Hardware

[Pekka]

Hi!

What is enough for fluent use of VW for Windows? I mean the computer?s resources like CPU speed, amount of RAM, display adapter etc. I will get a new computer in the near future and I would be pleased to have some ideas about what kind of computer is good.

I have noticed that some tasks like DTMs are too much for my present computer and printing is very slow (I print some pictures with my desktop A3-size Canon bubblejet printer).

PR

[Robert Murphy]

I suggest that you purchase a G4 Mac tower as the program (vectorworks)runs much better and the presentation is far superior on the Mac OS than Windows. Also when you install a video card you can drag and drop severa;l drawings from screen to screen which is not as flexible with dual screen Windows OS. The speed of a 266 Mhz g3 power mac blows the doors off a 800mhz pentiumIII in our office so a G4 would be sensational.

quote:

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Originally posted by Pekka:

Hi!

What is enough for fluent use of VW for Windows? I mean the computer?s resources like CPU speed, amount of RAM, display adapter etc. I will get a new computer in the near future and I would be pleased to have some ideas about what kind of computer is good.

I have noticed that some tasks like DTMs are too much for my present computer and printing is very slow (I print some pictures with my desktop A3-size Canon bubblejet printer).

PR

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[Hannes]

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Murphy:

The speed of a 266 Mhz g3 power mac blows the doors off a 800mhz pentiumIII in our office so a G4 would be sensational.

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I use a PIII 800 MHZ, 384 MB RAM, 2 Monitors

with 8MB ATI RAGE II video Cards.

With Julian Carr's Speed Tester i get a result of 3,8 which is not the worst i believe.

More results of the speed test are on Julian's Homepage(look at the upper right corner/ free software):

http://www.zeta.org.au/~jbcarr/

Buy the fastest CPU you can afford(no matter if P III or AMD) and put at least 286 MB RAM

into your PC- the more the better.

Hannes

Hannes

[DBL]

I'm operating on a PC. After much trial and error I purchased a Workstation from XI Computer corporation. They design computers specifically for CAD. I have a video card with 32 megs Ram. The new Athlon CPU's seem to be an excellent deal. I'd get as much Ram as possible. I've got 896 megs. The difference is astounding. It seems as though the process is twice as fast as the same CPU with only 128 megs Ram. ECC Ram is a bit slower but avoiding errors speeds up the process. There are some hot new video cards that speed up the system dramatically. XI sales is very helpful at putting together estimates and there Tech support has been just great. I've trained on Macs and had more crashes than on my XI Workstation. The two systems Mac vs. PC Workstation are comparably priced so the choice is yours.

[DBL]

I'm operating on a PC. After much trial and error I purchased a Workstation from XI Computer corporation. They design computers specifically for CAD. I have a video card with 32 megs Ram. The new Athlon CPU's seem to be an excellent deal. I'd get as much Ram as possible. I've got 896 megs. The difference is astounding. It seems as though the process is twice as fast as the same CPU with only 128 megs Ram. ECC Ram is a bit slower but avoiding errors speeds up the process. There are some hot new video cards that speed up the system dramatically. XI sales is very helpful at putting together estimates and there Tech support has been just great. I've trained on Macs and had more crashes than on my XI Workstation. The two systems Mac vs. PC Workstation are comparably priced so the choice is yours.

[kgoodwin]

Hey DBL (or anybody else who wants to respond),

I'm trying to build a new PC for VW. What do you have in your system? What processor and speed? What type of video card? What OS? What are some gotchas I should watch out for?

I was considering a dual processor system, but apperently VW doesn't support it. Do you have any direct experience with that? I also wanted a dual display, do you have a recomendation on video cards?

Thanks for you time.

Kevin

[DBL]

quote:

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Originally posted by kgoodwin:

Hey DBL (or anybody else who wants to respond),

I'm trying to build a new PC for VW. What do you have in your system? What processor and speed? What type of video card? What OS? What are some gotchas I should watch out for?

I was considering a dual processor system, but apperently VW doesn't support it. Do you have any direct experience with that? I also wanted a dual display, do you have a recomendation on video cards?

Thanks for you time.

Kevin

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[DBL]

This is a late reply. Haven't been to this site. Waiting for Landmark to release. At this rate I might as well wait until the end of the year to order, work out a few bugs first.

If you visit the XI site you can look at technical spec's for their current systems. One of the important features is the motherboard. I know zip about them but have experienced the results on my system. My last crash was over 8 weeks ago! Lotsa memory & a good motherboard. AMD's processors continue to be the best for value. The single processor Thunderbird is the fastest with a 266mb front side bus. Apple has apparently been talking to AMD about building their CPU's. DDR Ram looks to make a big difference in performance so the Motherboard would need to accept DDR. Rambus memory is more powerful but way over the top in price.

The only Dual Monitor video cards that I remember hearing anything about was one made by Matrox. The best video card tested by Cadalyst for Desktop PC's recently was a Fire GL4 with 64mb DDR. I don't remember the specifics but it should be easy to find at XI's site. Try configuring a single processor AMD system. They are set up to do the same way as Dell. When you select options for hardware and software it will show all their available options. The Fire Video card is apparently almost $1000. on the street. It's much cheaper in a vendor package system. XI's price is something like $400, but don't quote me on that. The Matrox Card didn't get anywhere near the performance boost that the Fire card did but if you really want a dual Monitor system there isn't much choice. I'm happy with my IBM 20" monitor set at 1600x1280, no rulers or scroll bars. I've got good focus all the way to the edge of the screen, their strong suit. I think I saw some for sale for $300 recently! It's not 22" but I'd take good resolution and focus over size any day.

Hope this helps someone. Good hardware can make a big difference.

DBL