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?

[Anonymous]

Any idea what the equivalent none workstation style graphics card is i.e Nvida 7950GT etc. etc.

Also can you set the processor to use its 2 cores independently i.e. run Archicad and plotmaker on one processor and the other core runs another copy. also is your memory dual channel i.e. if you have 4gb on 2 channels can you set a channel up to work with each core of your processor? I am starting to dabble in the dual core market with my friends computer I have built it will be interesting to see if you can do this with archicad. Also what version of windows are you using on it still XP latest update or the dual channel version windows 64 (though I know that still ahs alot of hardware compatability problems).

If you do run each core separately is it easy to set up? in the next few years I am suggesting we swap to PC's and I will be looking at building them as it will be cheaper in the long run.

[Anonymous]

Organicsabre wrote:
Any idea what the equivalent none workstation style graphics card is i.e Nvida 7950GT etc. etc.

Also can you set the processor to use ....

Not sure if i could suggest a equavilent desktop (non workstation) card as they are different? If going by price, yes was also looking at the nVidia 512m 7900GTX PCIe video card. I didnt end up trialing this card as it is really for gaming, optimised for openGL where as this particular workstation card is optimised for 2D and 3D CAD. But is also very good in OpenGL.

The dual cores run by themselves and smartly assing processors as required. If 3 programs, yes, 2 will go on one, 1 on the other. But you cannot say which programs go where. I assume the 2 programs using the most power wouild be separated and then work out a hierarchy from there.

Ram gets shared as required between the programs.

[Anonymous]

For what its worth, I asked GS developers for advice when I bought our last set of computers in December. Regarding the graphics card I was told that the workstation cards are essentially not worth the money for AC.

ArchiCAD does not take advantage of the additional instruction sets that the workstation cards offer. Additionally, the high end gaming cards use the same processors so they are much more cost effective and you will not see a significant (if any) performance gain with the workstation cards. On the other hand I have also been told that the ws card drivers are usually more stable than the gaming cards...then on the other hand the gaming card drivers are used by more people so they are updated more often.

I think David at Kirksey also told me that they had some driver problems with the ws cards they had a while ago.

Ultimately after all of that I decided to go with the Nvidia 7800 GTX and it has been great so far in 9 & 10.

[Anonymous]

Eric wrote:
For what its worth, I asked GS developers for advice when I bought our last set of computers in December. Regarding the graphics card I was told that the workstation cards are essentially not worth the money for AC.
...

This is disspointing to hear. Workstation cards have been around for some time so i would have thought ArchiCAD, being a professional CAD package, would be written with these in mind.

I hope this is looked at by graphisoft in future versions.

[Anonymous]

Mark wrote:
This is disspointing to hear.

Well, not knowing what those extra opengl instruction sets actually do you could also say that its good to hear that you can save $500+ on the video card and still get the same performance.

[Anonymous]

Eric wrote:
...you can save $500+ on the video card and still get the same performance.

Eric - You couiild say that, but it is like saying if ArchiCAD delete half of its features we could buy the software at half the price! What i am getting at is other high end CAD programs are able to take advantage of advanced cad specific hardware that ArchiCAD is not yet able to handle. I would rate ArchiCAD as a high end cad package. At AU$8000 a pop (or whatever it is these days), i would hope so.

This is a dissapointment.

Although admittedly (as you point out) we do not know what the additional opengl routines are, but seeing as there is a constant demand for this type of hardware in the cad industry (not just high end graphic illustrators but engineering professions) i think it safe to assume any cad program would benifit from their additional features.

[Anonymous]

Mark wrote:
What i am getting at is other high end CAD programs are able to take advantage of advanced cad specific hardware that ArchiCAD is not yet able to handle.... i think it safe to assume any cad program would benefit from their additional features.

What specific benefits and advantages?

I have seen over the years people spend lots of money on high end graphics cards only to see their capabilities exceeded within a year or so by much less expensive hardware. At hundreds of dollars more per unit the difference has to be quite compelling to justify the expense.

Since the biggest bottleneck (aside from the printers) in ArchiCAD production is the CPU, I would prefer to see more work go to improving performance in that area (such as multi-processor support).

Remember that efforts to optimize for rarified graphics cards is likely to be time lost when those cards are superseded by the next generation of high end (or even middle range) cards. GS has limited development resources and it is essential that they direct them toward the areas that provide the most benefit for the greatest number of users.

[Anonymous]

Whoops, didn't mean to start a firey debate, i just did not like the comment, "you can save $500+ on the video card and still get the same performance".

Matthew,

I am no video card guru so, although i could give it a good shot, i will not try to debate between what the technical differences between a desktop or workstation card are. However the following link is a very nice explanation on the differences between nVidia desktop and workstation card. I hope this answers your question.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_geforce.html

Note the topic on page 19, application optimization and the list of programs that use this. This topic also deals with 2D optimization that is often forgotten about with everyone concetrating on the 3D optimization. I would not turn down an increase of 200% in 2d performance if i have the choice!

Furthermore, my comments about supporting workstation video card were not made in examining what the overall development capabilities graphisoft have. I also agree seeing graphisoft look at dual-core systems is a higher priority than graphics card.

However, looking at the video card issue alone, i still stand by my comments, and expand further, it is disappointed that programs like AutoCAD (which i like to refer to as 'flatcad', ), and others, have implemented workstation card features into their applications for some time. With ArchiCAD being equally 2d and 3d orientated, i would think this would be a high priority. I do not see these cards as 'rare cards'. Video card technology changes very quickly being desktop OR workstation cards.

[Anonymous]

I am hardly fired up over the subject and neither am I any GPU guru. I just don't agree that there is much to be gained in real world ArchiCAD productivity for the extra cost (both of GS time and in our purchase of the cards).

I'm sure there are advantages to the workstation cards that justify the expense to certain users. I am only saying that in my experience there is little if anything to be gained from them in ArchiCAD.

In 3D the sole bottleneck (assuming high end consumer level card with good OpenGL performance) are the CPU and bus speed. Likewise in 2D, the main slowdown that I have experienced is from parametric symbols (when there are lots of them doing complex things) which again is CPU dependent.

The 200% increase in AutoCAD drawing speed is a very suspect figure. For one they say "as much as", thus this is the maximum they could measure under ideal circumstances (despite its technical moniker this is after all a marketing document). And I think we can rest assured that they are measuring raw computer performance (say a bulk copy of two million lines or such) and not actual user productivity.

I know I don't spend that much time waiting for ArchiCAD to do things, and certainly not panning and zooming which are pretty much instantaneous. Most of my time working in ArchiCAD is spent sorting out design issues (ie thinking) and creating, adjusting and fitting the model elements from which most of the drawings are generated automatically (again CPU dependent).

I may well be exceeding my knowledge of the subject here and would be happy to learn that there is a wonderland of productivity enhancements to be had from workstation class graphics cards. I would just need to see clear examples of just how ArchiCAD productivity could be improved before I would press GS to spend precious development efforts specifically for them.

[Anonymous]

My question is that is one of these "workstation" cards any better than say 2 top of the range XFX Geforce 7950 GX2 XT 1024MB Dual GPU "HDCP" PCI-E Dual DVI (520MHz Core Clock, 1300MHz Memory Clock) graphics cards for the half the price of a workstation card. This card end of this year will also be SLI compatable allowing for the price of one workstation card to have two of these "gaming" cards, which will no doubt beat the single workstation card for performance especially as each of these cards have 2x GPU's on them. (insane performance I know)

The gaming graphics engines are getting so advanced and still use open gl. Archicad is still using open gl for rendering etc. so is it worth spending thousands of $ on a workstation card when you can these days get the same amount of performance using gaming cards for much less, thats my question.