Hardware recommendations
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This might be a little late in answering but I'm almost positive you need two of the same card to use cross-fire (eg. (2) 5850 CARDS).
I'd be wary of spending a bunch of money on a workstation graphics card for SU. The only real difference between "gaming" cards and workstation cards are the drivers and the tech. support. For some programs -- 3d Studio Max, for example, the drivers make a huge difference. I haven't heard that they've been optimized for SU.
For ATI cards, the DirectX 11 seems to be useless for anything less than a 5850 as the cards aren't powerful enough to compensate for the performance hit from using dx11 instead of dx10. The 5000 series is MUCH more energy efficient but you can get more power/$ from using the 4000 series (not to mention more mature drivers). The 4890 is a very powerful card and can be had for ~$180 or so. That said, the 5850 and 5870 are very nice cards.
Recently there was an article (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2539-11.html) about 2d (and 2.5d) graphics where the ATI cards perform VERY poorly (and the NVIDIA cards are not much better). Fixes are supposed to be in the works, but it's still worth knowing.NVIDIA cards tend to be more expensive than ATI for comparable power although they are sometimes more stable and you need an NVIDIA card to use CUDA (having the graphics card help with general processing) in programs like Octane Render (which looks like it could be amazing).
Hopefully some of this is helpful.
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@dsarchs said:
This might be a little late in answering but I'm almost positive you need two of the same card to use cross-fire (eg. (2) 5850 CARDS)...
...For ATI cards, the DirectX 11 seems to be useless for anything less than a 5850 as the cards aren't powerful enough to compensate for the performance hit from using dx11 instead of dx10.DirectX performance and crossfire and related technologies are totally irrelevant in the case of SketchUp. SU uses OpenGL, not DirectX, and OpenGL does not support the multiple graphics card technologies.
Anssi
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I was just responding to an earlier question about whether or not you could use different types of cards for cross-fire/sli.
As for directx, I was saying that the benefits of directx 11 are useless unless you get the top level of cards. I know that SU doesn't use cross-fire or dx, but presumably the machine will be used for programs other than su. GPGPU rendering/processing is coming soon to say nothing of games
Besides, if SU is the sole reason for investing in new hardware your money would be better spent on cpu/cooling/ram or something and just getting an 8800gt video card. -
I haven't read through this entire thread (couldn't do 22 pages!), so I apologize if this has been mentioned already, but I'm looking to get some kind of external storage, or something to back up my system because my computer has been acting up lately.
I was wondering if there is a particular storage system/brand/type that is most reliable for long-term storage of sketchup files? and then also a system that is best for accessing files more often?
Thanks a lot guys!
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So its been a year and a half or so since the survey got under way? Are the results buried in here somewhere, or buried somewhere somewhere?
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hi there,
did anyone come across the ATI Radeon HD 3200 on a laptop?also, If I buy a laptop in a store, and prepare a flash card with a viewer and a fat skp file, what is the best SU test I can do to compare available models?
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@dennis_n said:
hi there,
did anyone come across the ATI Radeon HD 3200 on a laptop?also, If I buy a laptop in a store, and prepare a flash card with a viewer and a fat skp file, what is the best SU test I can do to compare available models?
I ran across a ruby awhile back that allows for a SU benchmark http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=10750#p75785
If you continue through the following pages you'll find several benchmark skp files that people posted and subsequent results.
Also have a look at http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=20076
-Brodie
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Uh..., that's a seriously useful re-direct.
Thanks.
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haha, sorry about that first link. I thought it would link directly to my post. The link was supposed to redirect you to the 4th page of this thread where I bring up the Test.time_display ruby
By the way, it doesn't seem to work unless you capitalize that first "T". In other words, it must be Test.time_display NOT test.time_display
-Brodie
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I wasn't being sarcastic: I just tried the second, thread, link, which was useful to me.
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HI,
I just moved onto a used Mac os x 10.5 DUAL 2 GHz PowerPC G5 8 GB DDR SDRAM. It has a 128 VRAM ATI RADEON 9600 video card. I know that is the minimum video card sketch recommends, especially for the PRO version. I am wondering if I need to bump it up to 512 VRAM. Will I notice a big difference in this leap, or is it more subtle and unnecessary? I do quit a bit of design work within SU/LO, so I do want to get set up the best I can within reason. Does anyone have any insight into this need? thanks, -
Keea,
In real life VRAM is mostly relevant if you have a lot of large textures or multiple large screens. I can run SU quite OK with my old laptop that has Nvidia graphics with 64 Mb VRAM, and my other old computer that has an ATI card with 128 Mb, drives a 1080 x 1920 widescreen display quite well too.
Anssi
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I'm looking to buy a desktop at the end of the summer and was hoping to get some opinions on the model I'm leaning towards..
Specs:
27" iMac
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MBWhat does everyone/anyone think of this configuration? Would that be good for modeling programs such as Sketchup, CAD, and the like.
Any/all opinions welcome.
Thanks!
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@beau21 said:
I'm looking to buy a desktop at the end of the summer and was hoping to get some opinions on the model I'm leaning towards..
Specs:
27" iMac
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x2GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MBWhat does everyone/anyone think of this configuration? Would that be good for modeling programs such as Sketchup, CAD, and the like.
Any/all opinions welcome.
Thanks!
Nice computer, you'll be in very nice shape. SU only uses one core but in my experience with large hospital models 2.8 GHz will do you just fine and your graphics card should be plenty good. For the rest of your programs which use multiple cores it'll be a very nice setup.
-Brodie
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beau21
How did you go with the Imac? Any news? Just ordered one but worried now about the ATI reviews...
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Anyone else any ideas on the 4850 ATI card? In the the Imac preferably, but not necessarily...
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We have been dealing with 80MB models in my office lately.
I'm considering buying a couple of computers with the following spec:Windows 7 64 bit
AMD Athlon 3.5Ghz dual core processor
8 Gb RAM
PNY Quadro 580 with 512 Mb RAM graphics cardI can get this package built for around $2000.
Can I do any better than this without doubling the cost? -
Wow--this is a long topic. I made it through about six pages before I jumped here to ask my question:
What is more important for SketchUp: system RAM, or video RAM?
Does anyone have any suggestions for a notebook computer that will do well with larger sketchup files?
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@danbig said:
Wow--this is a long topic. I made it through about six pages before I jumped here to ask my question:
What is more important for SketchUp: system RAM, or video RAM?
Does anyone have any suggestions for a notebook computer that will do well with larger sketchup files?
Vram only becomes critical if you use a lot of very large textures. Su is a 32-bit application, so system RAM is not so critical either.
What you should look for in a SU notebook is
- processor speed, number of processor cores is not so important, as SU uses only one
- SU benefits from the TurboBoost feature in the latest Intel multicore processors
- a real graphics card (Nvidia seems still to be more reliable)
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Hello,
My father, a long time CAD user was wanting to give SU a try and is having a problem downloading the software. He currently uses Auto Desk on the same laptop, so I found it hard to believe his suggestion that his computer was not capable of running SU was likely. I referenced below his laptop configuration. Could anyone tell me if it seems like he should or should not be able to run SU, and if not what the problem may be. I haven't been able to trouble shoot with him much so I don't know yet if he may just be doing something wrong when installing. I thought I would rule this out first.Thank you,
SeanToshiba Laptop
2.3 GHz
4 GB RAM
235 GB remainingAMD Turion
II Dual-Core Mobile Processor M520
AMD M880G Chipset
ATI Radeon HD 4200 Graphics with dynamically
allocated shared graphics memory
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