ATI vs nVidia

[Anonymous]

Greetings all, I'm new here. In fact, I don't even have ArchiCAD, my dad does. We just installed 8.1 on a new system I built for him:

3.0 GHz P4 w/HT
800 MHz bus
1024MB Dual-channel DDR400 RAM (2x512)
Dual 40GB 7200RPM hard drives
WinXP Pro
All software updates, drivers, patches possible
GeForce2 32MB DDR (temp card)

I got him a GeForceFX 5200 128MB DDR for his birthday earlier this year and he's currently got it in his other machine. I think I convinced him today to put it in his new beast machine, but he says that he read "somewhere" that ATI cards offer better OpenGL support for 8.1.

As someone who follows graphics cards religiously, I've seen many benchmarks done using professional and gamer cards and the nVidia models usually come out on top. I read through the other thread on this board about graphics cards and it seems that most of you prefer nVidia as well.

Has Graphisoft done any recent benchmarks with new cards? Are there any benchmarks or reviews available for current generation cards with AC8.1? I've put a lot of time and effort into maximizing my dad's new computer and I want to be sure he gets the most out of it. Your advice is greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous]

nick_danger wrote:
Has Graphisoft done any recent benchmarks with new cards? Are there any benchmarks or reviews available for current generation cards with AC8.1? I've put a lot of time and effort into maximizing my dad's new computer and I want to be sure he gets the most out of it. Your advice is greatly appreciated.

AFAIK, the only official tests are at :
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/archiguide/videocardtest.html

But it's not a bench mark, rather a compatibility test. Until now, I think there are much less compatibility problem with nVidia cards than ATI one (on PC), but this might have changed.

[Anonymous]

nick_danger wrote:
Dual 40GB 7200RPM hard drives

I guess you mean they are working in RAID ? If not, the investment in a RAID controller is worth the price... you'll only get 40GB usable, but you get much faster read speed and error protection...

[Anonymous]

Geoffroy wrote:
I guess you mean they are working in RAID ?

Not RAID. The drives are set up the way they are to seperate program files from the cache and user files. There is still quite a gain in speed without it being "officially" RAID. I do the same thing with my games on my computer. You have to manually seperate a lot of files and edit quite a few .ini files, but the end result is very smooth and quick.

Using Unreal Tournament as an example, I was averaging about 42fps at 1024x768 with all effects on. Then I moved the map, model, and texture files to my other hard drive and left the audio and UT systems files where they were. At the same resolution and effects level, I was averaging 65fps. That's a 55% increase in speed...

Performance gains vary from program to program, of course, but I've never found a reason to switch to RAID. From what I've read, RAID really only gives you mass improvement when dealing with larger files, but I've never looked into it much. If I ever get around to building a server, I'm sure I'll utilize it though.

Bah, I'm straying from my initial post, which is purely graphics rendering speed/quality. I have already checked out the compatibility list. Does anyone know what the people who work at Graphisoft use and recommend?