Best PC Today for Mid-Size Firm - Processor, Video Card, Ram

[Anonymous]

Starting with 4 new PCs right away, we need to replace about 60 workstations in May. I would appreciate recommendations for optimum configuration: processor speed, video card size, how much ram. (Macs have been eliminated as an option so please, no further comments.)

I know virtually nothing about PCs, but our IT Manager would like to know what's best for ArchiCAD 10/11; maybe one with enough ram for Cinema 4D & Maxwell Render.

What's hot on the market? What are you buying? What's coming out in the next few months?

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

Ok, MacPro Quad. A project without elevations? Hmmm... Elevations, no fills or shadows only take about 10 minutes (with simplified rails since it is way zoomed out).

Thanks for the reminder about the anti-aliasing & sun object, because I do render quick views.

Mabe

[Andy Thomson]

Mabe wrote:
A project without elevations? Hmmm...

I only say this because generating elevations on tower projects has been painfully slow, and something I have complained about for 3 years now. AC needs to 'think' more like a rendering engine when it comes to shadows and translucency, and leave the vector stuff for building geometry and fills.

I'm sure they'll have it all figured out by ArchiCAD 24.

[Anonymous]

Hello friends.

I use sketchup 6 with the maxwell plugin, but my computer (g5 imac) feels very outdated, and I am about to upgrade.

I am considering the macpro dual quad core, but I hear maxwell/sketchup max out at 4 gigs ram, and anything I get on top of that will not speed up my renders. I don't know if there is truth to this rumor.

What are the key elements to speeding rendering time? Ram, Ghz, video card?

I appreciate the advice,
M

[Anonymous]

Well perhaps this would be better addressed in a new thread, as the original was over a year old, and gear has changed.
...HOwever...

-Rendering time benefits most from heavy number crunching cpu's (after making sure you have enough memory for the app- check the specifi ones to make sure! Some utilize ALL you give it, and some max out at 2gb!)- ...So a dual Q-core mac-intel will probably crush anything else. But we'retalking about (using the above apps and more) the difference between a AMD s939 2.4ghz/2gb ddr-400 @ 5 minutes to render a scene, and the above monster dual-4xcore mac-intel can do it in 3 minutes. BUT at 6-10x the cost!. So really... how much do you do rendering?

The quad+ cores come into play when you do heavy multi-tasking and assign cores to profiles/apps (check out "task-assign" for windows users). Then you can run 2+ cores in the background while you continue to work in multiple apps, without noticing anything but the heat coming out of the case.




For those who are still wondering and have questions on gear- there is some ...hmmm....bad info on this page, or rather, mis-informed about what kind of gear and where to spend money....



1)VIDEO? GPUs...
.. ALL the cad software out there runs just FINE on high-res (*WUXGA+) monitors with anything over a 6800gt/7800gt Nvidia (but not a 8500-8600; 8800 or better; the 2nd digit is the core/ram speed!)... A good Geforce 7900gt will run you around $50 USD nowadays. You'll see Ab-SO-LUTE-ly NO difference between that and a $2k video card, unless you're running HUGE 24"+ screens in tandem at over 1920x1200; then you'll notice a little bit smoother on the super expensive video cards. ATI can do it with the 2600's and up. Even my old 9700pro AGP looks wonderful!!!!

2) Motherboards???
And for SLI/PCIe.... chipsets... a dual 8x bandwidth PCIe slot, for quad monitors is more than adequate. So p35 chipsets and p965 chipsets are totally ok, as long as you're not using ATI/crossfire and get stuck with the x16+x4 choke.. but even then, if you use the 2nd video card for the non-main monitors, and stick with the main graphics card for the 3d windows, and DON'T use the cards in crossfire, you won't ever feel the limitations of those chipsets! x38/x48, p35/p45, 650i/680i (runs hot), 750i/780i/790i... all are just a matter of functions and periferals you can plug in or not... the difference between them, for non-overclockers, is around 10% at best in the real world, especially for CAD users.

3) CPU's? (again)...
Those E6600 cpus rock. I like the E6700's myself, they OC better. But upgrade them for a Quad Q6600 (r the Qx6700 if you OC your gear). If you can afford the 45nm CPU's they're nice, but no change in performance except for about 30% faster in rendering at best. Really. 2-6x the cost for 10-30% improvement for people who don't usually spend more than 10% of their time rendering at best???? Nawwwwwwww! On Mac's? Macintel dual cores are just as good, maybe better than the non-mac's as the OS's are leaner and meaner. However, virtualization isn't up to par for 3d work yet...so it's a pros and cons game (least till next year, when VMware ought to have v7 ready... let's keep our fingers crossed).

4) RAM...???
2gb RAM is fine; as someone said, -unless you're multi-tasking a lot. Then 4gb helps a lot. There is NO DIFFERENCE in the real world performance between DDR-400 and DDR2-18000/2,000,000,000. Seriously. It's all hype and benchmarks. I OC and liquid cool my rigs (mineral oil baby!) and I've got top OC memory and my old OC ddr-400 cl2 is just as fast in real-world performance as the latest ddr2/ddr3-1600+.... though eventually that new memory helps for rendering because it has MORE bandwidth, and fast memory, and a lot of memory is the next best thing to a beast cpu. But right now, it does almost nothing and only eats at the wallet. Except we need the wider RAM for the newer quad capable chipsets and motherboards.

By the way you do not even NEED a GPU/video card to do rendering. A network rendering slave, even remote vs. network, can do it all and you can grab the files when you're done...this is how movie studios do it- racks of big cpu machines and a terminal with network shared drives and remote access from the workstations. NO video cards or IGP at best.


....

My advice for large firms who need a lot of stations, if your IT guys know or are into virtualization....

A) Get a firm license for VMware workstation ACE as well as AC, and run all your rigs as images using VMware's player for your 2d-CAD people (it doesn't do 3d for beans yet, as of version 6.5 beta they're working hard on it, but it won't probably happen until v7... it's still a bit too slow, and cheaper in employee cost to pick up a few cheap Nvidia cards and run your AC straight). Then you can use almost ANYTHING as a workstation, as long as it meets the AC requirements, sans 3d. So older AMD xp1900's with 2gb Ram and ati 9800 video cards or g4's will run just fine!!! For RENDERING, set up your network with a RENDERING QUAD-CORE or better machine...(spend the savings on a big linux beast dual xeon quads mac-intel or something, loaded with 8gb Ram or more.... assign a core for the network or as a server so it's being used when not rendering....)

....


Other than that.

We noticed NO difference between a system that was top-knotch 1st gen a year ago ($4k rig) and the same today, except in rendering times, for AC10-11-12. AC will even run on my 5 year old laptop without a snag.

Now if you're OCing or using Vray/Maxwell/C4D/3dsMax and Maya and all that organic 3d software and radiosity stuff, yeah, a big rendering rig with the latest chipset motherboards will rock. I'd check their forums or simply this: A decent video card (those quatro and ati monsters are for movie studios!!!) around $200 USD at MOST (2nd/3rd gen- and no you don't need a physics card or a special 5x the price CAD card for any of the above)....Spend the savings on as many cores as you can afford (One of those macs with the 8 cores would rock with bootcamp or VMware Fusion!)....and memory and a GOOD quiet power supply and nice monitors.

I'm in the process of ordering a Qx6700/8gb ram (heavy rendering and multi-tasking) and a p45 chipset motherboard (for the extra monitor support, though a p35 chipset motherboard would be more than enough). p965 chipsets and p35 chipsets still are top knotch and the new versions of EVERYTHING on the market right now only offer more options, often as the loss of OC ability or at best a gain of about 7-10% in performance sometimes, in very specific work (the rest of the time the same performance as last years gear). But we still use our old amd xp1900's and AGP card in the office and I ONLY NOTICE that they are slow when I roll around in explore mode in the 3d window (where I do a lot of design stuff)... but a simple upgrade to a faster GPU would solve that!

So if you can afford it- a core-beast macintel and virtualization via VMware Fusion or Bootcamp for windows
or
dual or quad core intel (no difference between 3 year old cpu's and todays hottest except in rendering times with NON-AC default rendering software) with 2-4gb ram and a decent 1-2 year old video card.

I've checked it out side by side on machines- no visual difference, no need for top computers unless you do rendering outside of AC.

.........and that's a hats off to Graphisoft.



-Now if we can just get those walls to follow the terrain without using SEO's and have the little roofs on them stay consistent in our custom profiled walls.....

[Anonymous]

WOW...
Thanks Jp
20yrs with computers, 3yr with AC and that was a mind full!
What a nice gift to Archicad users, and me especially.
I think you might want to ADDITIONALLY post this where it might get
seen by more. Like Hardware?
Bier

[Anonymous]

...
Yeah. Maybe I ought to repost. No time this week though.

I just tested out our big dual quad machine (8 cores/32gb ddr3).

With 32gb of ddr2 and 8 cores, I am able to run about 8+ VM machines (anymore and it's senseless due to lack of arms- LOL!) with AC10+ on them. I can have 8 projects open, and running through a LAN, but the bottleneck is the HD access- so multi-cores and Virtual machines need multi-HD's- so cheap small Raid-arrays (40gb@2x per VM machine?) are best.

The only other real issue outside decent video card performance based on monitor resolution (the bigger the res, the faster the video card needed!) is that Virtualization doesn't do 3d for beans really. The latest VMWare (6.5 beta something) on Debian/Mandriva/Ubuntu/OpenSUSE yields only a slight improvement. I know there is some game-based windows emulators (what is it called, "core?") that might be a faster way to run a Virtual machine inside linux and do it in parallel (install AC as a "game" for the 3d window peformance).....

So 3-4 year old machines, no problem with a video card upgrade and 2gb ram.

ddr-400 is just as good as ddr3-1600 (slightly slower in rendering, like maybe 1 minute vs. 47 seconds, but that is more because of the super fast CPU's!)
an AMD 64 x2 s939 or P4 2/3ghz is just as effective as a qx9750 or phenom, but the newer multi-core cpu's render about 20-30% faster (3 minutes vs. 4 kinda specs) and can run virtual instances of AC AND render in them, though the 3d windows in the VM's are totally useless currently).

Motherboards: you don't need the latest and greatest. Something decent, over 3 years old will work fine. NForce2 and up (NF2) and anything newer than 2004 ought to work just fine. Save the money for a nice MONITOR!!!!

On that note, just checked out Samsung's Syncmaster 225BW's and they are great for the price. Three or four 22" on good video cards is wonderful and saves a lot of papers all over the desks and tables; great for horizontal space-challenged offices!!!!

so in summary
I have an AMD xp1900 with an ATI 9700 and a second one with a Nvidia
FX5500, and 2 gb ram each. They look and run JUST AS NICE as my band new top of the line machine, though the newer machine renders about 30+% faster with AC12.