Best system for $1000?

I need to purchase a system to run Solidworks for around $1000 Have been quoted Athlon 64 3800+ X2 Dual in box w/400W power 1GB 240 pin DDr Ram, ATI FireGL V3300 128 GDDR2 PCI Express X16 Video, Western Digital 250GB 7200 rpm 3GB/s hard drive, 19" DVI LCD MOnitor, 18X DVD+/- DVD burner 12X DVD ram, keyboard and optical mouse for alittle under $1000. WOULD LIKE SUGGESTIONS ON BETTER ALTERNATIVE. THANK YOU MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am running Solidworks 2006 on a similar system, but with 2Gig of ram, it runs pretty good until you get into some big assemblies .I would reccomend more ram in your system.also make sure you get a board that will take a better cpuif you have the money in the future. If you wanted to spend a little more I would reccoment the 5200 chip, that is what I will be using soon.
Edited by: sargpep

Could you tell us who quoted you that system? I am looking for the same thing.

The quote for:

Athlon 64 3800+ X2 Dual in box w/400W power 1GB 240 pin DDr Ram, ATI
FireGL V3300 128 GDDR2 PCI Express X16 Video, Western Digital 250GB
7200 rpm 3GB/s hard drive, 19" DVI LCD MOnitor, 18X DVD+/- DVD burner
12X DVD ram, keyboard and optical mouse for alittle under $1000.

Was NOT any brand name box, it is a piecemeal box that a local geek puts together in his basement.

It's better a Core 2 Duo (2.0 Ghz E6400)... Look at Specviewperf results for Solidworks! A Intel Core2 at 2.13 is even better than a AthlonX2 at 3GHZ!!!


Ram: it depends... 1GB is all right, but if you make big assembly u should choose 2GB!


Disk: try a WD Raptor 74GB and a second disk of 350GB. Raptor for Applications & OS, other for Data...