So my old P4 3.2ghz is faster with AC than a new Core2duo??

[Pete]

My Dell p4 3.2 is almost 3 years old and I am ready to crank up a new machine. However in reading this forum, it appears that AC10 will not take advantage of the new chip technologies. It is confusing: multi-threaded vs. multi-processor vs. multi-core....

Am I correct in thinking that a Core2Duo running at 2ghz will be slower (by 1/3) than my P4 at 3.2ghz? If so, I may simply upgrade from 1 to 2 gigs of ram and step up to a faster video card (still 8xAGP) and save lots of money. Does this make sense?

Thanks,
Pete

[TomWaltz]

Pete wrote:
My Dell p4 3.2 is almost 3 years old and I am ready to crank up a new machine. However in reading this forum, it appears that AC10 will not take advantage of the new chip technologies. It is confusing: multi-threaded vs. multi-processor vs. multi-core....

Am I correct in thinking that a Core2Duo running at 2ghz will be slower (by 1/3) than my P4 at 3.2ghz? If so, I may simply upgrade from 1 to 2 gigs of ram and step up to a faster video card (still 8xAGP) and save lots of money. Does this make sense?

Thanks,
Pete

multi-threaded basically means "capable of running multiple processes at one time, whether on multiple processors, cores, or machines"

I really wish someone would benchmark Archicad 10 on each platform so we could get a better comparison between AC10 on MacIntel and AC10 on WinXP.

My personal guess is that if your downgrade from a 3.2 GHz processor to a 2.0 GHz, I would expect it to be slower, but I only base that on clock speed.

[Pete]

Thanks Tom,

That is my concern. I know that any multi-tasking (email, antivirus, itunes, etc.) must take processor power away from AC, slowing it down some. A second core would take that burden away, in theory. But, a Core2Duo with a clock speed anywhere near 3Ghz is still quite expensive, maybe with no real speed gain in AC.

[TomWaltz]

I can only relate my experience, namely that my dual 2.16 GHz Mac Book Pro matches my 2.5 GHz Quad G5 when rendering animations, and is slightly faster.

That's relevant because Lightworks is multi-threaded and it using 4 processors on one machine and 2 processors on the other...

[Laszlo Nagy]

Pete wrote:
Thanks Tom,

That is my concern. I know that any multi-tasking (email, antivirus, itunes, etc.) must take processor power away from AC, slowing it down some. A second core would take that burden away, in theory. But, a Core2Duo with a clock speed anywhere near 3Ghz is still quite expensive, maybe with no real speed gain in AC.

I believe that the Core2Duo system will be much faster, even at lower clock speeds.

When I bought my Pentium M 2.13 GHz notebook 1 1/2 years ago, they already said it was about as fast as a 3.2 GHz P4 because its processor architecture was more advanced.
Today's processors are even more advanced. Today processors do not try to raise clock speed but instead make it faster by more sophisticated architecture, more cache (temporary storage) for the processor, more cores. Also, the memory modules for today's systems are much much faster, making it a faster system overall.

I found you a CPU chart which you can check:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=433&model2=461&chart=188

It is plainly visible that the Core2Duo leaves the old P4 in the dust in most of the tests. So I do not think you should be worried about clock speed nowadays, it is not the most important buzz word anymore.

[Pete]

Thanks Laszlo,
Very helpful site. Good info on video cards as well.
We shall see.....

[KeesW]

A colleague in Sydney has the answers to your question. Please check his site http://www.aaarchitect.com/archicad_benchmarks.htm.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Dear Cornelis.
The link you entered has a dot at the end aftre the "htm", because of this the browser will report the page cannot be found.
If you leave out the dot, it will come in correctly.

[KeesW]

Thanks Laszlo

Sorry about the full stop - I was too grammatical!
Anyway, Adam has tested quite a few computers with Archicad 9 and 10 and answers most questions about relative speeds. The fasted overall so far tested is, in fact, a 12 month old computer, built by a guy in our office! The fastest, for just photo-rendering, was a new dual Xenon Mac. Follow the link (without the dot) and you'll be able to read the tests for yourself!

KeesW

[Laszlo Nagy]

Yes, I managed to find the page, I was just putting up the note so others would be able to find it, too.