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

New iMac

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi:

The new iMacs finally came out and while a not a huge upgrade it's
time to get a new one.

I plan to get the 27"5k with:

-4.0ghz i7 +$250.00
-Add my own memory ?
-AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4gig video +$250.00

-3tb Fusion +$100.00
OR 512 GB SSD +$200.00

The 1TB SSD is too expensive for me: +700.00

For how ArchiCad works, I really don't know if the Fusion drive is ok, or is the 512 SSD that much better. If I go with the 512GB SSD I would need an external drive which is ok I guess, but since I take it client meetings a lot it would be one more thing to fuss with.

I do mostly custom residential and small commercial. And how much ram to I really need.

thanks!

Don
20 REPLIES 20
Anonymous
Not applicable
shtarkel wrote:
Go with SSD and 24 GB RAM You will see the difference and it will serve you well the next 5 years
thanks!
Da3dalus
Enthusiast
We're looking into that as well. Most of our office is 2010-2014 iMacs. However, in the last year, most of the Architects have wanted Macbook Pro's. The major drawback there is that Apple has soldered the RAM, and limited these great laptops to 16 GB (same thing with Mac Mini, plus crippled dual-core CPUs). It's ok for now, but I fear needing more in a year or two.

It seems like they are doing this to push people into getting the coffee can Mac Pro, which has seen lukewarm sales. Even though they can upgrade RAM to 128MB, everything else is pretty fixed, and there's no room for storage, more video, etc. Plus, they're expen$$$ive! In general, I think the iMac is a better value.

And don't get me started on using a Mac as a server... none of them fit the bill, and we're starting to put in Windows PCs for BIM Servers!
Chuck Kottka
Orcutt Winslow
Phoenix, Arizona, USA

ArchiCAD 25 (since 4.5)
Macbook Pro 15" Touchbar OSX 10.15 Core i7 2.9GHz/16GB RAM/Radeon Pro560 4GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi:

Well I finally got my new 27"iMac Retina 5k, i7 4 ghz, AMD Radeon R9 M395X
512 SSD and 24 gm ram set up and I have to say its slower than I expected.

To a launch a file on my old 27" iMac 2.93, ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 8 gb of ram it takes about 1 min, but the same file on the new iMac takes about 1 min 40 sec. The file is along with AC 18 is installed on both machines.

Worse when I edit things in plan on the new machine, things seem sort of "sticky" that is there very slight delay from I move to an edge of a slab to when it shows in its new position. On the old machine the edit seems to
appear instantaneously. The 3d model appears much faster on the new machine.

Just some first observations, but I would really like to know if anyone has any ideas why the new iMac seems to function slower (in an irritating way) than the old iMac.

Any suggestions? Adjustments?

thanks,

Don
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi:

Forgot to mention one important thing, the new iMac is El Capitan (10.11.2) and the old is Mountain Lion (10.8.5)!

thanks,

Don
shtarkel
Participant
It could be from the OS version and ArchiCAD version, try installing archiCAD 19 if yo have the license for it. It is much faster than the previous version.
It CAN'T be from your hardware.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks for the reply!

I have been waiting to move to AC19, but for the moment I'm still on 18.
Hoping someone else has some ideas.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi:

Anyone have any other thoughts on why AC18 would be so slow my new
iMac? See above for the specs,

thanks!
Erich
Contributor
Don,

I recall seeing something about turning the hardware acceleration off to improve 2D draw times with certain machine configurations. You might try that to see if it helps.
Erich

AC 19 6006 & AC 20
Mac OS 10.11.5
15" Retina MacBook Pro 2.6
27" iMac Retina 5K
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
Going from 2,5k (I'm assuming the old iMac had a 2560x1440 pix screen) to the 5k is possibly the culprit: to rasterise the vectors of the model requires a lot more calculation on such a high resolution, I suspect.

Try playing with the 2d antialiasing and 2d hardware acceleration settings. The model display in 2D navigation also has quite the influence on the speed.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks for the replies and they did help. I searched for Archicad problems with iMac 5ks (probably what I should have done first) and found that Graphisoft has specific recommendations for AC18 and AC19.

I have AC 9 and will be shifting to that soon, so hopefully things will be better than going to a lower resolution on AC18.

Thanks again