Best computer configuration for ArchiCAD 10 and 11

[Anonymous]

First I want to say "hi" to everybody on this board... My name is Adina and I been using ArchiCAD for over 6 years on small projects (mostly residential)... I recently switch on using ArchiCAD on large projects and I have some difficulties with my computer...

I wonder what the computer configuration should be (PC platform)... The size of my file is about 20MB or more...

Also wondering if anybody used Vista already with ArchiCAD 11 and how it works...

Waiting for any suggestions and feedback...

Thanks in advance!
Adina

[Steve Jepson]

Minimum requirements can be found here.

http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/system_requirements/ if that helps.

Best configuration for a PC ? That's a very hard question.

Can you be more specific?

[Anonymous]

The answer is horses for courses and which course do you want to run, you can build a very cheap PC and update it every year or you can build an expensive one which will last several years.

You have a choice between the AMD and Intel platforms, at the moment Intel appear to have the speed edge so commenting on these:-

The latest and naturally most expensive mainboars/motherboards use the Intel X38 Express / Intel ICH9R controllers with FSB speeds up to 1600Mhz and up to 12 USB ports. Most boards also utilise DDR3 Ram which is way more expensive than DDR2. Step back one from the latest all singing all dancing models and you can probably build yourself a good system at a reasonable price.

Go for a board that holds the controllers heat sinks on with push pins, mine are held on with anchors soldered to the board and one now has a three point anchor instead of a four point which might account for the frequent blue screen's of death.

Solid Japanese capacitors are the latest saving grace, they apparently don't explode or leak which I didn't know they did, maybe it's just advertising but who knows ?

Intel Core 2 Duo processors go from around 2.2Ghz up to 3.0Ghz with a special Extreme 3.0Ghz model 3 times the price of the ordinary 3.0Ghz model. Computer pundits expect that most machines will have switched to the newer Core 2 Quad processors by the 3rd Quarter of 2008, these are not quite as fast as Core 2 Duo at the moment but can handle more instructions - read the articles in ArchiCADWIKI on 64 bit processing.

There is no point at this time in buying more than 4Gb Ram as neither of the 32 bit versions of Windows XP or Vista can handle it - I think you are better off to go for solid ram from a known maker than spend too much money on very fast stuff which is not really necessary for CAD.

You can get Graphics cards with 64Mb of ram and cards with 1Mb ram which will do all sorts of things but may not go that well with CAD I use Matrox cards which are not exciting but work for me.

You will need hard drives the bigger the cache on them the better, most of them have 36months warranty but remember they will either fail very quickly or last for a long time following the statistic known as the bathtub curve so back up.

You will need a power supply, 500w seems to be the minimum these days it should have connections for the main board usually 24 pin plus either a 4 or 8 pin second board connection and a third connection for the graphics card, the latest supplies have modular connections for HDD's etc.

You will need a case which can be air (fan) cooled or watercooled which should be exciting if you're not too good at the plumbing.

Oh and you'll need an operating system too, download the Vista checker from Microsoft, turn on all the external drives and printers and discover which will work with Vista before you buy it, it tells me that my HP DesignJet 500 and 2 printers are "unknown", how jolly.

Life gets complicated don't it.

[Thomas Holm]

Adina, Don't let the experts scare you!

If you don't want to switch to a Mac, it still doesn't have to be so complicated. The truth is that Archicad isn't extremely picky. It mostly uses just one processor core, so you don't need the latest and the greatest. You will like having a dedicated graphiics card, but Archicad will run with builit-in shared-memory grapics too but a little slower in OpenGL 3D views.

You can simplify the requrements like this:

MacOSX: Any iMac that's produced today will do, if you get 2GB RAM.

PC with Vista or XP: Any recent HP or Dell PC costing around USD 900 or more will also do, if you get 2GB RAM.

If you want to spend more, put the money on a faster processor, and/or a bigger and faster hard disk, not on more processor cores - Archicad won't use them.

More RAM is better, but may still cost more than it's worth if you just use Archicad and the system. More than 4GB is overkill today. Other programs might have other requirements.

[Anonymous]

Expert how-are-ya

The so-called expertise derives from a reluctance to shell out cash on things I don't know anything about.

There is also a bubu on the graphic card note in my last post, they go currently from 64Mb to 1Gb and not 1Mb. ArchiCAD used to be picky on graphic's cards as I've stuck with Matrox for years I don't know if this is still true.

The latest PC machines are usually bought for games which seems a total waste of cash to me but the technologies developed do work their way down to the mainstream market.

The only advantage I can see in buying one of these machines is that it will stay current longer and you may well be able to upgrade it and avoid frequent purchases of new machines.

With regard to the iMac they are in my view the best designed machines on the market but you should be aware that they are basically laptops equipped with 3.5" hard drives, that's how they are so slim. The advice from all reviewers is not to buy additional ram from Apple as it is over priced, go to www.crucial.com for example, where there is a little programme there which will guide you to the correct ram for any machine PC or Mac