Tired of settling for good enough performance on a system torun 2-D and 3-D CAD applications? Dell, inpartnership with Autodesk, has come outwith the T1500, a new class of workstation specifically designed to supportAutoCAD software.

The new model, the smallest single-socket workstation inDell's lineup with a starting price of $949, is designed for engineers who'vebeen using less expensive systems to do entry-level CAD work because theyhaven't had the budgets to invest in higher end, professional workstations."It's going to provide performance benefits over someone using a gaming box ora white box to run workstation applications - they might even be using abusiness desktop with a graphics card and think they're getting away with goodenough performance," says Rick Perez, Dell's precision product manager. "Wewanted to make a more purpose-built system ... for the CAD space that offeredperformance users have come to expect on a workstation-class product withoutall the overhead associated with other platforms."

The first indication of less overhead is the T1500's smallerfootprint. To accommodate the smaller size, Dell designed the system with alimited number of expansion bays and expansion slots, including four PCI slotsas opposed to the six available in other Precision workstations and support fortwo SATA hard drives, as compared with other units' support for four harddrives.

The workstation can be configured with the latest Intel Corei7 quad core processors and fast 133 MHz DDR3 memory. It is also available witha choice of AMDATI FirePro and AutoCAD-certified NVIDIA Quadro cards fordelivering 2-D and accurate 3-D CAD model views and accelerated OpenGLperformance. The other major feature: The T1500 has been certified to work with AutoCAD 2010. "This ensurescustomers that we have worked with, the vendors and ISVs to ensure not only thehardware works with the software, but that it has been fine-tuned from a driverperspective with the graphics cards to ensure optimal performance," Perez says.

Rolls out Entry-Level Workstation Optimized for AutoCAD A