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CADALYST scheduled four reviews of workstations for AutoCAD users in 1999one per quarter. The coming year will bring technological changes like never before, and we want to keep you informed. Every three months we'll give you a snapshot of the current state of workstations to help you make knowledgeable buying decisions.
This review concentrates on midrange 3D workstations appropriate for mechanical designers using Mechanical Desktop-certainly the high end of the AutoCAD market. Users with less strenuous requirements may find better value with less powerful systems.
Our minimum configuration this time around is:
450MHz Pentium II
Support for dual CPUs; only one installed
256MB system memory
OpenGL graphics card with 8MB memory
9GB hard drive
32x CD-ROM drive
Sound card and speakers
Modem or network card
Of the 16 companies we contacted, twelve accepted our invitation to participate in this review. The workstations started arriving at CADALYST Labs in early November, and we completed testing for the main review by early December.
It could be our imagination, but this was the toughest group of workstations we've ever ranked. We include the adjusted grade point average computed from the reviewer's report card, in addition to our standard star rating, to further differentiate the systems.
New benchmark
We introduced the CADALYST Systems Benchmark '96 in May 1996. Thanks to rapid increases in workstation performance since then, we decided to revamp the test for 1999. In this review we introduce the CADALYST Systems Benchmark '99-a work in progress. (We've already revised the test based on results from this first review.)
Because this review is 3Dbased, we concentrated on that portion of the benchmark. We use the same base drawings as before, but increase the working model size by arraying each drawing. The new test requires AutoCAD Release 14 and is designed to run under Windows NT 4.0 on a Pentium II system with a minimum of 256MB of memory.
As before, the 3D test also requires a special version (not available to the public) of AccelGraphics' AccelView 3D driver. We hope the next release of AutoCAD supports OpenGL functions directly, eliminating the need for a third-party driver.
We will update the 2D portion of the benchmark in time for our next 2D workstation review, scheduled for our May issue....