hardware for architecture

[jnr]

To anyone out there, and especially someone from NNA:

I'm considering new hardware, win XP.

CPU: Does Intel's new hyperthreading technology have any affect on this software's speed and is it worth it?

Video: I read a post swearing by ATI's new 9800 rage pro (128mb card AGP). Is this worth it? I currently have a dual head geforce 450 and it is slow and glitchy using 10.2.1. It used to be that Vectorworks did not take advantage of the capabilities of the technologies and memory of the newer video cards. Is this still true or has NNA dumped some of the video processing onto the cards?

Any recommendations?

[jnr]

I'm moving this back to the top in the hope someone from NNA will weigh in on this.

[Andrew Bell@NV]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jnr:

CPU: Does Intel's new hyperthreading technology have any affect on this software's speed and is it worth it?

---

"Worth it" is a judgement call. I wouldn't move heaven and earth to get it, but hyperthreaded machines are already pretty much in the "sweet spot" (where decreases in performance don't save you much, but increases cost a fair bit more.)

quote:

---

Video: I read a post swearing by ATI's new 9800 rage pro (128mb card AGP). Is this worth it?

---

Again, judgement call. The 9800 (or indeed any recent, decent video card) should significantly speed up OpenGL rendering over your old Matrox. It will have no effect on hidden line, polygon, or RenderWorks rendering.

[jnr]

Andrew:

Thanks for your response. So if I wanted to choose the ultimate PC configuration for this software, where would one put the money?

You seem to suggest spending more on a video card does not necessarily improve rendering speeds for renderworks (which I use a lot because the dual head matrox card does not support open gl). So buy as much RAM as one can afford or go for clock speed? What is the trade-off of RAM versus clock speed? Can you clarify your comment regarding increases/ decreases vs cost? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

[jan15]

jnr: I don't know much about this, but I've heard that L2 cache is important. It's often hard to find out how much cache a chip has. A lot of hardware retailers don't seem to think it's important at all, and Intel makes it hard to figure out with their confusing system of naming chips. Your 2ghz P4 is a prime example of that -- it could have 256k of L2, or it could have 512k, depending on which series P4 it is.

[MikeB]

Here's my totally unprofessional opinion of the importance of different components for VW.

1.Clock speed- By far the most important, Nothing else matters if you cant crunch the numbers fast enough.

2. Bus speed- Some may differ with me on this but how fast a computer can move information is very important.

3. Ram - Once I get over 512 I really cant tell that much of a difference anymore

4. Vidio Card- I don't use Open GL so a decent card seems to work fine.

Again this is just my opinion, but when I buy my next machine this is how I'll look at it.

Good Luck

[Andrew Bell@NV]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jnr:

Andrew:

Thanks for your response. So if I wanted to choose the ultimate PC configuration for this software, where would one put the money?

---

You need enough RAM to avoid using much virtual memory; beyond that it won't affect performance. Take a look at the task manager on your current machine while running VectorWorks, and see how much memory you're using with as complex a file as you generally use. Give yourself some room beyond that, since you may work with larger files in future, but if you're not hitting the virtual memory, more RAM has no effect on performance.

You may find you'll want to use OpenGL a fair bit if you get a card that supports it, in order to lay out your more complex renderings before you do them. So depending on your work habits and whether you change them, the most meaningful improvement for you may be getting an OpenGL-capable video card.

[jnr]

Andrew:

I think it would be really useful to a lot of people if this kind of general configuration information were avalible perhaps either as a link from the purchase area of the web site, or somewhere in the literature (of course by the time you get the software, you probably already own the hardware...). This would not violate company policy of not recommending specific hardware manufacturers or configurations (although the double standard of testing apple hardware is blatantly obvious-but that's another discussion). This would give prospective users (and upgraders) a much better idea of how to configure hardware.