BIM Coordinator Program (INT) April 22, 2024

Find the next step in your career as a Graphisoft Certified BIM Coordinator!

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

CPU or GPU for rendering?

Anonymous
Not applicable
hello,
i'm in the search for new notebook up to price 700 eur, and i have a dilemma which one to buy.
so, I have few questions:
1st: is it more important to have more cpu cores or better gpu for faster rendering in archicad, artlantis, lumion etc.
2nd: some i7 cpu comes with only 2cores and others with 4 cores. is there significant difference?
3rd: how important is number of threads, because i saw AMD cpus with 4 cores and 4 threads, unlike the i7 which has 4 cores and 8 threads

Thank You very much!
14 REPLIES 14
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
1. As far as I know CPU is what is being used by most current rendering applications. Some applications start to appear that use the GPU or GPUs but there is only OctaneRender currently (that I know about) that is using GPUs:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=41417

So for ArchiCAD, Artlantis etc. CPU is more important.

2. A 4-core processor is better than a 2-core processor as it can handle 4 processing threads instead of 2.

3. Number of threads is what really counts. Intel has Hyperthreading which means that 1 physical core can run two processing threads in it. A 4-core 8-thread processor is better than a 4-core 4-thread processor. From the application's standpoint the former can process 8 threads for ArchiCAD or the rendering application, while the latter can process only 4 threads.
Even in Graphisoft's pages they say they recommend as many cores as possible:

http://www.graphisoft.hu/support/system_requirements/
Note: Processors with 4-8+ cores are recommended to fully exploit ArchiCAD 17's performance capabilities.
In the last several releases Graphisoft has made great efforts to fully utilize multi-core processors and get as much performance out of them as possible. This is especially true with AC17 where they specifically say 4-8+ cores is really recommended. Previous they only said you should use multi-core processors, which means at least 2 cores.
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
and what about now. Can ArtLantis 6 use GPU graphics card?

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Nuge
Advocate
Try Octane for archicad

http://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/


Nuge
AC27 i9 11900K / 128G ram / GTX 3090 / D5 Render
I want to know if Artlantis 6 can use GPU processing. That was not clear from what I was able to find on their website.

I don't think I need Octane. I have Maxwell Studio/Render 3.1,an older version of Artlantis Render, and of course CineRender in ArchiCAD.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
I don't think Artlantis 6 uses GPU for rendering.

http://artlantis.com/en/features

If it did they would be widely publicizing it as it would be much much faster than CPU-based rendering:

http://www.gpurendering.com/technology/gpuVsCpuRendering.html
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
laszlonagy wrote:
I don't think Artlantis 6 uses GPU for rendering.

http://artlantis.com/en/features

If it did they would be widely publicizing it as it would be much much faster than CPU-based rendering:

http://www.gpurendering.com/technology/gpuVsCpuRendering.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VHzONYfgUg

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

laszlonagy wrote:
I don't think Artlantis 6 uses GPU for rendering.

http://artlantis.com/en/features

If it did they would be widely publicizing it as it would be much much faster than CPU-based rendering:

http://www.gpurendering.com/technology/gpuVsCpuRendering.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VHzONYfgUg

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?346401-Maxwell-Render-on-GPU-(CUDA)

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Anonymous
Not applicable
I was wondering if there was a way to utilize my GPU for 3D view?
I have fiddled around with the Nvidia control panel and all that. But still, Archicad uses 0% of my GPU

I have a GeForce 870m and it has openGL 4.5 ( thats why I baught it. I thought it would help.)
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
spacant wrote:
But still, Archicad uses 0% of my GPU
AFAIK, only BIMx uses the GPU. ArchiCAD itself does not:

http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/setup/hardware-compatibility/recommended-hardware-for-gra...
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Learn and get certified!