topic Re: Help with PC selection. in Installation & update

Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 21:23:53 GMT

I am looking to buy a new PC and i do not know enough about them.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=11065696&cm_mmc=BCEmail_113-_-DellXPS600-_-30-_-Computers_BCEmail_113

Is this a good deal. The Dell site could not match it but I am not sure if it's fit for AC

Re: Help with PC selection.

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 00:49:41 GMT

Most of the specs on this machine look fine, Adalbert - but it is using the 'older' single core P4 processor... and it is running Windows Media Edition.

I've read somewhere that Media Edition is based on XP Pro, but I don't know where one ends and the other begins. You might be safer with Pro unless someone has info to share.

On the Dell site, you can get the new Pentium D dual core chips in both this XPS 600 and the 9100. You'd have to configure and compare. If getting a new machine, I'd definitely get one with dual core (essentially dual processor).

Note that right now the coupons aren't there, but typically each week there are discount coupons beyond Dell's web site coupons at www.techbargains.com. New coupons are posted every Sunday evening (as I recall).

Also, compare Dell's memory prices to www.crucial.com (Micron Tech). Typically, you save a lot of money configuring the Dell with some basic amount of memory and getting the desired memory from Crucial.

Hope that helps,
Karl

Re: Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:41:50 GMT

Thank you Karl, that is valuable info.

Re: Help with PC selection.

Stephen Dolbee — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:55:06 GMT

Albert,
Have you considered Dell's workstation (Precision 670). Their workstation prices have come down considerably over the past couple of years and you would have the option of upgrading to a second processor if desired. Also comes with the 3 year warr. Just a thought.

Steve

Re: Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:44:55 GMT

I'm going to Athon64 X2 Dual-Core system for the next PC pjoject.
The dual core Athlon X2's smoke the P4s in mulittasking, Photoshop work, and rendering tasks.
I did a side by side taste test and was impressed as hell by the Athon X2's.

Re: Help with PC selection.

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:52:16 GMT

I would consider buying 2 GB of RAM, depending on the size of projects you are working on.
I am working in both AC 9 and PM 9 open at the same time, working on a cca. 100000 sqft building in AC, plus with dozens of Layouts in PM, and I find 1 GB of RAM is not enough.
I will buy 1 GB RAM in the near future.

Re: Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:36:48 GMT

Thank you again
I certainly will install 2 GB of ram but what cote my eye was the price of this Cosco offer of $2500 the Dell site was $3500

is the dual core that good of the dual porocessor?

I work on large buildings 100,000 sq ft and up and do all my engineering and tenant work.

Re: Help with PC selection.

Laszlo Nagy — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:36:05 GMT

I am not completely familiar with the difference between dual core and dual processor, but dual processors have two processor cores in total, and dual core processors also have two processor cores in total. If the processor has two cores, it is probably more tightly integrated, but there are some resources (like cache) which the cores must share so one core can use less.
I suppose dual core is just about as good from a performance point of view as dual processor, since this seems to be the way Intel and AMD are going, with 4-core and 8-core processors planned for the future, which offer even more parallel execution of programs.

Re: Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:02:46 GMT

Will Archicad take advantage of threading?

What GS lists at http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/system_requirements/ is a joke.
One must expect more and after all that site should list the most of what the software could take advantage

He'p to select PC or tay with Mac

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:45:10 GMT

I willhave to chose between:

PC
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11031649&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=4349&hierPath=84*4349*

Dell XPS 600
(Media Center) CPU Only 3.4GHz 1GB 500GB DVDRW DVD
$300 Off Reflected in Price
NVIDIA® nForce4 SLI X16 MCP
256MB nVidia GeForce 6800
Audigy™2ZS Dolby® 5.1
3-Year Warranty
$2,199.99

Processor & Memory:

Intel® Pentium® 4 650 Processor at 3.4GHz
with Hyper-Threading Technology
NVIDIA® nForce4 SLI X16 MCP chipset
(2 full-bandwidth 16-lane PCI-Express allows future upgrades to dual GPUs)
800MHz Front Side Bus
2MB L2 cache
1 GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2 x 512MB) expandable to 2GB (4 DIMM slots)3
Drives:

500GB Serial-ATA RAID 0 (2 x 250GB) Hard Drive
16x DVD+/-RW - CD & DVD Burner with double layer write capability.4
16x DVD-ROM Drive
13 in 1 Digital Media Card Reader
Graphics & Video:

256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) nVidia™ GeForce™ 6800 Graphics
Dual TV Tuner with remote control (watch, play or record different sources simultaneously)
Communications:

56K PCI Data/Fax Modem
Integrated Gigabit Ethernet5
Audio:

Sound Blaster® AudigyTM2 ZS (D) Sound Card w/DVD Audio, Dolby® 5.1 capability, and IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port
Dell A425 Speakers with Subwoofer
Keyboard:

Dell® Wireless Keyboard
Dell® Wireless Optical Mouse
Expandability:

Expansion slots: 3 PCI slots, 1 PCIe x1 slot, 2 PCIe x16 (graphics) slots
4 DIMM slots. Memory installed in pairs for dual channel
Ports:
Video: 2 DVI and 1 S-video connectors
Two PS2 ports (mouse and keyboard)
Two IEEE 1394 ports (1 front, 1 back)
Eight USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 6 back)
Front mounted headphone jack
Audio: 7.1 channel out (3 jacks), line in and microphone
Integrated Gigabit Ethernet network connector
Internally Accessible: Single IDE Channel: 40-pin connector (two devices)
Chassis:

or
MAC
$2,849
Dual-core 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 processor
1.15GHz frontside bus per processor
1MB L2 cache per core
512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
250GB Serial ATA hard drive
16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
Three open PCI-Express expansion slots
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT with 256MB GDDR SDRAM

Re: Help with PC selection.

Karl Ottenstein — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:24:28 GMT

Albert,

AC will take advantage of multiple processors in various areas. By having multiple threads, that work can be scheduled onto multiple processors (dual core) or pipelined in a multithreaded (not the same thing as dual core!!!) chip. See time estimates below. PlotMaker takes advantage of multithreading nicely during background updates .. you can continue to work on layouts as the updates are happening in BG AC and with the update dialogs showing the progress. LW in AC uses up to two processors.

When you say "I will have to choose", I assume that you now need the computer immediately and have to buy from a local store (Costco or Apple) and do not have time to have one shipped to you?

As I said earlier, the Costco configuration while very nice, does not include a dual core processor - only hyperthreading.

I've had a HT processor for some time, and you will only see about a 10% improvement in throughput with HT enabled ... compared with perhaps 90% improvement with dual core. Not within AC itself, but assuming you are rendering in Artlantis at the same time as working in AC for example. Within AC itself, the LW rendering engine WILL use two processors (threads) ... and so you will see a small improvement with the Costco HT processor over one without HT, but a significant improvement with dual core. Same thing with C4D and other mutiprocessor aware apps.

The Costco machine comes with 533MHz memory. Dell has 667 Mhz available on their web site. Better.

Costco comes with Media Edition ... the features of this machine are geared towards video/music/photos - using as a home DVR/etc - not necessarily CAD and an office environment...although the RAID drives and other specs will make it a speedy CAD station, too. (Even for video editing, I would want dual core ... I'm always waiting for my video editor to render footage. Not an issue with DVR though.)

At Dell site, you can configure with XP Professional, which works well in office networks, including mixed Mac ones (auto reconnect with saved passwords/etc).

Costco comes with Microsoft Works. You can configure with Office apps cheaply at Dell site.

A similarly configured machine, but with 667Mhz RAM, dual core 3GHz processor, XP Pro, and a 19" LCD monitor (no monitor at Costco), "free" shipping comes to 2,737. $537 more... which is probably worth the price difference.

For PURELY ArchiCAD work - for example, section regeneration which is a single-processor activity today - the 3.4 GHz single (HT) Costco processor will give you about 10% faster results than the dual core 3 GHz processor, as this is almost entirely processor dependent given enough memory. But, if you multitask and have llots of things happening on the computer at the same time - or use rendering engines that can use multiprocessors - the dual core should pull ahead easily.

Comparing to the Mac, again if speed is the issue, I've found a pretty much GHz to GHz equality for ArchiCAD and so the Mac would not keep up with the PC here. Minimally, 512MB shared with two processors is an insanely small amount of memory. You'd want to upgrade to 1GB minimum - and ideally 2GB or more IMHO.

For the initial cash outlay, the Dell gives better price/performance. From the amount of time one spends dinking with XP systems to keep them updated compared to OS X, the Mac might be cheaper in TCO?

Karl

Re: Help with PC selection.

Karl Ottenstein — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:36:13 GMT

Well, perhaps the nail in the coffin for Media Center and Costco, Albert...

Bugged me that I didn't know where Media Center fit between XP Home and XP Pro... so reading on the MS web site I found this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/evaluation/faq.mspx

Can I connect a new PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to a work network or domain?

While you can access network resources on a work network or a domain, you cannot join a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 PC to the domain. PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 are designed specifically for home use. Windows XP Professional features, specifically Domain Join and Cached Credentials (Credentials Manager for logons) are not included. As a result, you will be prompted for your logon user name and password to access network resources after you reboot or log back on to the PC. In addition, file shares or network resources that are set to require a domain-joined PC for access will not be available. Remote Desktop and Encrypting File System support are still included.

So... Media Center seems to basically be XP Home with the media extensions. Not XP Pro. Probably fine for a standalone/home machine.

Karl

Re: Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:20:58 GMT

Karl,

I was surprised of the detailed answer and I THANK YOU, this type od advice is priceless and I do not believe one could find then just anywhere, this board is great.

others....

I have a in my office a G4 and is so stinky slow that makes me mad Friday when I wright that particular paycheck. I decided tat I must change it give up my G5 and use a PC. A PC because of RISA and Carrier's energy analysis. I am much afraid of the future. I am perfecting these two aspects because I am convinced tat this will render most architects to a non licensed status within a decade, to no more than a fashion designer and we all know how many will be required. I decided that is not yet time to go to Revit, lets wait an see how practice aspects are being integrated. For the moment one can use Risa on its own. Energy analysis it not yet integrated on modeling a functional skin. In all this aspects a PC is vital but a mediocre will do.

Back to my purchase I realised that all tings equal a PC above average (Dell preceision dual core) is more expensive than a MAC by close to $1000, and I mot wiling to build my own. The monkey wrench it :"First Intel Macs on track for January"
http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1368

Re: Help with PC selection.

Aussie John — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 06:29:51 GMT

The quad mac dual core dual processor 2.5Ghz should be pretty zippy.
quite a lot faster than the vanilla 2.3 dual core.
I wouldnt expect the intel desktops for a little while yet although powerbooks are rumoured for January

Re: Help with PC selection.

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:46:03 GMT

In light of the January release of Intel based Macs I decided to keep the G4 in service but add a Sonett 1.8 GHZ processor. This is a $350 investment.