Architectural Designs

Computer for architectual design?

I plan to get a computer for architectural design. The softwares I use are autocad, 3ds max, mayer, photoshop and vectorworks. I have got a list of the specs for the computer, but not sure if it will work and if there is anything else need to be added in. Please someone gives me some suggestion. Thank you. Intel EM64T, AMD Athlon 64 or higher, AMD Opteron® processor (which one is better?) 4 GB Ram 500 MB swap space (or 2 GB? ) Hardware-accelerated OpenGL and Direct3D supported (what hardware here means?) Microsoft Windows-compliant pointing device (optimized IntelliMouse) NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700

Public Comments

1. just buy a workstation from Dell or Hp or some other OEM http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&cat=prod&k=workstation&qmp=12&p=1&subcat=sys%2fworkstations&rf=all&nk=f&sort=K&snpsd=A&ira=False&~srd=False&ipsys=False&advsrch=False&~ck=anav http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/12454-12454-296719-307907-296721.html?jumpid=re_R295_prodexp/busproducts/computing/workstations-see-all&psn=desktops_workstations/workstation
2. Mac Pro which happily runs Vector Works, autocad and Photoshop, Maya, and 3ds max (I think) http://www.apple.com/macpro/ they run Windows too http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html