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Installation & update
About program installation and update, hardware, operating systems, setup, etc.

ArchiCad 17 Performance

Anonymous
Not applicable
We've been 'playing' with AC17 for about a week now and the general consensus in the office is that it is more 'clunky' and 'sticky' to work with than AC16. I have migrated a large project from AC16 to 17 and it is noticeably slower and jerky, especially when navigating in 3D.

I thought AC17 was suppose to have performance enhancements?!
14 REPLIES 14
drh64
Contributor
I'm working on a large project now and it is a major improvement over speed from 16. Perhaps you should look at your hardware compatibility/upgrades...
Anonymous
Not applicable
Given www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad_17/performance/#background_processing these claims, I wasn't expecting 17 to be slower than 16!
Anonymous
Not applicable
csparchitects wrote:
I wasn't expecting 17 to be slower than 16!
The common experience seems to be that 17 is faster. It seems snappier to me but I haven't opened one of my monster projects yet.

A Xeon with 12GB and a Quaddro should be good enough. Hard to say what the problem is.
Mjules
Mentor
I start migrating a project from AC 16 to 17. My iMac gives me a lot of issues and it seems that I have to change my video card, if possible, so that the computer can run properly ArchiCAD 17. Please advise !
Martin Luther Jules
AC 10-27 (Full)
Asus | 64 GB RAM | Windows 11
drh64
Contributor
Martin-
Have you checked to see if there is an update on the video card? You seem to be running a newer iMac so I am surprised if you have problems. Mine is only two months old and it is working great. What other symptoms are you having???
Dan
jbArch
Newcomer
I jumped from 15 to 17 and it seems snappier, but 3D with OpenGL is useless... I suspect my older videocard is the issue, but it has served me well in past versions, and appears to met the graphisoft requirements.
AC 21 (8002) & 22 USA
Mac OSX 10.14.5 on MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Intel i7, 16GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB VRAM, 500GB SSD
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
jbArch wrote:
MacBook Pro C2D 2.33 GHz, 3GB RAM, ATI RadeonX1600
The notebook doesn't meet the minimum requirements of 4 GB RAM:
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/system_requirements/index.html

I'm actually pretty impressed that a laptop from 2006 can run 17 at all.
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
jbArch
Newcomer
Fair enough Karl, but do you really think the RAM is the limitation here?

My understanding is that more RAM simply allows one to run more copies of AC and other apps simultaneously, and most of the time AC won't need 4GB.

Just trying to look at a simple house in OpenGL 3D, nothing too fancy here.
AC 21 (8002) & 22 USA
Mac OSX 10.14.5 on MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Intel i7, 16GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB VRAM, 500GB SSD
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Can't really say that it's the RAM - just mentioned it since for whatever reason, they have 4 GB as the minimum requirement vs your 3 GB. Launching a modest project in 17 doesn't consume much memory...

I checked the Apple database out of curiousity - as each version of OS X includes graphics driver updates (and is the only way to get them)... but 10.6.8 supports the same version of OpenGL as current releases, so I assume the 3D performance issue is the really minimal specs (by today's standards) of the X1600.

I wonder if disabling some of the 3D enhancements would help any? E.g., under Work Environment > Advanced Redraw Options, perhaps disable "3D OpenGL Antialiasing"?

Perhaps changing your 3D window settings to disable, or decrease, some of the OpenGL performance settings?
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
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