Would 128 GB RAM be too much for ArchiCAD 28?

[architekt659]

Hi, this is my first post here, so in my first words i'd like to say hello to all the honourable users of this forum! 🙂

Now to the point:

I am the lucky owner of ArchiCAD 28, and although it works pretty well on my PC now, I started thinking of upgrading my harware a little bit, just in case of starting bigger projects in the future. Below you can see present configuration of my machine:

Processor:         Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz 2.90 GHz
RAM:                32,0 GB DDR4 (Kingston) (2x16GB)
Hard drive 1:    477 GB SSD KINGSTON SKC600512G,

Hard drive 2:   3.64 TB HDD ST4000DM004-2CV104
GPU:                 NVIDIA Quadro P1000 (4 GB), Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (128 MB)
operating system - Windows 10pro x64

Now the question is, which part schould I change to make it work faster with big projects?

I was thinking of increasing RAM up to 128GB, but perhaps I am exaggerating? Would this amount of RAM be used by Archicad with other elements as above? Or perhaps some other element should be chaged instead? 

I don't have any knowledge of which part of PC has the greatest impact on the speed of Archicad, so I'd be very grateful for some advices how to spend my money wise 🙂

Operating system used: Windows 10 pro

[SenecaDesignLLC]

You can't really have to much ram, but ram speed would be better for performance than quantity 

[SenecaDesignLLC]

For instance I have 16 gigs, I can't have a lot of projects open, but it's the fastest ram I could get.  And it's very apparent.  Now I only have 16 because of the small size of my laptop so I would say go with 32 or 64 but the fastest your system can handle 

[scottjm]

I’d say your graphics card and cpu are probably on the lighter side. Our office always used to but workstation graphics cards, but have moved to using gaming cards of late with no identifiable issues but a huge increase in performance for much less cost. I’d suggest an RTX 4060 or better with min 8gb, this will give you a significant increase in 3D performance for a few hundred bucks. 

A P6000 vs an RTX4060 are apparently benchmarked equivalent, but the P6000 is close to double the cost of the 4060, for to my knowledge, slightly better calculation accuracy. But from everything I’ve read lately the accuracy of gaming card these days is almost as good as workstation cards. 

Be aware in Archicad all 2D drawings are processed via the cpu while 3d views are naturally utilising the graphics card. 

Upgrading your CPU is obviously going to be a lot more involved probably needing a new motherboard, which will in turn move up up to DDR5 RAM. But if budget allows that would be worth doing too. 

Lastly looks like you SSD is SATA, moving to an NVMe SSD is going to increase hard drive performance significantly (but again this likely means new motherboard unless you want to buy a pci-e card for your currently board, but it’s probably not worth it)

[architekt659]

Thanks a lot for your answer, I didn't know that RAM drives with the same number can have variuos speeds... I've just read that motherboard and processor may restrict that speed, so I have to check the maximum value that is possible in my PC.

Do you think that my graphic card is sufficient for bigger projects or should it be changed too?

[architekt659]

Hey, thank you very much for comprehensive answer!

It seems that I have to rethink my plans of upgrading PC form scratch. Well, why not? 🙂 After all it will probably lead me to better and more effective solutions.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions 🙂

[MitchD]

32GB of RAM is plenty. i have 2 laptops with 32GB, and a desktop with 64GB; even with multiple and/or large files (100+ house developements) open i struggle to see over ~30GB ram used.

in my opinion a CPU upgrade would reap the best benefits. something with good single core performance as ArchiCAD is primarily a single-threaded application.

[Lingwisyer]

You could always open the Resource Manager to see how much RAM you are using under the Memory tab. Then you can see if RAM capacity is your bottleneck. No point spending double the amount to get 64gb if you only ever use 16 of your current 32gb. On the other hand, if you are using 24+GB then it would probably be a worthwhile upgrade. 128gb is a significant price jump, and can introduce some compatability limitations between your motherboard, CPU and RAM options.

ps. I recently upgraded the RAM in a collegues computer to 64gb since some of the site aerials we were receiving this year were taking 30+GB to open on my computer...

[architekt659]

Thanks for your advices.

I've checked the amount of RAM used by my Archicad with quite a big project file, and it goes to about 16GB and stays on this level for all the time of working... The only thing I am wondering is, if there isn't any software limitation in Archicad or somewhere in the system, that allows it to use for example "no more than 50% of RAM" for the security of the system. In this circumstances it looks ok on the graph, but in reality Archicad is chocking on the limits that cannot be exceeded. 

Have you heard about this kind of restrictions?

[Lingwisyer]

There is no Windows settings for that, but there is a setting in AC under:

Options => Work Environment => Advanced Redraw Options => Memory Usage

Ling.