i am looking to upgrade my pc as im getting alot more 3D cad work in, the only problem is, i am crap when it comes to computer specs and i need to know what sort of machiene will support my needs.i need somthing fast that will cope with detailed 3D rendering etc.my mate is currently selling his old(ish) pc... will this be sufficient for my needs?...pentium core 2 duo @ 2.66 ghz8 g ramg4 66100 gt 256 megabytesi understand the graphics card issn't that great but if i were to upgrade that, would this be able to handle fairly detailed drawings??any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! 

A good video card is very important when doing 3D work. If you don't have a good one, you will experience a lot of problems with lag when panning, orbiting and zooming and you will have issues with strange artifacts in your display. If you buy this computer, the first thing you should do is upgrade the video card.What operating system is installed? I'm guessing it must be 64 bit if the machine has 8GB RAM, but is it XP, Vista or Win 7? If it's Vista, I would recommend loading either XP Pro or Win 7, depending on what version of Autocad you're running, because Vista is crap.I would also recommend a quad core processor, especially if you will be doing a lot of rendering. Rendering is very processor intensive and so the more processors you have, the faster you can render.And this computer isn't a laptop or a notebook is it? If you're going to be doing a lot of 3D work, get yourself a good desktop PC. Don't waste your time, or money, on something that's not going to be able to perform.

thanks for the advice!
 
tbh, i think i will buy it off him as its only going to cost me £300 (mate rate)
 
so i'll have some money left over to upgrade a few things.
 
can you reccomend me any decent gfx & video cards etc
 
Ta

i've just found out that the video card is a Geforce 6600GT 256mb DDR3 and the processor is an intel core 2 duo 2.66mhz
 
the operating system is windows 7, 64bit.
 
Would this be sufficient do ya think?
 
 

I would look into the Nvidia Quadro line of cards as they are specific to professional graphics and the line ranges from very inexpensive to high end.

I agree with CADCAM.  I used to have a similar card (had more memory) and it works "ok" but the NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800 is what I am using now and there is a big difference.
 
As CADCAM said NVIDIA Quadro cards are made for CAD.  The main difference is that software like AutoCAD, Inventor, etc. use the graphics card almost exclusively during operations, so you need a card that is designed for that and getting one with the most memory on it you can afford is key to smooth CAD operation.
 
The card that you mentioned is a Gamer card.  Gamers want more memory on there cards but the software they run relies mainly on the system CPU not the CPU on the card like CAD software does.
 
If you can get the system for a really good price, you could buy the system and just replace the video card afterwards.  My NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800 cost me 400+, but as pricing goes they maybe cheaper now since it has been almost a year since it was purchased.

Breeze104 is correct and the reason these "gaming" video cards do not work well in CAD is due to the design of the card. Gaming video cards are designed to run code that does most of the number crunching using the CPU. Proffesional graphics cards are designed to do the work right on the card itself, not offloading so much work to be done by the CPU. CADCAM2010-07-23 20:36:03