Hi! I'm looking to buy a computer for 3D architecture creation and am going to buy from a chain retailer for price reasons. What do you suggest is the most worthwhile buy in this market for ArchiCad 11? Here are a few topics I've been dealing with:
1) What do you think of HP/Compaq vs. Dell vs. Acer/Gateway? HP has been in the famiy since 99' and 03' and still kicking but the others are priced less. I've heard that the Taiwanese company Acer bought out Gateway. Has their quality gone down? I've heard Acer has substandard parts and lacking customer service.
2) What works better for 3D applications, AMD or Intel? The retailers sell the AMD Athlons and Phenoms and Intel's dual core, Core 2 Duo and Quad Cores. How much better can a Quad perform with a 3D program compared to a Dual? I heard that the dual core is cheaper b/c intel cut back on power consumption and heat gain but they're about half the GHz of a Core 2 Duo. How important are the GHz to running a 3D program?
3) The graphic cards that come with these retailer's PCs are Nvidea Geforce 6600 and 8800 series, ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 and HD 2400 series, and Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 and 3100. From what I've researched some of the lower end computers actually add the memory directly from the card to the Harddrive and not as dedicated video memory (hence slowdown and freeze up). I need something that can handle large detailed 3D projects. I've found the radeon x1250 in an Acer says it has 256 GB dedicated memory but is that a ruse? Any thoughts?
4) I heard AMD purchased ATI in 2006. Is the quality the same as before? I have a laptop that runs a Radeon IGP 345M but can't handle Open GL in ArchiCad (the screen turns black and freezes). It has 64 MB memory but it can't handle the textures (I switch to the Internal 3D engine). What should I look for to get the textures working correctly?
5) Now the big question. What's the most important, the size of the RAM, the amount of dedicated memory in the graphics card vs. the shared memory, or the speed of the processor?
Thank you for your time. I'm sure there are others struggling with these questions
John
