New Computer Q's

[spence]

I have searched through various threads to try and find what people are saying about a good Sketchup machine to build but always feel like I need to ask. I'm now considering building a new machine, it's been about three years. Is windows 7 ultimate a good idea? You can run 8gigs of memory on it I believe. Does sketchup work on a 64 bit system? I'm not that knowledgeable about hardware not software for that matter. All I need is the processor, mother board, memory, hard drive, and graphic card, any suggestions? Right now I'm running windows XP pro, 4gigs mem, Dual core 2, nvidea 8800 GTX. I mainly use Sketchup, Photoshop, Corel, Piranesi, and other various graphic softwares. I would love to hear what you have to say.

[lvl1201]

From what ive seen sketchup can only use 2 gigs of ram, there are a couple of patches floating around the web that addres that "problem" because there are no x64 version of sketchup, although im not certain if they are a reliable solution i havent use them myselft.
Now, the having a dual core may have not give the best performance on rendering, but if u have a high clockspeed and a wide FSB you should be all right, something around 3+ Ghz and a 1033FSB should be more than enough.
And the 8800gtx is a pretty solid GPU to use with sketchup, but you may want to tune up your nvidia control panel settings, remember Sketchup runs on opengl so try to keep the extension limiti off and the maximum pre-rendered frames to 1. That have worked for me.

Aside from the hardware you will find software limitations.

I have an E8550 OC @3.5Ghz, 3 gigs of ram and a 275GTX and like i said Sketchup is software bound.

[honoluludesktop]

@spence said:

I have searched through various threads to try and find what people are saying about a good Sketchup machine to build but always feel like I need to ask. I'm now considering building a new machine, it's been about three years. Is windows 7 ultimate a good idea? You can run 8gigs of memory on it I believe.
Only of the pc is a 64 bit system.
@unknownuser said:

Does sketchup work on a 64 bit system? I'm not that knowledgeable about hardware not software for that matter.
SU will run, but may be slower.
@unknownuser said:

All I need is the processor, mother board, memory, hard drive, and graphic card, any suggestions? Right now I'm running windows XP pro, 4gigs mem, Dual core 2, nvidea 8800 GTX. I mainly use Sketchup, Photoshop, Corel, Piranesi, and other various graphic softwares. I would love to hear what you have to say.

If your processor is running 3 Ghz and up, and you have pci-e, as far as SU goes, there may not be any improvement. 4G. ram is still a lot of memory unless you use memory intensive programs like renderers, or run many apps. at once. A very fast drive on the bus is important.

[Daniel]

You might want to check out the Hardware Recommendations thread in the Sketchup Discussions board.