I will try to not geek out and confuse you on this post. With AutoCAD 2010 there is an AutoCAD 2010 System Requirement to have a CPU (essentially the computer’s brain) with SSE2 support. SSE2 is an Intel CPU instruction set (SIMD Extension 2) which is essentially technology to replace the old MMX extensions which are half as slow in many data and math operations. Most current systems will support SSE2 except an old AMD CPU system over 6 years old. AMD Opteron, Athlon 64 both support SSE2 and have since 2003.
So why SSE2 requirement in AutoCAD 2010:
In developing software there is a limit on how old of technology you can effectively support without impacting current hardware and software users. In the case of AutoCAD 2010 adding the SSE2 requirement this increases performance for customers using current hardware. Many areas improve in AutoCAD such as OSNAPs.
I said I would not geek out so I will not go into details on floats, floating point, and registers. Your experience may vary but the change was made for some performance benefit of current hardware.
Bottom Line: Increasing performance is a good thing!
Cheers,
Shaan
Shaan, is there an easy way to tell if your computer has sse2 support? we have several machines in our office, and I want to make sure that 2010 will work on all of them before we start to upgrade.
Chris,
If your machines are newer than 2003 you should be fine. You can also look at the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2.
Cheers,
Shaan
I have tried to download AutoCAD 2010 LT and the SSE2 error came up. Does this mean I need a new CPU to run the AutoCAD 2010 LT, or is there an upgrade i can do?
Alyssa,
There are very few of these AMD old machines out there. If you have a computer that does not support SSE2 there is no updates to make it able to run AutoCAD 2010.
Sincerely,
Shaan Hurley
Is this compliant affected with AutoCAD2004?
Yong Jing,
This only affects AutoCAD 2010 support of the old AMD chip set. AutoCAD 2004 should be just fine.
Sincerely,
Shaan Hurley
there a easy way to check if your proc. has sse2 support
look here, download and run
http://cpuid.com/cpuz.php