Hardware Feedback for Archicad and Twinmotion

[jakubc7]

Hi, I was hoping to get some community feedback on the new PC that I am looking at putting together.

Archicad work is mainly single residential, unit developments and some small commercial. I keep my files pretty clean and don't import heavy models into my projects. All vegetation and furnishing happens in Twinmotion. So project scale is small to medium at most. I tend to have multiple ACs opened at once (up to 4-5 if working on multiple units for single project). My current PC can handle it well enough but it gets noticeably slower the more files I open.

What bothers me the most is that TRACE REFEREENCE tends to slow my AC in 2D views quite noticeably. It helps if I use the PROJECT MAP view instead of VIEW MAP as reference. Does anyone know what can be done to help with this issue? 

I do use Twinmotion quite a bit and want to make the most of the Path Tracing. I want to be able to do real time Path Tracing in my walkthroughs and generate short videos with Path Tracing enabled. Something I am unable to do with my current setup (GEFORCE RTX2060).

Any feedback is welcome but the areas I am hoping to further input are:

- Is the graphics card sufficient to do what I want and keep up with the the technology for the next 3-4 years? Professional GPU is probably out of the question due to pricing and as far as I know, it would not handle Path Tracing without spending stupid amount of money. Correct me if I'm wrong please. I am willing to sacrifice AC performance for better Twinmotion experience as I don't tend to have issues with AC.

- Would SSD storage drive make much difference?

- Would I benefit much from 64GB memory upgrade?

I'm hoping to keep the budget around $2500AUD (approx. $1600USD), which the below system is within.

CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8 Core 16 Thread Up To 4.6Ghz AM4 - No HSF Retail Box
CPU - Cooler Thermaltake Toughair 510 Dual Fan CPU Cooler
Motherboard - Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 AM4 ATX Desktop Motherboard
Memory - Silicon Power 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR4 XPOWER Zenith Grey C16 3200MHz
OS Drive - WD Blue SN570 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD
Storage Drive - WD Blue WD10EZEX 3.5" 1TB 64MB 7200RPM Desktop HDD
Graphics Card - Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC LHR 12GB GDDR6
Case NZXT H510 Compact Mid Tower Case - Matte Black
Power Supply - EVGA GD Series 600W 80PLUS Gold Power Supply
Operating System Microsoft Windows 11 Home

Thank you, any feedback is appreciated.

[Lingwisyer]

Might be worth waiting for the release of NVIDIA's 40 series cards? Though it will still be a few months before we see the lower end cards...

Personally, I would get a second storage HDD and run it in RAID0 or get a second, larger capacity SSD instead if you are working off this drive.

[jakubc7]

Thanks for the reply Lingwisyer. Why wait? Because the 30 series prices will drop or because there may be affordable series 40 option?

Also, not sure I understand your HDD comment. I do have a dedicated storage drive for all my files and libraries etc. My "current" PC has a SSD for both; storage and SYSTEM (500GB each) but I wasn't sure if it's beneficial to have SSD for storage. Do you think I will notice the difference in speed when loading AC libraries or PLNs or when saving files?

[Lingwisyer]

The price of 30 series cards might drop, but so would supply. The new 40 series cards supposedly have a siginificant jump in performance over the 30 series. They also have some new technologies that are not backwards compatible that might come into play, though given TM has not picked up RTX yet, this might not matter.

Running two drives in RAID0 improves read and write speeds. Not as much as swapping to a SSD would, but cheaper. Alternatively to RAID0 you could go RAID1 which will protect against harddrive failure but you don't gain the write speed of RAID0.

The larger the individual files are that are loaded, the more noticable improvements in read and write speeds are. On the other hand, if you are accessing lots of smaller files, these speeds are less impactful and the access time comes into play which SSDs are far ahead.

Ling.

[jakubc7]

Great thanks for clarifying. Thinking back I recall saving files taking a few seconds and since getting an SSD it's almost not noticeable so I think I'll spend the extra money on SSD storage. Funny you mention the hardware failure because my Storage SSD is failing occasionally and hence the reason I am getting a new PC sooner then I normally would. From that point of view I'm not too keen to wait until new GPU as I don't want to end up without a working PC.

Do you have an option on the RTX 3060 in terms of Twinmotion and Path Tracing ... not taking into account the new cards coming out soon?

[Lingwisyer]

I have not used TM extensively nor hands on experience with the RTX3060 so cannot really say...

 "my Storage SSD is failing occasionally"

You could just go get a replacement SSD and clone everything over, or create an image on a spare drive to recover from in the case of a complete failure. Moving a storage drive to a new system is usually pretty smooth.

Another option would be to get the new system minus the GPU, retaining your current one, and see what happens down the road.

Ling.

[jakubc7]

Yes, I'd normally do this but I could use a second PC in the office as my partner is currently working off a laptop which is not always ideal. So, yes I will be replacing the SSD on the current PC but getting an upgrade for myself.

I use Google Drive for all my files and found coping or cloning triggers Drive to re-sync and sometimes create duplicates of files/folders or adding (1) to file names which creates issues to my systems. So I prefer to let it sync manually which takes a few days - something I prefer to do while I have another fully functional PC and don't risk losing work time.

[ryejuan]

Base on the specs that you have listed I would advise that you upgrade your Hard Drive to an 1tb NVMe one and also your GPU to a 3070 or 3080 (if you still got enough budget) then also consider getting a PSU around 800 at most. Hope this helps you. 🙂

[jakubc7]

Thanks ryejuan. I'm contemplating the 3080 card as I don't want to have an underperforming GPU from the start. I hope this would make a noticable difference given the extra cost. I don't quite understand what NVMe is / does in a HDD but will do some research.

Thanks for your help everyone 🙂

[Lingwisyer]

NVMe is just a type of SSD. Faster than your typical SATA SSDs since it runs throught the PCI-e lanes. They are installed in M2 sockets or in one of the shorter PCI-e slots depending on the format. Your chosen motherboard has a spare NVMe M2 slot if you decide to go that route with your second drive. Though given work files, the difference in speed between a SATA and PCIe SSD will probably not be that noticable...