topic Intel i7 920 feedback in Installation & update

Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:47:11 GMT

Hi folks,

I'm planning to upgrade my pc and would like some feedback of the new Intel i7 920 CPU within ArchiCAD...
It would be great if you indicate the previous and new CPU+RAM and the percentage of general speed improvement.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:13:34 GMT

It's the third fastest on this chart! -

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Cinema-4D-Release-10,835.html

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:15:43 GMT

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the link...
Actually I knew it... It was my first stop in my research...
What I really wanted was to have some feedback of i7 920 CPU performance with ArchiCAD...
Specially with large files, multiple modules, large libraries., update layouts... lets say... Heavy load...

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Wokka — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:19:03 GMT

Paulo,
Did you get any other reviews re the i7 920 or did you just get it? I'm about to upgrade and it looks promising. I do a lot of large single file ArchiCad and also a lot 3D and rendering with C4D. Did you go 2.66 or 2.93?
Thanks
Any feedback would be great!

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:22:07 GMT

Paulo,

I'm with Wokka on this. Please post any comparisons between your old rig and the new i7 machine. My machine collapsed the other day and although it is back at work now, the end is in sight.

I'm considering either a Q9400 CPU (Passmark of 3,690) vs an i7 920 (Passmark of 5,542), but requires i7 mobo, DDR3, etc. An i7 based machine will be almost double the cost of the Q9400 based machine.

My past experience with these issues is that you never "get" the perfomance gain the benchmarks claim. It comes down to relying on what your peers say about their experiences. So I'd love to hear your news on this subject.

Thanks,
Mark
PS my currernt CPU is a Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz at Passmark = 416, yikes!

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:45:33 GMT

Hi Wokka and Mark,

Sorry Wokka... I completely forgot your post.

Couldn't get much information about the i7 at that time here in the forum... So I sticked to Tom's Hardware benchmarks...

Anyway... I bought it 6-7 months ago and it took about a month to move all the baggage... So lets say... 6 months of full power use...

Ok... Once I don't have any skill in hardware/software review, I guess a "General Satisfaction Improvement Percentage" is the best I can do describing my "feelings" on this new machine compared to the old one.

It may sound a little (total) subjective but, as you said, in the end benchmarks never fulfill our expectations...

So... Here it is:

Old Machine: amd 2000+, 256mb RAM, 64mb Video, XP Pro 32 bits.

New Machine: Intel i7 920 2.79 GHz, 6Gb RAM, 512Mb Video, Vista Business 64 bits.

Project folder size including all AC12 files and refs: 100mb

General Satisfaction Improvement Percentage: 300%

...

About going to i7 or Q9400...

Mark.. I don't know about US prices... But here in Portugal, the i7 machine was about 150 Euros more expensive than the Q9400 one ... So I decided to stick with the i7 once it can upgrade better...

Bottom line... I'm working 300% more satisfied than I was with the old machine... But as I said... Its just my feeling... 😉

I hope this helps you guys.

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Wokka — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:34:18 GMT

Paulo,

Braza wrote:

Old Machine: amd 2000+, 256mb RAM, 64mb Video, XP Pro 32 bits.

New Machine: Intel i7 920 2.79 GHz, 6Gb RAM, 512Mb Video, Vista Business 64 bits.

Project folder size including all AC12 files and refs: 100mb

General Satisfaction Improvement Percentage: 300%

Bottom line... I'm working 300% more satisfied than I was with the old machine... But as I said... Its just my feeling... 😉

At last a highly technical, detailed review I can understand

Thanks for that! I appreciate the effort. 300% sounds pretty good to me, I'm always underwhelmed with the performance of most of my new machines...
(It's OK, I completely forgot the post as well, but I'm still in the market, just waiting for some 'down time' to implement it)

Hopefully prices have dropped further here in Oz since my last post. Time to check with my supplier...
Cheers

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:26:34 GMT

Wokka wrote:
At last a highly technical, detailed review I can understand

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Steve Jepson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:23:14 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZB_Q7_5VZQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDM60XVJwI&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:44:24 GMT

Braza,

Congrats on the rosy glow of a 300% +! I hope to follow you after I wrench every possible polyline and complex profile out of this current machine.

Hm, ... 300% ... Like a couple of dark chocolates with a late night coffee yes?, but of course then try to sleep after the chocolate and coffee!

All the best,
Mark

_____________________
Dove, dark chocolate bars & cafe stretto

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Arcadia — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:59:45 GMT

I have an i7 920 now (from core 2 duo 3ghz)and to be honest the difference was not as startling for general usage (although generating sections and 3D docs seems to take roughly half as long) as I had hoped but I think I may be having graphics card issues as well which might not help. The biggest thing I noticed was going to 64bit system and having stacks of RAM. I can run 2 or three instances of archicad at the same time stably and export to VBE without having to close down all my apps. The time it takes to number crunch stuff - like exporting to VBE is dramatically quicker though.

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

owen — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:22:26 GMT

Arcadia wrote:
I have an i7 920 now (from core 2 duo 3ghz)and to be honest the difference was not as startling for general usage (although generating sections and 3D docs seems to take roughly half as long) as I had hoped but I think I may be having graphics card issues as well which might not help.

Thats about right ... if you look at the Toms Hardware benchmarks earlier the i7 920 is about 2x the speed of a ~3Ghz Core2 - which makes sense, slightly slower clock speed offset by better core architecture and it has double the number of cores.

On small projects a 100% speed up might not seem to make much difference, but if you are doing visualization cutting a render down from 2hrs to 1hr starts to make sense. Also rebuilding a section of a large project in ArchiCAD in 5mins vs 10mins is also handy ... its a good 'take a break and walk around' time 😉

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Stephen Dolbee — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:41:20 GMT

I went from a 6 year old 2.4 xeon to my current Imac i7. I find it considerably faster for section/elevation generation-even for smaller jobs. Now, if I only had some work.

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Arcadia — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:44:26 GMT

On small projects a 100% speed up might not seem to make much difference, but if you are doing visualization cutting a render down from 2hrs to 1hr starts to make sense. Also rebuilding a section of a large project in ArchiCAD in 5mins vs 10mins is also handy ... its a good 'take a break and walk around' time

Yes I suppose thats right. I guess waiting any time at all is too long but then that would be having unreasonable expectations. I haven't done any renders with the new system yet but I will be very interested to see how this goes.

Why is it that even when doing CPU intestive tasks the cores never seem to run at full capacity (except for maybe one or 2 of them at a time for brief seconds)?

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:07:52 GMT

Stephen wrote:
Now, if I only had some work.

Same here. It's slow as molasses. In western Carolina.

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

vistasp — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 05:03:46 GMT

Bump!

Would like to hear more user experiences who those who have worked on i7 machines.

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 04:17:15 GMT

Hi Vistasp
Hope your doing well!
This probably wont help much, but for what it's worth.
Was running a single core 2.4 with xp(sp3) recognizing 3.3 gigs, a medium vidcard with 256k, 7200 hard drive.
Compared to a new i7 as profile says, (see below).

Opening a 25 meg file seems like roughly 5 times faster.

Rendering the same 25 meg file with default Lightworks settings, 150 seconds to render on old 2.4 (as above) and 25 seconds on new i7.
Rendering with same Lightworks settings with a 7meg file was 60 seconds
on 2.4 and 6 seconds on i7.
Not very scientific but it's all I can do to estimate relative speed.
5 to 6 times faster maybe?
Maybe I'll cross-time section cuts and saving if I get time.
I was focusing on a HP of roughly the same specs but ran into this Dell
Studio XPS at San Jose Best Buy for 1100 on close out, so I grabbed it.
So far seems like all is fine.
Time will tell.
Take care.
Be safe out there.
lec

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

vistasp — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:04:24 GMT

Thanks Lec, always good to hear from you. Like Paulo's post earlier in the thread, it gives a pretty good idea of the improvement to be had. Reviews using benchmarking tools etc. go right over my head - and don't necessarily reflect how the hardware will perform with AC anyway. Will probably keep the video card though...

My PC has lately been showing signs of age so I've been seriously toying with an upgrade of the hardware and the OS (not of AC though - v.14 doesn't do much for me).

Now if I can only get all my clients to settle their bills... 😉

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

vistasp — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:20:46 GMT

Finally got the new i7 I had been aiming for. Man, it's so much faster in all ways!

AC startup time is down by huge margin and a few test photo-renderings that I'd benchmarked with the old machine got completed in just one-third the time.

Overall, the only pain was getting AC9 to install (as per this wiki page) and the fact remains that both v9 & v10 don't work properly in OpenGL mode. Still, have XP running on VMWare and only need to figure out how the heck to get the Wibu drivers to work properly there.

I'm keeping the earlier versions mainly for working on GDL objects, so the OpenGL problem isn't the worst thing that could happen...

Overall, it's a resounding yay!

Re: Intel i7 920 feedback

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:46:16 GMT

VistaSP, congrats!

Owen,
You mention 5-10 minute regen time for sections, AND you have a lovely 16GB sitting on your machine.
Lazlo and other GS'ers mention that section rebuild is tightly related to hard drive speed due to
AC's use of temporary and cache files during the regen process.
Your 16Gb of mem, leads me to suggest a ramdrive, you would see a startling improvement. Look here.

Snap
PS sorry for the late response, haven't looked here in a while