You must buy a Mac to be certain that ArchiCad works?

[Anonymous]

We currently have a mixed environment with Windows and MAC computers, but it's very difficult to understand what Graphisoft supports and does not support on Windows. On Mac this is what is stated by Graphisoft :

This means a big difference between the Mac and the PC platforms, where are hundreds of different video cards available. Drivers from different manufacturers, that are mostly optimized for games and DirectX, not for CAD and OpenGL. You can be confident that all of the current Macs come with a video card that is compatible with ArchiCAD.

On Windows, the story is totally different.

First : This makes it practically impossible for us to test laptop video cards.

Then : For reasons detailed above, we can not recommend any specific card and driver combination for laptops. However, there are professional video cards available for high-end laptops, such as the Nvidia Quadro, which are just as good as their desktop counterparts.

There are very few laptops in the market with FireGL and Quadro cards, and the bulk shipment of theese has always consisted of HP's XXXXw (now Zbook) series, Dell's precision M series and Lenovo's W series of laptops. Is it not possible to recommend any of theese laptops for ArchiCad customers?

One would think that Graphisoft worked with Nvidia and some hardware suppliers to provide a stable hardware plattform for Windows based users that require notebooks. In Norway Graphisoft recommends to buy the computer from a very local supplier of chineese OEM laptops. There is no business next-day support avavible on theese machines, and very little is known as to why theese specific laptops are recommended.

We have "ignored" the recommendation from Graphisoft Norway and proceeded to buy laptops from large vendors that offer business-grade support. It is sad that Graphisoft is not capable of supporting hardware similarly to what Autodesk offers for Revit. With Revit you even get an optimized driver to pull the maximum performance out of the graphicscard, if you have a Quadro based card.

Wonder what Nvidia and AMD think of Graphisoft's behaviour in this scene, as Graphisoft in fact is undermining the value of Quadro and FireGL series in laptops.

[Laszlo Nagy]

What a company supports and what it recommends are two completely different things.

This page talks about system requirements:
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/system_requirements/archicad17.html

There is says:

Video Card:
OpenGL 2.0 compatible graphics card with on-board memory of 256 MB is required, 512 MB or more is recommended to fully exploit hardware acceleration capabilities.

So if your graphics card is OpenGL 2.0-compatible, AC support it.

The article on Helpcenter you quoted from is about graphics cards recommended for ArchiCAD.
It talks about gaming cards vs. professional cards. You can also see various test results for various cards, both gaming and professional.
When looking for a card on Windows, I think it is not justified to expect Graphisoft to test every single card from every single manufacturer with every single driver update so they can tell you whether the card will work fine or not with ArchiCAD. This would just be a neverending activity for them. That is why they provided the test files so you can test them with your specific card.
For the Mac they stated why it is a much simpler affair: Apple has great control over the quality of the drivers so it is a simple deal. The Windows platform is a Wild West in this regard.

But generally I don't see much problems with graphics cards. I am reading the forum every day for the last 10 years and there are not many problems with graphics cards in ArchiCAD. Most of the time if there are, a driver update fixes it. So it seems pretty stable for me. That does not mean that some people do not sometimes get a combination of hardware and drivers that just doesn't work, I guess that happens too. But in the overwhelming majority of cases it usually just works on Windows too.

I also don't get why you state you are not able to test laptop video cards.
The Video Card recommendation page contains test files you can download and use to test those cards.

[Anonymous]

It's just odd that Graphisoft can verify 100% that ArchiCad works on a Mac, but will not certify any Windows computer, not even the 8 different CAD oriented notebook workstations avavible in the market. And then they recommend a chineese OEM computer instead.

I'd like to feel as certain with ArchiCad as I am with Revit, where Autodesk releases a driver config file for Quadro optimizations. Why ArchiCad doesn't nobody knows...

I just Think they should state: certified to work with mobile Quadro and firegl Cards... and pherhaps offer a driver Too...

[Laszlo Nagy]

I am seeing many such results on that video cards page. They also state whether the given card/driver combination has passed or there was an error:

http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/video-cards/recommended-video-cards-for-archicad-17/#Nvid...