topic Re: i7 or Xeon in Installation & update

i7 or Xeon

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 18:47:02 GMT

Wich processor matches the best with Archicad?
Core i7 ?
or
Xeon?

Re: i7 or Xeon

Eduardo Rolon — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 20:27:41 GMT

Both.
Xeons will be more stable and let you have more AC versions open at the same time but there is not that mouch difference.

Xeons will let you use more and better RAM also.

Re: i7 or Xeon

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 11:30:01 GMT

Thanks!

Any Xeon? (E3, E5 ?)

Re: i7 or Xeon

Erwin Edel — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 12:00:08 GMT

I'd go for E5 for more cores, but there are so many micro-architecture of CPU out there, it really also depends clockspeed etc.

That said, I run E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70 GHz, still works fine for ArchiCAD20.

AMD seems to have some good affordable CPU too.

This might help you decide better: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/index.php

Assuming you are running windows, if it is MAC, I'd say the Mac Pro workstation is at this point in time very overpriced for the old hardware it uses (long overdue an update!). We also run two late 2013 macbook pro i7 workstation and I run a late 2013 i7 iMac at home, which are equally capable at running ArchiCAD20.

Beyond the CPU, go for at least 16 GB ram, 32 GB is more recommended, especially if you plan to use Cinerender.

Re: i7 or Xeon

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 12:56:21 GMT

Thanks!
I was running Macbook pro but with its old expensive MacPro I look for a Dell Precision 3000 or 5000

Re: i7 or Xeon

Erwin Edel — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 13:42:05 GMT

Our windows machines are HP workstations (current one I'm using most z420), we have good experience with them if you are looking for more options.

Re: i7 or Xeon

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 13:49:09 GMT

Thanks!

And what about the new HP Z Mini G3?

Re: i7 or Xeon

Erwin Edel — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 15:45:21 GMT

Ehm, that thing looks interesting in terms of design, but the purpose of it is a small mystery to me.

I can understand the hardware specs for a mobile workstation (notebook), where you want something small because it needs to be portable. For a desktop situation in office I would be perfectly happy to have a tower sit below the desk.

Expect to pay a premium for them being able to put a lot of power in a tiny box and expect that power to be a bit more expensive for the same reason.

I love my iMAC at home for not having the hassle of all the cables running to monitor and sockets, but with a small desktop you still have that.

Re: i7 or Xeon

tworks — Sat, 18 Feb 2017 09:44:18 GMT

hi guys,

I am also trying to figure out i7 versus xeon choice.
Favouring cpu all depends on the workflow... not only for one program lilke ArchiCAD,
but for all important programs on that PC.
My main workflow is with ArchiCAD using OctaneRender and CorelDraw for postproduction,
My experience is that waiting for big AC scenes to load into Octane takes most time waiting and counting sheeps or get me a cup of coffee
In AC itself loading heavy floorplans takes a long time, and this is being done singlethreaded
Probably give in a little in cpu performance for some tasks (like loading the heavy floorplan)
might be worth in gaining a lot more in other tasmks by going with xeon chips with a lot more cores (and even going dual cpu).
But the single core performance of xeons in general are not that high as i7 or very expensive...
So, it is easy to stay in doubt waht the better choice is fro certain workflows.

below is from another guy from the octanerender forum and this is very informative and maybe it can make decision easier,
at least, I would take my chance and go for dual e5-2640 v4 instead of single i7.

Quote from lucky guy:
"....I will only focus on the Xeons now.(2 x 2640 v4)
Before that let me say that I also own a system with an i7 4930K OC'ed a little to 4.3Ghz.
Let me say this, If you can go with Xeons, do it. They are amazing.
In my case at the beginning I thought I would sacrifice single core performance but I was wrong.
It runs like butter through anything and it is so much faster than my i7 it's ridiculous.
It runs much cooler also, both on water, the Xeons don't reach more that 38C under full load.
The i7 goes much higher than that. So to give you some numbers,
the i7 OC'ed at 4.3GHz runs Cinebench 15 at 1074 and 144 for single core.
Now the Xeon runs the CB15 at 2691 points Multithreaded and Single at 138!
Even in single thread its very fast and at 3.4 GHz it's almost as fast as the OCed i7 at 4.3GHz!
That shows that clock for clock the Xeon runs faster, much more efficiently (at 95W) and much cooler.
Everything else also runs supersmoothly ."

When going i7 anyway I would choose 6850K (6 cores 3.6ghz /3.8 ghz turboboost)
or if you really need more cores and have some money to spend i7-6950X (10 cores, 3.0/3.5 ghz, but almost triple priced!)

It would be nice though to have an ArchiCAD user with (dual?) xeon to actually give his experience on performance for singlethread ArchiCAD tasks,
and compare with i7.

cheers,

Re: i7 or Xeon

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 01:51:23 GMT

I have both.
The i7 5960x (8 cores) gives me nearly the same rendering speed as the 2697 (12 core) xeon - 1800 cinebench.
I overclock the i7 to make it a bit faster than the xeon for rendering.
Xeons don't overclock.
But normal PC operations are slower with the xeon. A lot of software, including Archicad I suspect, uses only one of the cores for a lot of it's operations.
A xeon is usually under 3Ghz, whereas an i7 is a lot higher, so faster compute times.

So the i7 is generally way faster and that's the computer I use.
The only time a xeon or even multiple xeons are faster is during rendering.

If you mainly do rendering get more cores (xeon).
If you do more general drawing, detailing etc get more Ghz (an i7).
I wouldn't get less than 8 cores though.
Is my experience.

Re: i7 or Xeon

tworks — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 12:30:10 GMT

Thanx for sharing your exprience Elliott,

I have GPU render software, so I was thinking about Xeons for multithreaded tasks... but, as indeed you are saying, a lot of tasks are still singlethreaed (withing ArchiCAD).. I'll probably stick to i7 as well.
But now AMD has launched the Ryzen, so that might be a total other ballgame.
As far as I found some reviews on that... it is probably with same result as for i7 might be faster for singlethread tasks, but then Ryzen could be interesting for that as well.

greetz,