ARCHICAD optimization in matter of CPU

[Karol Argasinski]

Dear all,

I hope everyone is fine during times of coronavirus.

I am an Intel person and always have been. But I can see now, that AMD has improved in stability a lot and performance.

My firm is specialising in pointcloud and practically all ARCHICAD files that I have contains pointclouds. My current workstation has Intel i7-6700K CPU. It is still decent machine, but sometimes I feel lag with many tasks on board.

Has Ryzen risen ( ) to the task when we talk about ARCHICAD performance? Is ARCHICAD optimized enough with AMD? What are your opinions (Ryzen users)? I can read through Internet, that CPUs are great, gaming is wonderful, but: is it working great with professional apps?

My PC configuration:
Intel i7-6700K
64GB RAM (4x16GB)
RTX 2070

Basically, what I read, that for my graphic card, the best AMD CPU would be AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (I want to go with higher threads).

Feel free to comment, discuss. It is always good to learn something new!

Best,
Karol

[Laszlo Nagy]

I have been using an AMD Ryzen-based workstation for over 2.5 years now and I am completely satisfied with it. It has 8 cores and 16 threads which is very useful in all cases where multi-core performance comes into play.
I think there is no such thing as ARCHICAD being optimized for Intel or AMD. Both processors work the same, they are totally compatible, Windows is compatible with both, so as a user you don't really know if you are running on an Intel or AMD hardware.
There is no compatibility or performance issue I ever had with the Ryzen, so I can recommend it wholeheartedly because I feel it is more bang for the buck than Intel processors.

[Erwin Edel]

I generally check up on benchmark websites when it is time to make a purchase.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ for example. You can see single thread, single CPU and multiple CPU charts for performance and best value.

An older Intel Xeon might give you better value, you may find. The latest and greatest tend to be a bit overpriced.

[Karol Argasinski]

Hi everyone,

So Ryzen 7 3700X is here and I did a stress test with ARCHICAD. I have opened 12 teamwork projects, and randomly working on each one of them and the results are very impressive. PC is not laggy, the only long-time-taker was exporting IFCs.

Apart from that two pointcloud projects were running in SCENE and PointCab so... recommended.

One thing which is buggering me is heat/dB intensity. Anyone has this kind of issue?

Best,
Karol

[Laszlo Nagy]

No, I don't have heat or noise issues.
But my Ryzer CPU actually has water cooling so it does not really have a chance to overheat.

[Karol Argasinski]

LaszloNagy wrote:
No, I don't have heat or noise issues.
But my Ryzer CPU actually has water cooling so it does not really have a chance to overheat.

Lucky you!
I have this wraith prism cooler from AMD, but I am thinking on some kind of be quiet! solution. I am not a "fan" of water cooling, I always thought that it is too risky .

[Lingwisyer]

Karol wrote:
wraith prism cooler

While AMDs stock coolers are better than Intels, neither are worth using. Their cooling effectiveness are mediocre and their fans are noisy. I have used Cooler Master CPU coolers for quite a while and their stock fan noise is reasonably low, though you can get even quieter fans if you buy them separately or possibly on more expensive coolers. Larger coolers, including liquid options, also allow you to run lower RPMs which further reduces noise levels. Have not used BeQuiets coolers before, but their fans are really good from memory.



Ling.

[Laszlo Nagy · Accepted solution]

Karol,

Interesting that you say that because that is what I thought for a long time, like, what if it leaks and water gets onto the CPU and the motherboard and kills the whole system.
But it is pretty widespread now, and the whole thing is a closed system, I am not really worried about water leakage or anything like that.

[Karol Argasinski]

LaszloNagy wrote:
Karol,

Interesting that you say that because that is what I thought for a long time, like, what if it leaks and water gets onto the CPU and the motherboard and kills the whole system.
But it is pretty widespread now, and the whole thing is a closed system, I am not really worried about water leakage or anything like that.

Laszlo,

How often liquid has to be changed? Maybe it is worth trying...

[Karol Argasinski]

Lingwisyer wrote:

Karol wrote:
wraith prism cooler

While AMDs stock coolers are better than Intels, neither are worth using. Their cooling effectiveness are mediocre and their fans are noisy. I have used Cooler Master CPU coolers for quite a while and their stock fan noise is reasonably low, though you can get even quieter fans if you buy them separately or possibly on more expensive coolers. Larger coolers, including liquid options, also allow you to run lower RPMs which further reduces noise levels. Have not used BeQuiets coolers before, but their fans are really good from memory.



Ling.

Hi Ling,
I am thinking right now about BeQuiet!. Was using them before and I was happy with it. Will change it for sure.

Thanks,
Karol