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fruitful

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Desperately seeking advice.

 

We are finally biting the bullet and upgrading a number of machines. Would be very grateful for any advice. We are Mac based and need to remain so. Our work is commercial hospitality interiors with 2D drawing packs and 3D interior renders in Vectorworks. Our 2D drawing packs often use a lot of image fills. 3D models circa 200Mb VW files.

 

We have sought advice from Vectorworks UK support but have had little meaningful info other than i9 processors are better than i7's. They seem unable to advise on pro's and cons of no of cores and speed. My understanding is that VW2020 cannot take advantage of multiple cores but VW Support suggest otherwise: 

 

"In terms of Vectorworks using processor cores. If you are using renderworks styles to render your drawings, this will use as many cores as possible. General use such as; zooming, panning etc will not be impacted by more cores. Nevertheless, we say the more cores the better! In regard to iMac VS Mac book pro. The iMac will probably have better hardware. However, we all use Mac book pro's and have never had any issues with running Vectorworks at a stable rate. We recommend looking at graphics cards with more than 2GB of VRAM."

 

and 

 

"We don't have anything that compares different performances of Vectorworks on different computers. Looking at the iMac Pro's, Vectorworks will be good to run on these computers for the long term future. But also, the Macbook pro's and iMac's will all be good for a long term use of Vectorworks. As long as your computer is fully up to specification to run Vectorworks, there should be no issue. The newer computers will be built for long term use, this means that you won't have any issues outside Vectorworks as well with operating systems not having issues when updating etc. Compatibility will be there for the long term.

My colleague in the US informed me that you are better to have more cores than fewer.

The newer computers will be better for the long term use of Vectorworks compared to your current. The newer computers will be compatible with operating systems released, keeping your Vectorworks compatible with the computer. The newer operating systems will run a lot more stable on newer computers. Also, hardware is always improving, graphics cards and processors are more powerful and are improving to be more stable and reliable the newer you go. As computer software is asking more of the computers, the newer computers are built to run these softwares a lot more efficiently and reliable."

 

Bearing in mind we about about to invest many thousands, we want to get it right. We are leaning towards MacBook Pro's to iMac's/Pros rather than MacPro's but are open to all advice. The more specific the better.

 

Help !

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I'm far from an expert on these computer concerns, but I just bit the bullet and ordered a new 27"  iMac 2020 instead of the iMac Pro.  I came to this conclusion after reading many threads here, watching various benchmark reviews on youtube demonstrating where the iMac was beating the iMac Pro with the same number of cores and RAM.  My spec came in just under $4K for 8 cores, 2x32 GB ram (aftermarket), 16GB video card, 2 TB hard drive, and 10GB network card upgrade.  I opted for the 8 core since it had the fastest single core speed which seemed to be the recommendation here.

 

I'm currently working on a mid 2015 Macbook Pro 2.5ghx i7, 16mb RAM, and 2GB AMD graphics.  The largest model I have built is over 1GB and features fairly complex site model, .obj drone model, high resolution aerials, and extensive use of 3D objects to describe the architecture and landscape architecture of the project.  It performs surprisingly well on my laptop to the point where I see no need to upgrade it at this moment.  I did however get the desktop because my work situation changed and I intend on using more Twinmotion and Renderworks to describe my projects.  Twinmotion really gets my laptop functioning as a space heater, which is not exactly a design feature this time of year 🙂  I tried using a second monitor with the laptop and the performance degraded slightly.  I suspect my laptop will continue to offer usable service for a few years more for cliet presentations and random smaller modeling tasks.  The new desktop should easily provide many years of use unless something fundamentally changes with the software.  Hopefully any significant software changes just further improve performance on the new hardware.  Who knows what the future will bring with Apple silicone, but I am betting the next 3-5 years on the new I ordered iMac will be silky smooth based on my experience with the old laptop.

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Vectorworks has a current cap of 3 cores that is being removed in VW 2021 as confirmed here: 

 

 

This however does not apply to Renderworks which has a core limit of 16 cores, again confirmed above. It seems that anything over 16 cores in not worth it as VW cannot use more than this.

 

I am currently using an iMac with VW with no issues and I don't expect to have any in the near future. My specs are:

1218122732_Screenshot2020-08-21at17_24_04.thumb.png.f8fed4fc3a29696193029ce100f162cd.png

 

 When we bought this around 9 months ago we looked at the iMac pro but these seem to favour higher core counts rather than higher-speed cores. In the end we decided they were not worth it as single-core performance is always going to be a factor as there are big chunks of work that simply cannot be parallelised across multiple cores.

 

You haven't mentioned graphics cards but these are very important also as in recent releases VW has been offloading work traditionally done by the CPU to the GPU. I would recommend getting a high spec. graphics card for future proofing.

 

Finally, since you're on macs it may be worth looking into apple's Metal technology as they are dropping support for Open GL and going with Metal. VW will support this from 2022. 

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@_James @jeff prince Many thanks for your advice. Do you know how a 3.8GHz 8-core Intel Core i7 would compare to a 3.6GHz 10-core Intel Core i9 ? I am guessing little in it. Both have boost up to 5.0GHz.

 

Still (perhaps foolishly) considering MacBook Pro's (advantages of portability in current work at home pandemic climate) - 2.4GHz 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz but these are limited on the graphics card Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory - plus £100 and AMD Radeon Pro 5600M with 8GB of HBM2 memory plus £700 over standard 4GB card.

 

Not dissimilar cost when you spec as closely as possible the two routes.

 

Any thoughts

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14 minutes ago, fruitful said:

Do you know how a 3.8GHz 8-core Intel Core i7 would compare to a 3.6GHz 10-core Intel Core i9 ?

 

 

Looks like there is less difference than expected.

If you are really doing multitasking like CPU rendering the 10-14%

increase may be worth the cost.

 

Strangely the 8 core option is allowed to draw more power than the

10 core. Which could be related to most tested 8 cores also had

the standard 5500 GPU and most 10 cores were tested with the big

5700 XT GPU, which may run into an overall power system limit.

 

On the other hand the new iMac seems to be less noisy than expected.

 

 

22 minutes ago, fruitful said:

Still (perhaps foolishly) considering MacBook Pro's (advantages of portability in current work at home pandemic climate) - 2.4GHz 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz but these are limited on the graphics card Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory - plus £100 and AMD Radeon Pro 5600M with 8GB of HBM2 memory plus £700 over standard 4GB card.

 

That is still a viable option.

You will generally pay more for the same power or will not

get the same power as the desktop.

If you have typical workloads and not intend to run it at 100%

for the most time the, a Macbook Pro may be well suited.

(I think the iMac AIO isn't suited for use as a render slave either)

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@fruitful I would have got the MBP, but I wanted a big fancy screen 🙂. I’m not a good resource for determining if the 8 core or 10 core is better, based my decision on the advice from Vectorworks and various reviews from tech analysts.

 

used my 2015 MBP last night to present an interactive 3D OpenGL rendering to my clients, worked great.

Edited by jeff prince
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