ArchiCAD on a slower PC

[stefan]

I have been running ArchiCAD 8.0 & 8.1 with satisfying speed and responsiveness on my older PC:

Pentium III 600 MHz
256 MB RAM
Geforce 256 DDR (32MB)
Windows XP Pro (which eats memory)

Anyone satisfied with even lower specs?

I don't do large projects. I'm working on a 300m² single-family house renovation. I didn't add 3D-furniture in this project, but the whole model is ready for building permits. About 6MB, using the default ArchiCAD 8.1 library.

[Anonymous]

I say it's barely usable on both of these:

PIII 500, 384 MB RAM, 32 MB video card, W2K

Powerbook G4 400, 384 MB RAM, 16 MB video, OS 10.2.8

[David Tauer]

A customer has an older PC
P3 - 800MHz, 512M, 32M Nvidia video cards, WIN-NT

He just bought a brand new Zeon P4, 2GHz, 1.5G Mem, 980 XGL (128M) (OpenGL), WIN XP

Comparing a 20M (filesize) project against these two machines, there is no noticable difference in performance.

Question is “What is the best machine to get, and how can performance be tuned to take advantage of it?

At this point there doesn’t seem to be be any advantage to getting hot new machine.

File size is 20M on in-house design.

[Karl Ottenstein]

David wrote:
A customer has an older PC
P3 - 800MHz, 512M, 32M Nvidia video cards, WIN-NT

He just bought a brand new Zeon P4, 2GHz, 1.5G Mem, 980 XGL (128M) (OpenGL), WIN XP

Comparing a 20M (filesize) project against these two machines, there is no noticable difference in performance.

Question is “What is the best machine to get, and how can performance be tuned to take advantage of it?

At this point there doesn’t seem to be be any advantage to getting hot new machine.

Hi David,

I'm pretty surprised to see that a difference in performance isn't noticed.

My laptop and spare desktop are 1GHz PIII machines with 512MB and 64MB nVidia graphics; my current desktop specs (3GHz P4) are below. While I find working in AC completely usable on the 1GHz machines, the difference with the 3GHz one is remarkable with respect to various things - such as (not complete list): (1) the fluidity of navigating a complex model in the OpenGL window - totally liquid and responsive vs a bit sluggish... besides loading faster, (2) the speed of generating live sections/elevations, particularly if vectoral hatching and/or sun shadows are enabled, (3) rendering, (4) interactive schedules ... basically anything beyond basic editing that really needs horsepower.

So...I'm curious: if you open live sections on each machine, or generate (internal engine) hidden line views ... do you not see a difference in speed? [If not, then I think something else is going on - perhaps the Zeon machine has a slow FSB and slow memory and/or a slow disk.]

Karl

[Djordje]

David wrote:
Comparing a 20M (filesize) project against these two machines, there is no noticable difference in performance.

Which ArchiCAD? I suppose 7, as 8.1 will not work on NT.

At this point there doesn’t seem to be be any advantage to getting hot new machine.

No much if you stay on 7. A LOT if you go to 8.1

[Stephen Dolbee]

I just upgraded from a Pentium 450/384ram/16MB video to a 2.4 xeon/1gig ram/128MB video and notice a substantial speed difference esp. with section/elevations with shadows. And that is in version 7. Made the upgrade anticipating version 8 and hope to make the upgrade by years end (now that 8.1 is out).

Steve