What is the optimum environment for Archicad 11

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

Sometimes my computer is excruciatingly slow when performing operations with archicad 11. I'm wondering if my computer and/or graphics card need to be upgraded. (I know nothing about this kind of thing, so please bare with my ignorance:-)

This is my set up:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 2002
AMD Athlon (tm) 64 x 2 Dual
Core Processor 3800+
2.01 GHz, 1.00GB of RAM
Adapter: NVIDIA Ge force 6200 Turbo Cache (TM)

Is there anything I can do to make my computer work faster?
Cheers

[Dwight]

Double up that RAM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hard Drive space? How much is unused?

Location of temporary files makes sense? Using the default locations?

How current is the video card?

Exactly what operations are slow and how complex are your models?

A few 3D trees slow you right down in perspectives.

Somewhere you'll find a thread about TRACE reference updating that slows the plan view regeneration - i think....

[Anonymous]

I doubled up the sheep as suggested, unfortunately it doesn't seem to have changed things much.

I've got 82.8 GB left on my hard drive.

i'm not sure where the temp files go...where should they go?

My graphics card is NVIDIA Ge force 6200 Turbo Cache (TM). Our IT guy says it's a few years old. How much difference does the graphics card make?

Operations are slow mainly during section generation and working in the 3d window. The trace reference slows things up as well.

Could it be my CPU? I've attached and image on the readings during an operation that was taking a while (generating a section). It looks like my rams ok, but the CPU is fully used. How much of a difference would it make with an upgraded CPU?
Cheers

[Dwight]

You don't have a buzzillion trees or anything like that in the model?

You want all of the CPU to be used when it does a task. Otherwise it is goofing off. If your CPU is not working very hard, fire it and get a new one.

[Anonymous]

No trees, but I have modelled a twisted roof form with the mesh 3d tool by Petri, and then used SEO to trim my walls...hmmm perhaps that's what it is.

Good advice about the CPU, looks like it doing the right thing then? thanks.

[Dwight]

Turn it off and see.

[Anonymous]

How about with dual processor?

[Dwight]

Dwight wrote:
Turn it off and see.

What i meant was turn off the fancy roof and see.

[Anonymous]

Turning off the roof made operations faster. So I guess I'll have to put up with the slow speed until I've generated all of my elevations and sections, and then unlink them to work on them further?
Otherwise this project might take me forever

[henrypootel]

It's not really going to affect you section generation performance, but that video card is rubbish. It was the bottom of the heap about 2 or 3 years ago, so it's not looking so good now. Also, 'Turbo Cache' is fancy marketing speak for 'i will steal your RAM whenever i feel like it and there's nothing you can do about it', which is not so great.