Workstations

[Anonymous]

Wow, what a great forum, i just realised this was here.

I have set up standards in our office for the last 5 years, 15 users and am now taking the time to seriously implement a very thorough template and procedural system so will let you know how it goes and hopefully get some advice.

My first port of call is the workstation configuration which could possible be posted in the hardware forum but i think cad managers generally have a big input into the configuration also. Has anyone spec'd new systems lately? Below is the spec i am looking at, any comments are welcome? Some of the spec has come about from peoples comments in the forums, particularly the video card.

Cpu : Pentium D Dual Core 930 3000 Mhz, 2 x 2048k l2 on-die cache,
800 Mhz fsb, socket 775, EM64T & XD (Intel)
Motherboard : Intel D945P chipset, 1s / 1p / 6usb2 port with
4 x SATA, udma & fdd controller on board (PSNLK Intel)
Memory : 2 x 1024m ddr2-533 PC-4200 (Kingston)
Video card : nVidia 512m 7900GTX PCIe video card
Monitor/s : 2 x 17" LG

Are people going with single cpu's or dual core?

[Gerald Hoffman]

Hi Mark,

I am not a CAD Manager in the same sense. I am only in charge of myself. I am also looking a a new hardware purchase and am definitely going with dual core. There are so many times when I am generating a section, elevation or doing a rendering when I just have to wait for my machine when I could be taking care of emails or something else so I think this is a no brainer. I would also recommend 4 GB ram. I have heard the new version of windows is going to take more that 500 MB just to load up.

Also the card you picked is a gaming card and would be probalby a good card. I would also look at Nvidias Quadro FX series which are tailored more for CAD work and might have better OpenGL implemtation. I also think your monitors are too small. You could use 1 17" if you want to cut down on cost for menus etc. but I think you want at least 20" for the main drawing window. I am looking at the 24" Dell monitor and I have a 20" now which is a bit small for me although I only have 1.

My 2 cents worth. Cheers,

[Chadwick]

I dont know how much you are willing to spend, but NVIDIA's Quadro series graphics cards are really good for CAD work and other modeling programs. I would try to stay away from gaming cards for cad work as I've been told they handle memory and display in different ways. Also, if you're looking into doing some really heavy lifting with your machine - BOXX makes some very nice workstations custom to the software you are using. www.boxxtech.com

Just a suggestion - hope it helps.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the feeback. I think the current price of this spec is probably as high as i want to go so any improved components would mean reducing it somewhere else.

CPU. Looks like i will stick with Dual core. So lock it in!

Screens. I currently have 2 x 17"LCD screens on my workstation, it would be nice to have 19, 20, or 21... but overall i think this is a nice economical setup.

Memory. Interested Gerald you are going for 4gb RAM. Have you monitored how often it is really used. I would be interested to know.

Video Card. This is a hard one as there are so many choices. After your comments Chadwick i researched further workstation cards. The Nvidia Quadro FX 1400 is comparably in price to the card i listed before, nVidia 512m 7900GTX and has got some good reviews. I dont want to spend more $$ than this. Although Nvidia state is is tailor made for CAD stations i cant quite see how it is better, not that i know that much about the definitions of the different specs anyway but... just some comparisons below of what i think are the main ones

7900GTX
Memory 512mb
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 51.2 GB/sec
Fill rate 15.6 billion/sec

Quadro FX 1400
Memory 128mb
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 27.2 GB/sec
Fill rate 2.8 billion/sec

I guess i am missing some of the more important specs?

[Chadwick]

An interesting point about the memory is that right now ArchiCAD can only utilize 2GB of memory max on windows XP. On a mac, it can go up to 4GB. I dont know if this is going to change for future releases of ArchiCAD or not but its definatley something to consider when you would be dropping an addition 300.00 or so for the 4GB or RAM.

[Anonymous]

I realize that most of the discussion is about windows boxes, but after the second switch you might consider Macs ( depending on timing) as the possibility for dual boot systems is somewhere in the short future. In our office system - almost all MACs - the work flow is somewhat simpler. Since there doesn't seem to be any really great speed improvements over the last couple of years, the systems on both sides are competitive. If Vista is delayed as it seems to be, there is a reason to explore all possibilities. Especially in the total cost of ownership and the ongoing cost of maintainance.

We are currently using dual G5's with a lot of memory and a very fast network that is productive. The necessity for big video cards seems to be less of a mandatory requirement than the amount of system memory, unless you are rendering almost every day. For a machine to do that -- load it to the hilt - for the "normal" machine it is less critical. I guess that there are so many other parts of the productivity story that individual machine configuration seems less important.

Lew Bishop
AC 9 2219 US
OS X 10.6
Dual 2..0/ 4GB/ NVidia 6800 Gigabit ethernet

[Anonymous]

When choosing display cards be sure to check out the compatibility database here

Display glitches and anomalies are much bigger productivity issues than OpenGL performance. I have a client who has one computer that loses the rubber band feedback after a while. We have yet to sort it out but it looks like a driver update may fix it since newer machines with the same card aren't having the problem.

[Anonymous]

Mark wrote:
Memory. Interested Gerald you are going for 4gb RAM. Have you monitored how often it is really used. I would be interested to know.

I did a memory test a few weeks ago and the results are in the attached justification letter I sent to my bosses. You will notice that when I did an update in PlotMaker, my total RAM use went to 2.5Gig. If I had had Word, Outlook, and FireFox running, that number would have been even higher. Get as much RAM as you can -- my company is upgrading to 3Gig.

[Gerald Hoffman]

Hi Jay,

My thinking for 4 GB of RAM is that with a Dual Core processor each would only have access to 2 GB which is I believe a minimum requirement for me. I don't know if the RAM is split this way between the 2 processor cores but this is my strong suspicion.

I only have 1 GB now and am constantly hitting the no fly zone. I would think it would depend on the size of projects that you would typically be working on. Mine are fairly elaborate 7+ story condominiums with lots of railings and trim detailing. Whenever I do a rendering or even Elevations and Sections sometimes, I hit the ceiling and the computer goes into the swap file on the hard drive. It of course slows down to a relative crawl. I am thinking with a dual core processor I can do some multitasking while this is going on because I really hate (perhaps to strong a word) waiting for the computer.

Another thing I suspect is that ArchiCAD does not release the RAM very well after operations. I have noticed that if you are working using the 3D window to check design fairly often, that the program shows a building up of allocated RAM. I don't know if this is avoidable or not. Extra RAM also makes having more that one instance of ArchiCAD open along with Plotmaker more doable.

This of course is what keeps us all on the upgrade treadmill. N'est-il pas ?

[Anonymous]

Jay wrote:
I did a memory test a few weeks ago and the results are in the attached justification letter I sent to my bosses. ....

Thanks Jay, thats a nice little letter you put together there. I will have to investigate this further. Looks like 2 gig is a definate minimum and will look at putting 3 or 4 gig in aswell.

Out of interest were the 2 machines the same configuration, except for the ram?