Experiences on high core-count CPU - noticeable difference?

[Anonymous]

Looking into buying a new Mac Pro and according to ArchiCad's own documentation it should utilize additional cpu cores very well, but I am wondering if the performance scales linearly. What are your experiences on this?

I understand that it is dependent on what task you are doing, and for stuff like rendering then it is the actual renderer that has to have the support, so what I am wondering about is the performance for usual tasks like drawing, zooming in/out, rotating your view, etc. Does going from quad core to say 12 cores make much of a difference?

[Laszlo Nagy]

I think this article may answer some of the questions you posed:

http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/setup/software-technologies/multiprocessing-and-archicad/

It is a bit older article but still has some value I believe. But for what it is worth, Graphisoft now recommend CPUs with 4 or more cores, because it will use all those cores:

http://www.graphisoft.com/support/system_requirements/AC18/index.html

There are now many areas, like generating Priority Based Connections (PBC), or generating Section/Elevation or Layout data, which benefit from more cores. Also, CineRender, obviously, uses all the CPU cores it can.
Also, AC17 introduced background processing:

http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/archicad-versions/archicad-17/

ArchiCAD uses background operations to calculate the precise geometry of construction elements which intersect or collide with each other. Background operations means that you can, for example, work on a floor plan view while the application calculates the geometry of elements not visible in the current view – without interrupting your workflow. Benefit: when you switch to another model view, the result will be displayed much faster.

So it seems more cores do improve performance, but I am not aware of exact figure of just by how much.

[Anonymous]

Thanks - good info