Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Does a better graphic card (i.e. external graphic card unit) speed up the Archicad software?

2raarchitecture
Booster

I am looking at the Sonnet Radeon RX 5500XT eGPU Breakaway Puck from B&h...

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Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin

Only those parts that rely on the graphics card:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Setup-License-articles/Recommended-Graphics-Cards-for-Archicad-2...

Unfortunately, that article currently does not contain performance information about eGPUs (it says it is coming...)

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Karl Ottenstein
Moderator

@2raarchitecture Everything I've read says that you can NOT use an eGPU with an M1 Mac - not supported.  So, any question of improvement is moot (assuming your signature accurately reflects the Mac that you're asking about).

 

One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB

Karl, and Lazlo, thank you! I am thinking that the reason the file is slow mostly relates to libraries. I can do work very swiftly with my set up otherwise. Sonnet shows this, but I have to confess my ignorance. I am not sure if it will work. I appreciate your feedback

 Screen Shot 2022-02-20 at 17.32.45.png

2RA Building Workshop
www.2rabldgworkshop.com

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz. 16.0 GB. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU.
ArchiCAD 25. 5002 USA Full
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin

I can not be of any further help in this, I have no Mac and no eGPU.

It would be best if you could try it out, maybe go to a place where they sell Macs and have them let you install Archicad on a M1 Mac with eGPU and see the performance for yourself.

Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27

You'll notice it does not say M1 Mac... as this device was built before the new Macs arrived.  You can Google and see that all reports say that the new M1 Macs are a closed system and no eGPU will work with them.  The Sonnet device will work with an Intel Mac.

One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB

M1 Macs cannot use eGPUs, Laszlo. 🙂

 

One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB

See, that's how much I don't know M1 Macs. 🙂

Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27

If an EGPU is not useable with M1, is there a way to boost its productivity. Witness alert, my Mac Mini is working awesome so far.

 

2RA Building Workshop
www.2rabldgworkshop.com

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz. 16.0 GB. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU.
ArchiCAD 25. 5002 USA Full