ArchiCad on 2018 MacBook Pro i9

[yma2010]

I was wondering if anyone is using AC on the new MacBook Pro with the i9 processor and if there are any observable benefits to it. Or, even Windows users if they have seen any benefit to the i9 processor.

[Anonymous]

I would be interested as well and does it take more advantage of the new acceleration in archicad 22?

[Anonymous]

Also interested in knowing whether it's better to upgrade to i9 or get an eGPU to benefit fully from ArchiCad 22. Anybody has actual experience?

[Anonymous]

We run ARCHICAD 22 on our iMac Pro (3.2GHz 8 Core Xeon with 64GB RAM and 2TB solid state drive). It works fast when running under macOS and we see no degradation in speed when we run it under Window 10 using Boot Camp. The only noticeable difference is that Windows 10 graphic rendering of text and other graphic items is n nowhere near as clear or as easy on the mark 1 human eyeball as when ARCHICAD 22 runs under macOS.

We also have a MacBook Pro (early 2017) so its processor is a lot slower but ARCHICAD 22 still works fine.

Phil Allsopp
KAMBRIO - development-finance-human habitat
iMac Pro
3.2GHz 8 Core Xeon
64GB RAM
2TB solid state drive
12 TB G-Drive RAID unit

[Eduardo Rolon]

eGPU will not help with AC

[Gerald Hoffman]

yma2010 wrote:
I was wondering if anyone is using AC on the new MacBook Pro with the i9 processor and if there are any observable benefits to it. Or, even Windows users if they have seen any benefit to the i9 processor.

I am now using my new MacBook Pro with the i9 processor. I was on a 17" late 2011 model before this so the difference is noticeable. I was waiting for the 32 GB of RAM to update which is at least as important as the processor. I also opted to get the Blackmagic eGPU which makes it quite usable with Twinmotion. I use the eGPU most of the time just plugged into the MacBook which charges it at the same time and gives the MacBook 8 GB of GPU.

So far no problems with AC 22.

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

Archicad works fine with the BlackMagic?. I mean, does Archicad use and load the work actually to the eGPU?
Thanks in advanced for the answer. I really want a new setup as yours but I was not sure if it works
Regards

[Gerald Hoffman]

ArchiCad does work with Blackmagic. If you are using it with the MacBook you have to change a small setting to make ArchiCad prefer the external GPU. I had to do this for Twinmotion as well. There is a GPU history you can monitor in the Activity app.

I did notice though on the GPU monitor it seems to use both the eGPU and the internal Radeon Pro 560X at the same time. I am not sure why it does this or if it makes the performance better or worse.

You only have to do this if you are running it on the MacBook. If you use an external display it will switch to the eGPU automatically if you use the MacBook in clamshell mode.

Cheers,

[Daniel Kovacs]

Hi,

Let me just link our Recommended Graphics Cards for ARCHICAD 22 article here. It has a section called "External graphics processor in macOS", which is about our experiences with eGPUs on macOS so far (in regards of using ARCHICAD of course).

Generally it shows benefits when you only have an integrated graphics chip in your MacBook, but if you also have a dedicated chip, our experience is that the eGPU won't provide that much of a boost in ARCHICAD. We are still testing these solutions to see if this is a hardware/ARCHICAD limitation, or if we can improve ARCHICAD's compatibility with eGPUs in the future.

We will post our findings in the article above as we progress, but please let us know about your experiences in this Topic! Real-life usage is always the best "benchmark".

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thanks. All I want to hear

Cheers,