How to Make Archicad and Artlantis Faster?

[Anonymous]

I am getting ready to replace all of our work stations with new Mac Pro computers that a base configured with:
One 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6GB memory
1TB hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5

I know this will be a significant increase in computing power over the 2007 intel Mac pro's we are currently using.

But if I could spend a little more money to upgrade either the RAM, Processor or Graphics Card --- which upgrade would allow Archicad 16 and Artlantis 4.1.8 preform their best?

[Karl Ottenstein]

First, I wouldn't buy a new Mac Pro today unless I had no other options... the Mac Pro has not been updated by Apple for years - and is finally going to be updated in 2013.

6 GB memory is kind of an odd number ... I'd take no less than 8 and ideally 16 (or more). Third party memory (macsales.com) is as good as and way cheaper than Apple memory.

A 2012 iMac can deliver the same performance as the configuration you list. If you need additional drive bays, it supports Thunderbolt expansion. A core i7 with 4 cores gives you 8 virtual cores for multithreading.

For Artlantis, the more processors the better. You won't see as much benefit with Archicad. Rather than configure every workstation to be a max-speed Artlantis machine, it might be more cost effective to have one 'super' Artlantis machine - and the others a 27" 2012 core i7 iMac with fusion drive - which will be great for most uses.

For the super Artlantis machine, I would look at a Mac Pro with as many cores as possible, and at least 16 GB RAM ... but would live with the iMacs until Apple releases the new Mac Pro next year. You might even decide you don't need a Mac Pro...

K

[vistasp]

Karl wrote:
6 GB memory is kind of an odd number...

Don't know about Mac machines but some motherboards (my gigabyte for example) use triple channel memory which is why I have 6GB of RAM.

Now that I've paid for my upgrade to AC16 (GS please get the resellership sorted quickly; the watermark from my trial version output is embarrassing) I'm going to use the three remaining slots and bump it to 12GB.

Just my 2p.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Good point, Vistasp. The handling of DDR3 memory by Apple appears to use up to quad channel as the Mac Pro has 4 or 8 slots (one or two processor system) - and the 27" iMac has 4 slots. As far as I can tell (hard to find definitive links) - the 2012 Mac Pro will use quad channel access with 4 (or 8 ) sticks, drop down to triple channel with 3 (or 6 ) sticks, and drop to 2 channel with 2 sticks. Lots of reading between the lines, so not sure.

Brian, this memory issue made me double check the specs pages on Apple's site ... and the one-processor 3.2 GHz Mac Pro runs with 1066 MHz memory, the 3.33 MHz processor gives you 1333 MHz memory ... but the late 2012 iMac is 1600 MHz memory...another factor in the iMac's favor.

As noted here:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_Pro

most consider the June 2012 'update' to the Mac Pro as insignificant... which means that Mac Pro architecture hasn't really been updated in almost 2.5 years.