BIM Coordinator Program (INT) April 22, 2024
Find the next step in your career as a Graphisoft Certified BIM Coordinator!
Installation & update
About program installation and update, hardware, operating systems, setup, etc.

Appropriate GPU

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hello everyone,

I wanted to ask your advice regarding graphic cards.

I have recently graduate my Masters in Architecture and I want to buy a good laptop that will serve my needs. I am considering to buy a Dell Precision M6800.

My main concern is what graphics card to choose. I am looking to buy the laptop from Greece, so my choices are a little limited. I have found a M6800 model with the below specs:

-i7 4800MQ, 2,7GHz
-32 GB RAM
-AMD FirePro M6100 (2GB)
-480 GB SSD, 1 TB 5400 RPM HDD
-Win 7 64bit

I will be using ArchiCAD ( 16-18 ), Artlantis, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Revit 2014, AutoCAD 2011 2D and maybe in the future 3DS Max and Rhino.

I know that the specs are quite good. I could do my job even with 16GB RAM and half of the SSD Hard Disk.

My concern is for the graphics card. Do you think is better going with the AMD M6100 or with an NVIDIA Quadro K2100M or K1100M (2GB). I have read a lots of posts until know and all of them point at choosing the NVIDIA ones.

What is your opinion? Has anyone tried with the same or similar graphic cards to manipulate complex 3D models in ArchiCAD? What about renderings? How do you think they are going to perform in ArchiCAD 16 and in v18 with the new render engine (C4D)? Have you used any of them for other software? What is your opinion regarding NVIDIA Quadro vs NVIDIA Geforce for CAD and visualization software? What about NVIDIA vs AMD for the same purposes?

Any comments will be more than welcome. Thank you in advance for your help.

Panos
1 REPLY 1
shtarkel
Participant
Hello, It will be better for you to choose Nvidia, as they have less driver issues than AMD and you can see performance on this page - http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/video-cards/recommended-video-cards-for-archicad-18/

The CPU is used for rendering the final image with lightworks or the new one Cinema render. The GPU is only used in the 3D window, so buy one with more VRAM.

Cheers!
Learn and get certified!