topic New workstations in Installation & update

New workstations

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 10:33:10 GMT

Hello, I´m about to order a few new workstations for Archicad, have some questions. I´m NOT gonna buy 4x Xeon high end spaceship computers.

1. Processor. AMD 64 or P4? Does Archicad support the 64 bit thing?

2. Graphic card. Is a ATI Radeon 9550 with 256mb of memory better for this kind of work than For example a 64mb Quadro card?

Hope someone can help me, dont wanna buy 4 computers with the wrong thing inside! Thanks!

/eric

Re: New workstations

Balazs Simonyi — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 11:52:50 GMT

ericj wrote:
Hello, I´m about to order a few new workstations for Archicad, have some questions. I´m NOT gonna buy 4x Xeon high end spaceship computers.

1. Processor. AMD 64 or P4? Does Archicad support the 64 bit thing?

2. Graphic card. Is a ATI Radeon 9550 with 256mb of memory better for this kind of work than For example a 64mb Quadro card?

Hope someone can help me, dont wanna buy 4 computers with the wrong thing inside! Thanks!

Hi!

I'm not an expert. But maybe I can help you.
1. There are not too much softwares for 64 bit architecture (for example windows neither yet) which can handle the advantages of 64 bit. But you can run 32bit softwares on that platform too. I think for an architectural program for about 2-3 more years a 32bit workstation will be enough.
But I prefer AMD. (for example a 3000+)
2. You have to distinguish between professional graphic cards (quadro) and well accelerated video cards. If you want to spend a lot of money and get the best detailed renderings, you should buy quadro. I prefer ATI I would buy with the larger memory.
And dont forget about the RAMs, the bigger plan, the more memory you need...

I hope I could help you something.

Bye,
Balazs

Re: New workstations

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 12:39:47 GMT

I think a decent gaming card ie NVidia GForece 6xxx or Radeon 9xxx or something will suffice with Archicad.
128MB video card memory is plenty in my opinion. Use the money saved for system memory or higher speed cpus.

Archicad is not 3DMAX, VIZ, or Maya so leave the $ 3,500 video cards with the LucasFilm and Pixar people. IMHO

Re: New workstations

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 22:24:41 GMT

if you are looking for a 64 bit processor, go with the AMD 64 line NOT the opterons. also, ArchiCAD does not take advantage of the 64 bit enviroment, however AMD64 processors do allow for a 32 bit enviroment. i personally run ArchiCAD 8.1 on a AMD64 3200+ that has Windows XP 64 (x64) which is in beta and can be downloaded from microsofts site. i have absolutely no problem running ArchiCAD. and most of your windows apps also will run perfectly. Windows xp 64 has a 32 bit emulator to run all of your 32 bit apps under and a 64 bit core to run everything else.

hope this helps you at least the 64 bit side.

Re: New workstations

Aaron Bourgoin — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:55:44 GMT

AMD Socket 939 motherboards are a good bet. There are planned releases of AMD chips through 2005 and the Socket 939 will also accept the dual core chips when they ship sometime next year. While not directly beneficial to ArchiCAD, a dual core chip will give you dual processing power on a single die. Another advantage of these boards is that they work with DDR RAM not DDR2. Cheaper.

My 3800+ had very similar specs to the FX series of chips and so you can save a bit of money by not going for absolute cream of the crop.