PC specs. - What do I need to upgrade?

[Anonymous]

I'm using ArchiCAD 11 on this computer but when working with larger projects it's easy to tell that the computer got its lacks.
What should I upgrade?

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz
Speed : 2.99GHz
Cores per Processor : 2 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 1 Unit(s)
Type : Dual-Core
Internal Data Cache : 2x 16kB, Synchronous, Write-Thru, 8-way, 64 byte line size
L2 On-board Cache : 2x 1MB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 8-way, 64 byte line size, 2 lines per sector

System
System : Acer Veriton 7800
Mainboard : Acer G945MK
Bus(es) : X-Bus PCI PCIe IMB USB
Multi-Processor (MP) Support : No
Multi-Processor Advanced PIC (APIC) : Yes
System BIOS : Award Software International, Inc. R01-C1
Total Memory : 2GB DDR2

Chipset
Model : Acer 82945G Processor to I/O Controller
Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 200MHz (800MHz)
Total Memory : 2GB DDR2
Memory Bus Speed : 4x 133MHz (532MHz)

Video System
Adapter : MSI NX7600 GT (NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT) (256MB DDR3, PCIe 1.00 x16, PS 3.0, VS 3.0)

Physical Storage Devices
WDC WD2500JS-22NCB1 250GB (SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 8MB Cache) : 233GB (C:) (D:)
FE1484C HGO792T (SCSI, SCSI-2, DVD+-R-DL, CD-R, 512kB Cache) : N/A (F:)

Logical Storage Devices
ACER (C:) : 114GB (NTFS) @ WDC WD2500JS-22NCB1 250GB (SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 8MB Cache)
ACERDATA (D:) : 115GB (FAT32) @ WDC WD2500JS-22NCB1 250GB (SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 8MB Cache)
CD-ROM/DVD (F:) : N/A @ FE1484C HGO792T (SCSI, SCSI-2, DVD+-R-DL, CD-R, 512kB Cache)
3.5" 1.44MB (A:) : N/A

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP (2002) Professional 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)
Platform Compliance : x86

[Anonymous]

Your system is very nice, save for one consumer item on there that sucks. The only thing you need to upgrade is the GPU (graphic processing unit)- or
VIDEO CARD.

That 7600 thing is just ENTRY LEVEL for 3d work, if even that!!!

So get a Geforce 7900-7950 GT/GTX with ddr3 (vs. ddr2)

You'll notice a world of difference.

If you're not sure how the numbering goes with the video cards,

1) Stay away from ATI for now
2) Buy a card from Nvidia (GeForce) with the SECOND HIGHEST NUMBER you can afford.

I.E. 6800 is better than 7600 (enough to notice)
.....7900 is better than an 8400 or 8600 or 8800 (esp. 7900 GT vs 8800 GS). Even it's better than a 9600! (9xxx is the chipset generation, the x6xx is the SAME BASIC CORE as the one you currently have, with some new direct-x 10 instructions and possibilities included: consumer level card!) x8xx is the first cores of any generation (6800/7800/8800/9800) that are good enough for serious pro work. 6600/7600/8600/9600 are simply often not good enough for a working professional in 3D and CAD work (but fine for 2d and basic games and basic visual stuff). 6900/7900/8900/9900 + GT/GTX are the ones to find for real working environment. And SKIP the Fire (ATI) and Quadro's (more open GL friendly, but in the end, real world isn't that noticeable in ArchiCAD, only in things like Maya and 3dSM and in movie studios).

There is currently nothing on the market that is worth the money that is better than a 7950 GTX with 512mb DDR3. The TOP brand new 9600's can do more a bit, but for 5x the price for 10-20% gain in benchmarks and simply hard to see in the real-world working in ArchiCAD, except if you are making some giant 50+ story skyscrapers out of glass loaded with GDL models (chuckle)... and the reasons people are touting DIRECT-X 10!!! are BS.: by the time Dx10 is across the board, these 8800's and 9600 video cards will be ancient and need to be upgraded anyway, and in the meantime, Dx10 isn't standard or even being USED anywhere, nor will it for a few years probably and in the meantime a 7900 series will keep up with ANYTHING out there for a work environment NO PROBLEM, and you can upgrade in a few years to a model that is current at the end of this year- save a few $1k's and have the same performance and bang for your buck for your work machines.

IF you have a free ram slot available, 1 more GB of memory won't hurt- but only if you've got a free slot and are not on dual-channel. you can quickly check this by opening taskmanager and looking at your memory useage- if it's under roughly, say, 60-70% while working in archicad on complex models (or in regular system working environment= a usual working situation) and you're not using a pagefile (or your HDs are not grinding or seriously fragmented; "Perfect Disk 8" is a great defragger by the way), then you're fine. If you really want to know if you need more memory, turn off paging on all your HD's and then run the usual tasks and if it doesn't crash and you're still not using all your memory, you're fine!

So upgrade that consumer level video card and perhaps one more 1gb stick of ddr ram.

[Anonymous]

OH. 2gb is all that mobo/chipset can handle!!!

OK
1) Better GPU/Video card.
then if it's still lagging/slow,
....
2) Better mobo/motherboard with more memory room and 3gb memory. Save money by finding one with the same CPU slot so you can re-use your cpu on it (good enough cpu!).

3) KEEP windows XP! Do NOT upgrade to vista.