topic Re: GPU for ArchiCAD? in Installation & update

GPU for ArchiCAD?

Miha_M — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 10:13:55 GMT

This has been talked about a lot here. Try searching the forum.
https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=67365
I can give only a simplified answer as the CPU and GPU utitization in Archicad is of complexity beyond my wisdom. The CPU is very important and does most of the calculations. The higher the CPU clock, the quicker this will be done. Archicad is able to make use of multiple CPU cores, but I don't know how many and and at which tasks, as it's task dependent. Sometimes it's all of them, sometimes not as many.
So my advice would be a high clocked multi core CPU. More cores will make the CPU more future proof.

The GPU is important in the "real time" 3D view navigation, which works best with OpenGL. Also Archicad since version 22 uses GPU for 2D view acceleration. You can see more info and benchmarks of graphic cards and Archicad here https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/knowledgebase/127710/.

I use a lower end Quardo and it does a good job in small to medium sized projects. A friend has a GTX 1060TI and this one also works without problems.

A SSD is a must and don't forget about some decent amount of memory.

Re: GPU for ArchiCAD?

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:55:55 GMT

Also, architectural visualization has changed a lot in the last 2 years. Real-time visualization solutions such as Twinmotion appeared, which can use the GPU to its limits. Additionally, Twinmotion is free for Archicad users on Maintenance agreements. So if your sister is using or planning on using Twinmotion, you should get a good GPU card for her.

Usually, Quadro cards are recommended to CAD/BIM users because their drivers are more accurate for vectorial programs. But for programs working with bitmaps/images/textures, GeForce cards (gamer cards) are better. To tell you the truth, I never really had money to buy Quadro cards, but in the last 10 or so years I practically never had any problem with gamer cards in Archicad that a graphics card driver update would not solve.

Re: GPU for ArchiCAD?

Barry Kelly — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 01:16:11 GMT

Miha_M wrote:
This has been talked about a lot here. Try searching the forum.

My guess is this is just a spam post.
I check if it is a copy of an old post but it is not.
But based on the user name and the fact they just signed up to make this post makes me think spam.
So far it reads like a legitimate post and there are no links to websites, but they often come back and add the links later.

Barry.

Re: GPU for ArchiCAD?

furtonb — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 07:57:06 GMT

But based on the user name and the fact they just signed up to make this post makes me think spam.

It looks legitimate to me - all new users are spammers? Everyone signs up "just to make this post".
I've come across a similar post on the Rhino forum too a few days ago, it's common for relatives to do reasearch for less tech-savvy architects.

@rosemaruq I'm using a a Radeon RX 5700XT, without any major hiccups. I'm not really rendering with ARCHICAD, I don't have recent experience with that. Another factor is to consider remote desktop performance these days, not something Geforce cards excel at - if I remember properly, OpenGL support was for Quadro cards only, maybe NVIDIA changed that:
https://www.khronos.org/news/permalink/nvidia-provides-opengl-accelerated-remote-desktop-for-geforce-5e88fc2035e342.98417181

Getting any GPU right now is a pain, though - thanks to crypto miners.

RT rendering is less and less VRAM bound (I know Octane supports out of core renderings for quite a time now: http://www.aoktar.com/c4dmanual/index.html?OutofCore.html), but creating exterior renderings could be tricky in high quality. I don't know about OOC support for Twinmotion, but I had a go with it previously with a Vega 64 (16GB VRAM), that run pretty decent - also an AMD card.

If I were to build a computer for easy and fast, higher-medium quality rendering, I would take an RTX for Twinmotion.
Anything else (CPU rendering and drawing): AMD or gaming NVIDIA. Quadro is rock stable*, true, but "gaming" cards are also pretty solid, unless you build a high-end PC with worsktation-grade CPU (Threadripper or Xeon) and ECC RAM, I wouldn't worry about Quadros.

(*Graphisoft officially recommends workstation GPUs.)

Re: GPU for ArchiCAD?

Barry Kelly — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 08:09:21 GMT

furtonb wrote:

But based on the user name and the fact they just signed up to make this post makes me think spam.
It looks legitimate to me - all new users are spammers? Everyone signs up "just to make this post".
I've come across a similar post on the Rhino forum too a few days ago, it's common for relatives to do reasearch for less tech-savvy architects.

That is why I didn't just delete it.
But the user name in the format name_name_number is usually a dead give away for spam poster.
There have been quite a few recently with the same format - all brand new sign ups.
Any with web links or are duplicates of previous posts get deleted and banned.
Others like this we will try to keep an eye on.

Barry.

Re: GPU for ArchiCAD?

Miha_M — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 08:22:45 GMT

My guess is this is just a spam post.

Barry, it looks like your suspicion was spot on. The original post has been deleted.