2009 speed and RAM requirements

[CARMELHILL]

NNA has got to be kidding me, requiring 4 gig of RAM for VW 2009. Autocad only requires 2gig and is more stable. I added the ram and it still runs slow. The dam cursor can't keep up with my mouse and keyboard inputs. I hope SP3 fixes these problems before I am forced to trash either my computer for another $2500 Dell or just trash VW2009 which is the cheaper alternative. Maybe this release is going to be like Autocad 13, only to be cleaned up by Autocad 14 which was amazing. I loved VW 12 and finally 2008 after they worked out some bugs, but so far I am disappointed by 2009. 2010 will be released when? in November??

[IanH]

Sounds like its a graphics card issue that is the problem rather than RAM. 2009 does have extra requirements for graphics card.

Possibly a graphics driver update or one of the 2009 suggestions mentioned in the following posts may help matters:

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=115455&an=7#Post115444

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=115485#Post115485

both of which discuss solutions to non specific problems even if the title is quite specific.

[CARMELHILL]

Another poster told me a graphics card update would only help with Open GL renders. I have an Nvidia 128 mb Geforce FX 5200 which NNA does not recommend. I'll be upgrading the card next week. But really, 4 gig of RAM. Come on. I'm wondering if this is a transition release, between using a Pascal program compiler and a totally new program compiled in Visual C++ which I understand they have already started.

[Ray Libby]

It would help to troubleshoot if you would post your computer specs.

[IanH]

... But really, 4 gig of RAM. Come on. I'm wondering if this is a transition release, between using a Pascal program compiler and a totally new program compiled in Visual C++ which I understand they have already started.

4GB is only a recommended amount.

Under 32bit windows, the maximum any application can handle is 2GB, unless you are running windows in a >2GB mode which by default is not enabled and most people (or applications for that matter) are not aware of. Vectorworks and many other applications can require more application memory than Windows can provide them with. This is not a fault of the application, but simply a factor of the complexity of things that you can do with Vectorworks and other applications - Rendering for example can consume enormous amounts of RAM because it is such a complex thing to do. Vectorworks 2009 is no more memory hungry than 2008, although 2009 can use more memory than 2008 by virtue that it is now aware of >2GB application memory if you run your PC in that mode.

By recommending 4GB, NNA are basically saying that Vectorworks can utilise as much application memory as you can feed it, up to the 2GB (or 3GB) limit. The extra on top is not for consumption by Vectorworks but by Windows and the many other applications and programs that are concurrently running. However the reality is that 4GB of RAM is far more than Windows can make use of and share out to the applications, and generally between 0.5 and 1GB of the addressable memory in a PC is likely to be exclusively 'shared' by in built PC hardware, such as video card. So even with 4GB fitted, you are probably only able to make use of 3 - 3.5GB of it.

For some projects, Vectorworks 2009 will, like 2008, run quite happily with 1 or 2GB. The performance tab of the Windows task manager is a simple place to see whether you are in need of more RAM. Unfortunately graphics card performance is a little trickier to judge and its all down to what functions the user makes use of.

[Miguel Barrera]

I know it is not a transition from Pascal to C++ because that was done a long time ago when Apple also switched to C++. Scripts use Pascal as the cross platform programming language for simple tools but if you want to create your own interfaces and/or access the OS, you need to use the C++ SDK for each platform.

This arrangement holds true for Microstation, which uses Basic for scripting and C (MDL) for more complex programming. I suspect AutoCad is the same, which uses Lisp for scripting.

I believe also it might be a video card problem because my 2 year old laptop will crash when I use OpenGL in VW 11 and 2008. I just bought a desktop with 6GB RAM and newer video card and have not experienced any problems.

[CARMELHILL]

I upgraded the video card and it has solved the problem. Not much of an upgrade really. Went from an AGP 128 mb Nvida Geforce Fx 5200 to an AGP 256 mb Nvidia Geforce 6200 for $108. Not bad. My next Dell will have an Nvida Quadro with better memory.

More important.....IanH, how do you change windows to use the 4 gig of memory?

VW 2009 Designer/RW

Windows Xp sp3

Dell Pentium 4, 3 ghz, 4 gig ram

[IanH]

More important.....IanH, how do you change windows to use the 4 gig of memory?

I briefly mentioned it in this post and followed up with links to further information and instructions two posts further on.

I have never tried it and it should be used with caution as there are apparently some applications that break when Windows is booted in 3GB mode although the sites that mentioned this were quite dated. In addition, I can see potential issues with giving an application access to too much application address space and starving the OS of kernel address space which may well make the system unstable.

According to Dave Donley's post, NNA will hopefully be doing their own 'how to' instructions sometime soon.

[D Wood]

Carmelhill

Does it hurt to say "thank you"?

[CARMELHILL]

Absolutely not. It never hurst to say thatnk you. Plus groveling helps too. Thank you very much.

Carmelhill

[acdeslx]

I'm going crazy with some speed issues as well.

It is now taking forever to "nudge" large objects or zoom or do any movement.

Did changing your video card help with these types of basic tasks as well?

I have 4gb of RAM on my windows XP box and am using an ATI Radeon 9800 w/128mb RAM -- VW 2009 sp2

Thanks,

Dave

[CARMELHILL]

The upgrade on the video card made a huge difference. I am currently pricing a new Dell with better processors and better video cards since my existing computer is 4 years old, making it almost obsolete without lots of upgrades. I just recently added a 26" monitor, DVD drive, 4 gig ram, and a new video card. Enough is enough. I refuse to upgrade the main mother board and processor. I'll strip out what I can from this computer and put it into my new Dell. Looks like it'll cost between $1400 and $2400 to get what I need/want.

[deck]

Hi

Reading about these problems is music to my ears (sorry everyone, I thought it was just me!). I upgraded to 2009 at the beginning of January and had problems straight away, the install disk came without two .dll files(?) needed for install. Got them from NNA via my local reseller, installed no problem. Then the display and general 'slowness' problems started, below is an email I sent last week to my supplier, before I started reading this thread, still waiting for a response.

I'm having a few problems with VW 2009, it all seems a tad slow, a slight delay when doing anything. When zooming in and out using the mouse scroll wheel the picture pixelates/disappears to a total blur and then takes a second or two before re-drawing. It's really frustrating me, to the point where I'm not using it at the moment and have gone back to VW 12.5 which works perfectly well on the same machine.

I believe my computer should 'eat' VW 2009, the spec being considerably higher than the 'recommended'.

Have you had any other users with problems, what spec machines are they using?

All drivers are up-to-date including graphics card from XFX/nVidia websites.

Can you please offer any suggestions? I've got a 400 quid upgrade gathering dust at the moment.

Many thanks.

Below is the rest of the spec for my machine -

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 2002-SP3.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz 1333MHz FSB Socket 775 6MB L2 Cache Processor.

Graphics card - nVidia XFX GeForce GTX280 1Gb DDR3 DVIx2.

Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R iP35 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard.

Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Dominator Memory Kit CL5(5-5-5-15).

Samsung HD753LJ 750GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache*.

Sony DRU-190S 20X DVD?RW DL & DVD-RAM Serial ATA.

Antec TruePower Quattro 850W Modular PSU - 2x 8pin PCI-E 2x 6pin PCI-E 4x 12V Rails 80PLUS Energy Efficiency.

Antec TriCool 120mm DBB Case Fan.

Scythe SCZP-1000 Zipang Quiet Socket 478/775/754/939/940/AM2 with 140mm Fan Processor Cooler.

Sony 3.5" Floppy Drive.

Antec P182 Gunmetal Grey Super Mid Tower Case.

Samsung SM2493HM 24" TFT Monitor 1920x1200 10000:1 400cd/m2 5ms VGA/DVI/HDMI.

Belkin Pro Series DVI-D Dual Link To DVI-D Dual Link Cable 3m.

Logitech Wave Keyboard - Ergonomic Keys - USB.

Logitech MX Revolution Wireless Laser Mouse -USB.

[cpbender]

Hi, I'm also experiencing significant slowness in 2009, seems to take forever to edit groups, symbols, redraw the screen when zooming, panning, nudging... I updated my graphics driver, no improvement there. I have no issues when opening the same drawings in VW12.

VW 2009 SP2

Dell Precision 380

Windows XP Pro SP3

Intel4 3GHz

2.5 Gb RAM

ATI FireGL V3100, 128 Mb

(2) Dell 1907 monitors, 1280x1024

Do I need a new graphics card? Any other thoughts?

Thanks,

Conrad

[CARMELHILL]

I found that disabling lots of the silly highlighting stuff in the Vectorworks Preferences Interavtive Tab helped. This seems to have been slowing things down. The upgrade to the video card was by far the best upgrade to my 5 year old machine. From a 256 meg 4200 NVida to a new Nvidia Geforce 6200 AGP 8X with 512 ram. The Nemetschek tech site explicitly said my old card was a problematic card.

I am currently exploring a new computer purchase which should speed me up some more, but my big hang up is whether to purchase a Vista 32 bit or 64 bit system. It seems that the 64 bits will be the standard on future machines like when Windows switched from 16 to 32 bit with Windows 95. Might as well be prepared.....

[monkey]

i didnt think VW did a 64 bit version of their software yet, or am i miss-informed?

[CARMELHILL]

They don't. I have an email to their tech department asking whether they will go that route soon. But they will be forced to when Windows 8 comes out because that will be 64 bit ONLY, although it will have a 32 bit emulation layer. Windows 7 which is coming out next year will still be released as both 32 and 64 versions but they are expecting 25% of all computers sold as new to have orders fulfilled with 64 bit versions. I researched all this last night. They feel memory has come down enough in price and software is finally starting to catch up with 64 bit programing. The dual core processors have supposedly been keeping pace with the 64 bit programming already. Every single eice of my office hardware is already supported by 64 bit drivers.

Others have told me that VW 2009 will runb on 64 bit, but 5% slower because it uses a 32 bit emulation layer, but when you consider that you will no longer be limited to 3 gig of useable ram, then the case for a Vista 64 bit machine with 8 gig of ram looks very attractive.

At least that's my understanding so far.

[brudgers]

If you're comparing machines with identical processors and memory, the Vectorworks will run slower on the 64 bit machine.

But the reason to go to 64bits is to put more RAM in your machine.

While Vectorworks can not access any more RAM under a 64 bit OS, if there's ample RAM Vectorworks will not be sharing RAM with other running applications and the operating system.

This reduces paging to disk for everything that's running and speeds up the machine orders of magnitude more than the emulation layer slows it down.

It's paralell to the advantages of a quad core processor which doesn't run Vectorworks faster but can make everything run faster.

As an aside, Intel processors have supported x64 on the desktop since March 2004 and mobile processors since 2006 (AMD which originally developed the x86 64 bit extensions has supported it for about a year longer.)

[jbrhwy]

No slow down with Vw2009 on a 3 year old iMac with only 1.5 GB of ram & some of the files are over 100 MB since aerial photos are used as a backdrop. Object highlighting & the snap loupe saved me the entire cost of the upgrade to Vw2009 on an airport pavement marking layout project (9800 m2 of markings requiring 573 stake layout objects).

[cpbender]

Thanks for the info, disabling the highlighting features definitely helps, although I was kind of getting attached to them myself... oh well, guess maybe it's time for a new graphics card (or a new computer).

thanks,

Conrad

[JGA]

I just built a relatively state of the art Vista 64 system specifically for VW.

It consists of:

i7 Quad processor @ 3.8 ghz

Video card GTX 285

6mb triple channel memory

HP 30" LCD and Dell 24" LCD

etc.

I use the 30" for the program full screen and the 24" for tools etc.

Screen use of drawing tools is unbearable and slow. Using the polygon tool for example - takes a second or so between segments.

I have all the latest drivers and updates and have re-installed several times including deletion of all the HKEY setting in Regedit (speaking of which - why on earth Vectorworks does not come with an un-install program is beyond me).

Everything else is very fast. OpenGL models in high quality mode rotate instantaneously - very nice. It loads quickly and does everything else quickly as expected.

I decided to re-install VW 2008 SP3. Problem is gone. Screen response is instantaneous.

So as far as I am concerned this is a VW 2009 issue. It is not a hardware issue. If it were a hardware issue - then why does 2008 work flawlessly?

On a side note - if I reduce the main window on the 30" monitor to about half the screen size the screen speed increases but is still clearly stuttering.

2009 is having some type of trouble dealing with the larger screen real estate, even using one of the fastest current video cards (with 1meg of memory) on the market.

Edited February 17, 2009 by JGA

[JGA]

I have resolved this issue. The Nvidia drivers were at fault - not VW.

The new drivers released Feb 19-09 solved the problem.

Edited February 21, 2009 by JGA

[islandmon]

JGA... you've got one helluva set-up ...

what is 6mb triple channel memory ?

Glad everything is working as expected... now... get back to work you laggard ; )

[DMcD]

>I'm also experiencing significant slowness in 2009, seems to take forever to edit

>groups, symbols, redraw the screen when zooming, panning, nudging... I updated

>my graphics driver, no improvement there. I have no issues when opening the same

>drawings in VW12.

Ditto.

Running VW 14 (2009) on a Mac Pro 2 x 2.8, OS 10.5.6, 4 GB RAM etc. and a 30" and 24" monitor.

Runs like glue.

As quoted above, nudging takes incredibly long. So long that the selection handles move seconds before the object redraws. As noted in some posts above, VW 13 runs fine and full speed on the same system. And when used on a laptop the performance is remarkably good.

As noted in some quotes, I have turned off all the ant chappies on screen, so no "interactive" elements are used.

Release 3 upgrade installed etc. etc.

Still runs like glue.

There are no drivers available for the graphics card since they are included with the OS.

I can find no reference to any other slow downs to software other than VW. And this behaviour was noticed immediately after installing VW14.

Is anyone else still getting this behaviour after installing the latest upgrade? Or is it just a few elitist folk with too many big screens?

DMcD

[Ray Libby]

What graphics card?