Hardware recommendations

remus

Ive got a bamboo. It works fine for me, although i imagine if your going to be doing a lot of drawing in photoshop then it would be orth forking out the extra cash for an intuos.

Gaieus

Hi Tiger and welcome to the forum. There is a wacom tablet topic already, please, go on with this discussion there as this topic is dedicated to the performance of SU on different computers.

Thanks.

adrianam

@sketchup guide tommy said:

Hi Everyone,

I've created a survey that asks a few questions about your computer. Not to worry, this survey is totally anonymous. If SketchUp is screaming fast on your computer, we want to know. If SketchUp barely runs at all, we want to know that too. If you have a number of
computers, new and old, feel free to take the survey multiple times. To view the survey, please visit the following page:

Moved Permanently

(spreadsheets.google.com)

Once I have enough data, I'll post the results for everyone to see. With your help, this will be the most comprehensive collection of hardware feedback that's ever been gathered for SketchUp.
.

Great Survey.. the final one is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pdV8e-LldOEpQw6k3-ovifg&hl=en

I'm looking at getting either a Geforce 8500GT Mg 512MB or upgrading to Geforce 9500GT Mg
512MB video card for a new PC (Core2 Quad, Asus P5 pro motherboard)... I'll be running Vista home premium.

After looking at the results in the survey I kind of wonder if I am heading in a safe direction with the 9500 GT videocard. Has anyone had "excellent" results with one of these using Vista?

jml79

Just a short note on processors and GPU's. Because SketchUp is not multi core aware but it is clock dependant, an inexpensive but high clock dual core CPU will actually give you faster results than a slower quad core cpu. I recommend a dual core so that the OS and other apps such as virus scans etc can run on the first core leaving you with an empty core for sketchup. This only applies to sketchup though, as soon as you use a good renderer like Indigo the quad core even with slightly slower clocks per core will vastly outrun the dual core. as for the graphics, I would look into linux game benchmarks to find out about OpenGL performance as this is the main api used by linux. oddly on an old ati rage 128 that I have in an old laptop, sketchup is actually usable under linux and wine but totally useless under win2k. That being said for a budget minded system for sketchup I would buy a fast AMD dual core cpu like an 5600X2 and the best video card I could afford (check out tomshardware vga lists for the current month and buy something recommended between $125 and $200) 4GB of ram and a fast HD. All of this should set you back between $450 and $600 (less in the US). for rendering you need something bigger or you could use a commercial render farm like ranch computing and save yourself a crapload of money while getting awesome performance (renders for as little as $10) I run a system similar to this and upgrade just behind the curve for cheap every 2 years. And I can make my own renders but would love to have a few quad cores sitting around to make into render pigs, running linux of course. Just my thoughts on the best bang for my limited pc bucks.

neocitra

I use Sketchup extensively, at work and home. At work I use Core2 6600 2.4GHz, 2G ram and Geforce 9600 GT.
At home, I got Quad Core Q6600 running 3.3 GHz OCed, 8G ram, and ATI EAH 3870. Comparing these two, work computer is faster in sketchup (didn’t make much difference in 32bit XP pro or Vista x64 home system. 4G Ram vs 8G Ram). So I updated the driver at home, but still slower. Then I knowticed something in Preferences OpenGL Capabilities box. Home system had only 1 True Color (# -4 Colors -True Color Precision –Medium Shadows –Yes Anti-Alias 0x) , while work had 3 True Color (# -16,28,40 Colors -True Color Precision –Medium Shadows –Yes Anti-Alias 0x,2x,4x) so I did some surching on the net and found this site: http://www.geeks3d.com/?page_id=7 This shows NVIDIA Forceware had more OpenGL extensions than ATI Catalyst. In my conclusion, Video Card driver Compatibility to OpenGL is most important for Sketchup.

Tinux

Hi, i have an HD 4870 (ATI GPU) card with the Catalyst 8.9 and a E6600 @ 3,4Ghz and it's not fast on Sketchup. However at work, a 7600GT (Nvidia GPU) works very well !

So i think like neocitra that the drivers are more important than the hardware configuration of the card...

But if somoene got something good to boost ATI performance on SU, i'll appreciate !!

Thanx

chango70

My workplace just bought a spanking new Dell computer with Q9550 CPU @ 4x2.83GHz and Nvidia 8800 GT Graphics card. Now I can wiz through all the models that I struggled on with my 8600M GT laptop. I recommend it to anyone. You do however need to update the graphic driver has the default one with Dell gave some diplay glitches when using SU.

neocitra

I just upgraded my HD EAH 3870 video card to GTX 260 and here is my synopsis.
Comparing EAH3870, 9600GT and GTX260, I would Pick 9600GT. First of all unless ATI brings out more compatible driver for EAH 3870, it’s not worth it. (strictly speaking for SU purposes) SU bench mark for EAH3870 looks good as 9600GT but when you try to orbit or zoom, real-time motion is very jerky. GTX260 has best SU bench mark but BM doesn’t mean anything to me. Because real-time motion of model that is 30mg (which most of my model is) or over, box outline of the group starts to kick in and with this mode, speed is same for 9600GT and GTX260. With price tag that’s 1/2 as GTX260, I recommend 9600GT out of These three.

sasrabirawa

I use Dual Core 2.0 GB, DDR II 2GB, Nvidia GE Force 256 but it still very slow to run a render Software such as Podium or VRay. Took about 20 minutes to render in 1024 x 786 pixel JPG. Could you help me to adjust my hardware, plz..??

plot-paris

depending on the complexity of the scene (and the amount of reflections/refractions/bump maps you use 20 minutes are fairly fast, as far as I know. (for comparison: for a proper render with an unbiased engine (Indigo for example) I leave my machine running for the whole night, something like 18 hours...)

Jackson

sasrabirawa,

Jakob's right, if you think 20 mins is slow for a 1000px wide photo-real render then you're going to be disappointed for a couple of years yet.... at least until Intel start releasing multi-multi-core processors and software starts utilising them. I was used to leaving Vue overnight and Maxwell for a week or two (see my spec below) to get decent results until VRay blew them out of the water (in terms of speed).

solo

I agree, 20 minutes for a render that size (assuming there was reflection and lights) is pretty fast actually.

rparsons

First of all if I am posting in the wrong area I am truly sorry. I really appreciate all of the knowledge in this forum. Since I do not understand all of the information and terms I hope someone will answer if the following system will be good for sketchup and rendering (Kerkythea).

Dell Precision Workstation T5400, Windows Xp Pro 64bit, Quad Core INtel Xeon Processor E5540 (2.83GHz,2X6M l2,1333), 4GB DDR2 SDRAM FBD memory,667MHz, 512mb PCIe x16 NVidia Quadro FX 1700.

Any info would be greatly appreciated and again if this is in the wrong place please let me know where it should be. Thanks, Ron

solo

rparsons,

Firstly welcome to GSCF.

Your rig as noted above is a great choice I do not see you having any problems with it.

remus

As solo said, that rig sounds like it should be pretty solid. Get a good motherboard to go with it and you should have a good setup which should be good for some expansion, as well, if you ever feel the need.

rparsons

Thanks Solo for your quick response. I feel more confident now about my decision. Any input from others would be also be appreciated.
Ron

sadz

Dear all,

I have only been using SU for a couple of months now but I have upgraded to working on a desktop as aposed to my laptop which was struggling.

I went for a triple core processor with 4GB RAM and an NVidia GForce 9600. However it was still not giving me the result I had hoped for. When orbiting the model, many of the components were still being shown as a boundary box and the animation was jerky and sluggish.

So I upgraded the graphics card to an NVidia Quadro 1700. Surely this would do the trick.

Afraid not. What I thought was a hardware issue may well be human error. The model I am working on at the moment is 28.9MB. I feel the answer may lie with layers? Am I right? Any tips?

rparsons

Thanks Remus and so I am not repeating myself I want to say thanks in advance to all who choose to respond to my earlier post. This forum is fantastic!

Ron

remus

Sadz, the first thing to check is whether you have hardware acceleration on.

window->preferences->openGL and then turn on hardware acceleration and fast feedback.

If that doesnt work, how many faces are there in your model? this is the main thing that slows down a model in SU.

chango70

Has anyone had experience with SU on some of the GTX 200 class NVidia chips? like the GTX 260 and the GTC 280? I still haven't bought that desktop yet as I am waiting for the new i7Core to come out. Just read somewhere that the slowest one on release will be marginally slower that then QX9775 Extreme edition CPU , in benchmarks anyway. I can't wait.