Anyone care to give some hardware selection advice .... ?

Hi,

I'm about to upgrade a relatives ancient machine. I'm a computer tecchie, so
I'm up to snuff on most of the kit. However.......

1) I'm thinking of (at most) a 128 Mbyte grahics card, maybe a 64Mb, nothing
tooooo fancy as he's not a gamer !

2) A 19" minimum LCD monitor (I've been looking at a Dell, 1280 x 1024
res. - is resolution important?). (Probably a max. cost of UKP400 here).

He'll be using AutoCAD 2005 and Inventor 9 Pro, mostly for fairly
lightweight mech. eng.drawing work, nothing too fancy.

Can you guys recommend any specifics (available in the U.K.) ? Many T.I.A.


S.

 

I'd forget the LCD monitor. Clarity is much better on a CRT.

 

In a previous post CW says...

CW:

Not to be contrary, but I think it depends on the LCD. I'm now running
a Planar PX191 (about $US500) and would never go back to my old 19-inch
CRT. BTW, I'm now running an NVIDIA GeForce 5500, which could be
considered a gamer's card, but it was only one in the local store and I
needed it TODAY.

 

Must be getting better. I haven't seen any that impressed me but, that
doesn't mean they are not out there.

 

I built a machine around an ASUS A7N8X-VM, Athlon 3200 and 2 Gig Mem. This
board is inexpensive and has audio, video and LAN ports built in. It
performs well for AutoCAD. I've built high end machines, and the performance
advantage is just not cost effective for AutoCAD and office apps. We do 3D
modeling. Having plenty of memory is the main concern for us.
bg