although I can't really moan about a properly set up XP Pro. AutoCAD does still support Windows 2000 as I mentioned in my first post harrison .

The teacher did say to look into workstations and operating systems other than windows, so i will look into workstations and include them. I might say something about a desktop computer and then compare it to a workstation.
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Try here. It seems to have some good info as to what is good for a CAD workstation and some sample workstations.
Or here.
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Yes it is still compatible with Win2000, but Windows 2000 is now no longer supported by M$ so is an obsolete OS and no business will buy into it these days. Only companies with an existing set of licenses will still considering continuing to upgrade AutoCAD and keep 2000 as the underlying OS. All new systems will either have XP Pro, XP Pro x64 Edition, or Windows Server 2003. As I mentioned before, you won't find anyone using it with Vista yet, but many may look at the option of using Windows Server 2008 once it gets released.

Why use a server OS? There are loads of advantages over a standard desktop OS. Much more optimised for stability and the ability to customise the services running on it to streamline the OS to the exact needs of the user. Support for as many physical CPUs as you like. XP still has a limitation of two physical CPUs, although not the number cores each contains.

Plus Windows Server 2003 is the more logical upgrade root from 2000 than XP is. And if you like 2000 then you will really like Windows Server 2003, and the forthcoming 2008 as they are based more on the idea of 2000 as a business OS without all the consumer crap bolted on to slow the OS down. Which is another reason for companies to look into using 2003 over XP for workstations as it doesn't contain any of the consumer stuff they don't need.
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Harrison, what do you mean about AutoCAD for Linux?

As far as I'm aware, there is no longer a linux version and the only version now is for Windows.
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Don't know about AutoCad but try here for a list of linux based CAD applications.
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I just had a quick look on the Autodesk site and they are indeed not mentioning Linux for the latest releases of the many derivatives of AutoCAD (quite mad how many they now have available). However I do know that AutoCAD 2008 does support Linux and has a Linux installer on the same install disc as the PC version. I would be quite surprised if they had dropped it from the new AutoCAD 2009 but I didn't see any mention in the quick click about I did on their site.
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Well, I have not heard of any Linux version of AutoCAD 2008. I read that there used to be a Linux version a few years ago.
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Harrison, do you know much about Ultra-640? I had a look on the internet but couldn't find much which seemed to make sense.

I know that it is 640MB/s, but I was wondering, does this speed get affected depending on how many devices you have on the chain?
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