I'm a newbie in this forum, so I'll introduce myself. I'm Kevin. There, now that that's out of the way, let me begin. Our company has just spent thousands of dollars on new hardware, listed in the subject. Dual-Quad Xeon processors on board. 2GB Ram. Two HDD, each with 250GB storage. They are complete dogs. We use a lot of aerial photos in our work, and these systems are slower that the six-year-old systems they replaced. We typically run AutoCAD, version 2009. I've been thinking that they may need to be overclocked? Front Side Bus ( 533 MHz) an issue? L2 cache too small (not sure how much)? With all of this processing power, you would think that they would just be screaming.

Any ideas will really be appreciated.

Kevin

 I am not an expert in this area by any means but doesn't auto cad rely heavily on graphics?

 Yes, CAD is very graphic intensive.  What kind of video cards are running in the systems?  The quad-core xeon's with 2GB of RAM should be more than sufficient, also which OS are you running?

You should make sure that you have AutoCAD certified drivers installed.  I've seen it run like total crap with non-certified drivers that were cleared up when I reverted back to older, certified drivers.

 Hello,

I just joined this forum and have yet to adjust my user settings but wanted to comment in regard to this topic. I am a residential designer and use CAD on an everyday basis myself. Your system proves to employ some very high end technolgy after viewing the various specs, both at Dell's web site as well as Intel.com. The only roadblock I saw, after reading the specifications, were in Dell's offering of video cards. Both the ATI and nVidia offerings Dell provides for the 690 are not in keeping with the rest of the system's quality. You also want to keep in mind that different CAD applications function best with different cards. For example, the system I use functions best using a high end gaming card where AutoCAD may not. Another thing to consider is the fact that most computer vendors tend to use default settings that assure a reliable boot up for obvious reasons and Dell is especially noted for this practice. These settings usually can be tweeked to gain much better performance.

I would suggest an internet search for what might be the best graphics solution for the application(s) you are using and to check your Bios settings to insure your hardware is running with the best possible settings for performance. Even Windows should be checked for performance gains.

Max H