upgrades

[Artifex]

I am thinking of upgrading to VW9.5 from VW8.5.2 but am concerned about hardware. Would I be looking for trouble using a somewhat dated pIII computer with 64 megs of ram and win98. One of the things I quite like about 8.5.2 is that it makes little demand on my system. The likelyhood of adding more memory is not problematic, but if more exhaustive measures are required I may happily work away as I am and wait to upgrade VW after replacing my system. Any suggestions?

[Matthew Giampapa]

In your case RAM is probably the most important factor. 64 megabytes and Windows 98 is really the bare minimum to have the program run.

Personally, I am using the program quite well with a PII 450 and 256 megabytes of ram.

VectorWorks 9 does a lot more work behind the scenes than VectorWorks 8 did. While I would really consider adding additional memory before anything else, you should also consider either downloading the demo version of VectorWorks 9 from out web site or calling our sales department to have a demo disk sent out to you. This way you can see exactly how well it runs on your system before you make the decision to buy.

Matthew GiampapaTechnical Support

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Originally posted by Artifex:

I am thinking of upgrading to VW9.5 from VW8.5.2 but am concerned about hardware. Would I be looking for trouble using a somewhat dated pIII computer with 64 megs of ram and win98. One of the things I quite like about 8.5.2 is that it makes little demand on my system. The likelyhood of adding more memory is not problematic, but if more exhaustive measures are required I may happily work away as I am and wait to upgrade VW after replacing my system. Any suggestions?

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[jnr]

In case your wondering, I had to upgrade my PIII to a P IV and windows 2000 in order for version 9 to run at the same speed as 8.5 did. If you are going to stay with win 98, DO NOT UPGRADE! No matter how much memory or how fast the existing processor, using 9 with win 98 is like watching a bloodhound run through a tar pit. Wait six months until service paks are issued for xp, then upgrade to 9.5. Hopefully 9.52 will be out by then. At that point you would probably have a good set up.

[Artifex]

Thanks for the advice, I think I'll try out the demo and sit tight for a little while.

[Guest]

You may want to take into advisement that 9.5 is now shipping. Significant improvements on speed were implemented with 9.5 over 8.5. Just a reminder, 8.5 is a very poplular comparison to VW 9, however MiniCad 7 was similarly used to say that 8.5 was "like watching a bloodhound running through tar," as jnr pointed out.

The more advanced the programs become and the more they do for you, therefore the more calculations per nanosecond the processors must do. The only alternative is to spend additional time tweaking the code to presume calculations for you, which has been done in 9.0.1 and moreso in 9.5.

I'm sure if you benchmark the initial releases of an O/S in a new series versus the second or third edition of those O/S series, then you will notice the initial release is much slower as well. This is simply a problem industry-wide. The only other way to ensure a new product line is faster is to remove features, not add them.

For more information on 9.5, please follow the link below.

http://www.nemetschek.net/news/pressreleases/120601.html