Help Required with new PC spec

[Anonymous]

Hi all

Please would you be able to assist with the following.

We are an Architectural and Urban Design Company and are looking for a good (Above Average) specification for a new PC.

The spec has to be able to cater for large sites and complex modeling. The primary focus in being able to build, few and edit the model quickly with rendering being of second most concern.

What is the current consensus RE the quadcores and ArchiCAD 11. Does this improve the speed or would it be better to rather go for a faster AMD processor.

Below is the current spec we are looking at:

NX8800ULTRA-T2D768E-HD
APACER INTERNAL AE100 16-IN-1 3.5" CARD READER BLK
600W PS/2 P4 FULL SAFETY ATX PSU - BLACK
MS WIN VISTA BUSINESS 66J-02663-DVD9 (32BIT) OEM
INTEL Q6600 CORE 2 QUAD S775, 2.40GHZ, 1066FSB,8MB
MS OFFICE 2007 SBE W/BCM CD OEM
LG DVD-RW 20X DRIVE - BLACK (RETAIL)
MSI P35 NEO-F ATX PCI-E 16X/8CH SND/GB LAN/DDR800
APACER 2048MB DDR II 800MHZ DIMM PC6400


Thanks
Jerome Le Sueur

[Anonymous]

Personally I would be buying a 8800GT 512mb, the almost as good as the Ultra and about 1/2 the price. Best bang for buck. The difference in RAM amounts between 768mb Ultra and 512mb GT will be minimal.
Personally again I wouldn't buy a MSI card, I prefer Albatron, Gigabyte or Asus.
Put the extra cash into more cpu power.

Get XP over Vista, I have used Vista for 6 months now and wish I could install XP on my laptop, unfortunatly I struggleing to find all the drivers I need

[Anonymous]

We upgraded our hardware recently and find that it is performing better than our previous Pentium system. Occasionally, we get jagged images in floor plan view...and stalling sometimes....might be a video card driver problem.

[henrypootel]

Definitely XP over Vista, although i would choose x64 edition, it's much more stable, and is faster when playing with bigger files.
Also, go for a Quadro over the 8800. They cost more but are a lot more reliable, especially when it comes to ArchiCAD. Check the compatability database on ArchiCADWiki for which model to pick.

[Anonymous]

Just changed from Mac to Pc in the last few weeks but that’s a whole new thread in its self on the problems we have had. We have almost the same spec'd machine you’re looking at and so far they have been incredibly quick (check spec below). The only problem i have had are the Archicad pull down menus sometimes disappear when in use (all drivers inc DirectX up to date) but i guess this is another problem thread i need to post.

I Agree with Henry on going with Xp and choosing x64 but i would buy Vista business and downgrade to xp on your Vista licence. That means if Vista ever gets through its teething problems, you can go back to it without having to buy the upgrade. Kind of like having 2 operating systems and only paying for one.

I personally wouldn’t go with the Quadro but that’s just my opinion. I just can’t justify spending this much money on the cards when there are gaming cards out there that perform incredibly well at a fraction of the cost. We only handle small commercial work so we don’t require monster machines to do our 3d on but our new machines and graphics cards have far exceeded our expectations and are very happy with them.

Good luck, hope this is of help