System Requirments (Advice Needed)

[Anonymous]

Hi

Hope someone can give me a bit of advice here.

I'm a programmer and run my own IT business. I've recently been contacted by a potential client who wants to use ArchiCad.
The origonal request was to clear an old machine of virus'/malware and install a copy of XP that came with a lap top.
I have advised them that the machine is too old to be capeable of running the program effienctly and WGA will probably close the machine down at some time in the near future.

I need to specify a new machine for him and hope that someone can give me some feedback as to whether the following spec will cause any problems.

AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800+ processor
4Ghz DDRII 667 MHz ( PC2-5300 ) memory
Windows XP Pro x64

The mainboard will be selected once I have determined what graphic card will work best, can anyone point me in right direction on this as he doesn't have an open budget and will need to spend the money wisely as opposed to buying the fastest and probably most expensive.

I use x64 myself so can support any OS problems he may have

mikew

[Anonymous]

My stats below. The system seems quite quick. The graphics card has to be refreshed after generating however it is quick in 3D OpenGL. 2GB of RAM is essential. The faster and more capacity the better.
HTH

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply Graeme

It seems as if RAM is the crucial issue here.
I think I'll recommend the 4Gb of DDRII and x64 will save me having to set a 3gb switch

mikew

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Greetings

Can Mike - or anyone else - illuminate me as to what is meant by a 3Gb switch.

This thread caught my eye as it seems to me that the 2Gb address limit was overcome in the last build of ArchiCAD 9 and presumably in AC10.

I can't find the thread from earlier this year that described one firm's in-house trial with RAM and concluded that 3Gb did make enough of a performace difference to justify upgrading all their machines.

[Anonymous]

Aaron

Just picked this up but am about to go out.
I'll give you a link that will tell you how to set a switch to allow XP to see more than 2GB a bit later on this afternoon.

It's 10:40 am GMT here

Regards

mikew

[Anonymous]

Aaron

The following link should give you some info on the 3Gb switch

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

Don't be concerned that the article mentions NT
Windows 2000 and Windows XP are marketing terms
From memory, 2000 is NT5.0 and XP is NT5.1

The amount of memory that a user has access to is not controlled by the application but by the operating system

If you need to bump your RAM to an amount considerally greater than 2GB then it may be worthwhile looking at Windows XP Pro x64
This is a 64 bit operating system and can support 128Gb of RAM
I've been using it for at least 7/8 months now and have found it to be the most stable Microsoft operating system I have ever used
It's based on the Server 2003 code, but comes at a cost
Drivers, although now getting more available, were in short supply when I first installed it [x64]

The following link is to a white paper written by a Microsoft MVP and explains why x64 may not be the best solution for everyone

http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/8/6/B868C664-13FC-4F91-9651-5B6D4F1A2F60/Is_Windows_XP_Prof...

However, a general rule of thumb is that if all you want to do is use office apps and web surfing then use 32 bit Windows but if your requirements are more specialist then it worth putting up with the disadvantages

But all is not doom and gloom, if you need both 32 and 64 bit operating systems (if 64 bit drivers are not available for some of your hardware for instance) then you could always dual boot XP Pro alongside XP Pro x64

If the links wrap and don't work then paste them into notepad, turn word wrap off and then paste them into your browser

Hope this helps

mikew

[Thomas Holm]

mikew wrote:
But all is not doom and gloom, if you need both 32 and 64 bit operating systems (if 64 bit drivers are not available for some of your hardware for instance) then you could always dual boot XP Pro alongside XP Pro x64

Or buy a Mac, use 64-bit OSX and 32-bit Windows at the same time transparently!
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/appleent/article.php/3647951