Hardware recommendations

[francois le francais]

Hello, I'm new on sketchucation, and I 'd like to have some advice. I'm just done with architecture studies and owner of a new macbook pro unibody 15" 2.8Ghz - 4gb Ram - 512Mo dedicated. Sketchup pro 7 runs perfectly my diploma files (4mb, without any google warehouse components and shadows activated) with the better battery life configuration, so i don't have to switch. I haven't worked with sketchup for more than 20 minutes (just for a test) with this config. I was before running xp with nvidia 7600gt (256) and thas was terribly slow...

I have just noticed a problem with zooming in edges, that appeared with my old config, and appears with both graphic cards config on the macbook too.

The fact is that for other reasons, i asked apple a return, and i'm not sure i'll order the same config, because the 9400 integrated card seems to be enough to me. I'm planning using vectorworks(2D), cinema4D+V-ray, photoshop, and no games. The point is that if i choose the basic apple config, my processor will be only 2.53 and less disk space (250 to 500).

I'd like to hear what u think about that. Is there some mac users who can confirm or not what i'm saying. It's not really a money problem, but if i won't use this card, it's a bit stupid to buy it. Regards

PS : i d like to make some test with big scenes if u can send me some...

[brodie]

If those are the programs you're running I would hardly factor SketchUp into your decision. Your main hogs will probably be Photoshop and VRay for RAM and Vray will also chew through whatever CPU you give it. You may or may not notice a difference in sketchup or C4D between those two specs, but you'll definately notice a difference in your rendering time with Vray.

-Brodie

[francois le francais]

Thank u Brodie for advices.

@unknownuser said:

I would hardly factor SketchUp into your decision

Look at my post http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=20076&p=189659#p189659 and you'll understand that, it's hard to notice a difference with sketchup.

Sure v-ray render will be faster, but once u notice the similar graphic performance with both specs (for cad i mean, i'm not a gamer), don't u think that the price difference between those 2 specs is a bit exagerate for faster renders... They both have 4gb Ram, one is 1599€, the other 2099(French prices).

[brodie]

Yeah, I would have expected a bit more of a difference than that but not much. With SU my understanding is the CPU is pretty much in control of the geometry while the graphics card handles the materials and shadows. That doesn't leave a whole lot for a high end card to do. If you test it out with a large model with lots of big materials and shadows on you might see the gap widen a bit but I'm not sure offhand what the difference is between the to graphics cards.

As far as the price difference, yeah it sounds like a pretty big jump for .3 ghz of RAM. If you've got a desktop at home that you can do rendering on I'd stick to the cheaper one. But if this is your only machine maybe it's worth it to you to spend the extra money. Only thing I can say is that if you're going to spend extra money on anything with a rendering computer it should be the CPU. Adding RAM usually isn't too difficult and even upgrading graphics cards isn't so bad but upgrading CPU's is pretty tricky.

-Brodie

[charly2008]

Hi to ALL,

I want to upgrade my desktop PC in the near future, especially for the use of SketchUp and high poly counts for example and for rendering purposes and for photo editing.

After some research on the Internet and in the forum, I would prefer the Intel i7 860 processor instead an i7 920, 8GB Memory (DDR3), and Windows 7 64-bit.

The graphics card I'm not sure what is the best choice for these purposes. I prefer a Nvidia graphics adapter, because I rode with them always good.

I do not know what's really important at the graphics card for the above mentioned purposes. And the many I've read on the internet has confused me even more. And the product range confused me too.

And I can't really see, what is the most important factor that influences SU's performance and the performance of render machines.

For Which type would you advise me?

Nvidia Quadro FX 580 (G96) 512MB GDDR3 / 32 CUDA Processing Cores / 2 Display Ports und 1 Dual-Link DVI-I Output
Entry-Level Productivity CAD / DCC

Nvidia Quadro FX 380 (G96)Entry-Level 256MB GDDR3 / 16 CUDA Processing Cores / 2 Dual-Link DVI-I Outputs

200 Series
GeForce GTX 295
GeForce GTX 285
GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 275
GeForce GTX 260

9 Series
GeForce 9800 GX2
GeForce 9800 GTX+
GeForce 9800 GTX
GeForce 9800 GT
GeForce 9600 GT
GeForce 9600 GSO
GeForce 9500 GT
GeForce 9400 GT

Any help and advices would be very appreciated.

Karlheinz

[brodie]

Unfortunately graphics cards aren't used to their full potential very often. In SU your graphics card will basically be used for your shadows and textures while geometry will be taken care of by 1 core of your processor. In most rendering engines out there your graphics card does nothing for your actual rendering times. It only helps if you have a "studio" in your rendering program that will let you rotate the model around, but once you click Render your graphics card isn't really used. So in that vein, graphics cards haven't been very crucial. You could get a pretty decent card and be fine.

HOWEVER, the next wave in rendering engines is to use the graphics card power rather than or in addition to your processor power which allows for nearly real time rendering. So if you want to think ahead towards the future you may want to buy the best card you can. Before you decide you may want to check out some of the rendering engines out there that do gpu rendering like v-ray rt. they may have some good suggestions on what they like to see in a graphics card.

-brodie

[Anssi]

Charly,

The QuadroFX cards you mention would probably work OK, but their performance is not too stellar. For a QuadroFX card, I would choose one with a 4-digit model number (and the 512 Mb graphics memory is the minimum recommended by Google, although SU seems to work OK with much less - the laptop I am writing this with has only 64 Mb). If you cannot afford that, go with a GeForce.

Anssi

[tfdesign]

Anssi, I think Thom mentioned earlier in the thread that SketchUp requires more CPU power than GPU. I think this is true. Bus speed to the processor is also important, I think? My HP workstation I've had to stop using, despite it having an Nvidia 512mb card, It was a P4 (single core- XP 32bit), but ran at 3gHz or something. I've swapped to this Macbook Pro, which although is 3 years old, has a higher bus speed, and is dual-core. The GPU is an ATI X1600 with 128mb vram, and the performance is better (but is now beginning to show cracks!)

I do need a faster machine. Mac or PC, I would prefer another Mac, but it's what gets the job done for the minimum price. But then again, I've had 3 PC's go wrong on me over the last 4 years, but this (Apple) laptop is still going strong! So what's the cheapest now? Do I blow £2000 on a new Mac, or £700 on a PC that may go wrong again??

[charly2008]

Annssi, Brodie and tfdesign, thank you for your explanations.

I have researched a bit and I think the GTX 260 seems to be more interesting for Gamers. While its Quadro FX 580 seems to be better suited for semi professionel grafic workstations.

That should not be a statement it is only a question too. For what are the bold marked points important?

Product Specifications PNY Nvidia Quadro FX 580

* 512MB GDDR3 frame buffer
* 128-bit memory interface
* 25.6GB/sec memory bandwidth
* DVI-I dual link and two DisplayPort
* PCI Express x16 Gen 2 bus interface (compatible with Gen 1)
* 40W maximum power consumption
* No auxiliary power required
* Active fansink thermal management
* ATX form factor, 4.376” (H) x 6.875” (L)

NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 by PNY Architecture
* 128-bit color precision
* 10-bit per color display pipeline
* Unlimited fragment instruction
* Unlimited vertex instruction
* 3D volumetric texture support
* Hardware-accelerated, antialiased points & lines
*** Hardware OpenGL overlay planes**
* Hardware-accelerated, two-sided lighting
* Hardware-accelerated clipping planes
* 3rd-generation occlusion culling
* Window ID clipping functionality
* Hardware-accelerated line stippling

Shading Architecture
* Full Shader Model 4.0 (OpenGL 3.0/DirectX 10 class)
* Long fragment programs (unlimited instructions)
* Long vertex programs (unlimited instructions)
* Looping and subroutines (up to 256 loops per vertex program)
* Dynamic flow control
* Conditional execution

High Level Shader Languages

* Optimized complier for Cg and Microsoft HLSL
* OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 10 support
* Open source compiler

High-Resolution Antialiasing

* Rotated Grid Full-Scene Antialiasing (RG FSAA)
* 16x FSAA dramatically reduces visual aliasing artifacts or “jaggies” at resolution up to 1920x1200

Display Resolution Support

* Dual DisplayPort support— ultra-high-resolution panels (up to 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz)
* Single dual-link DVI-I output drives digital display at resolutions up to 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz

nView Architecture

* Advanced multi-display desktop & application management, seamlessly integrated into Microsoft Windows.

[wm_cheng]

I plan to be building a i7 Core 920 soon and received a handful of "hand-me-down" graphics cards which I hope you can help me decide on which ones would be best for SketchUp use;

ATI Radeon 5850
ATI FireGL v8650
ATI FireGL v7600
ATI Radeon 4850

I think the 5850 is the newest of the bunch (but it primarily for gaming) whereas the FireGL is workstation class with 2Gb of memory, but it IS 2 years old (which is an eternity by computer time!). Which would be better to use? Would I benefit from "Cross-Fire" linking of them in SketchUp? Can I cross-fire link a Radeon with a FireGL?

I hope to build the new rig with 6Gb RAM and Windows 7 64bit - anything I should be aware of as it pertains to SketchUp?

Thanks,

[brodie]

I can't speak to those specific model numbers but I've had both Radeon and FireGL and have run into quarky issues with SU. Some of them have been detrimental (selecting faces behind the one I selected) and some of them have only been annoyances (odd coloring of selected faces). If you browse around this thread you'll see all sorts of recommendations against ATI cards in conjunction with SketchUp.

That said, if they're free it's worth giving them a shot before you spend cold hard cash on an nVidia card. But what might end up being the determiner isn't so much which card is best but which card plays nicest with SketchUp. I'd start with whichever card is the newest and has the latest drivers unless someone speaks up who has one of these cards in particular.

-Brodie

[Anssi]

I would start by trying the FireGLs. Last week I had, after being sceptical for a long time, to admit that a mobile FireGL in a Lenovo notebook seemed to work OK with SU. However, the OS was the tried and tested Windows XP 32-bit. So it is definitely a question of finding the right drivers for the OS.

As for performance, I don't think you will have any problems about that. SU is still quite CPU-oriented (and single-threaded), and any decent graphics card will do. In comparison to my old P IV notebook with mobile Geforce graphics a quad-core Xeon with a middlerange QuadroFX is noticeably, but not explosively faster, but the older one is still quite usable, at least with my small models.

I understand that linking two graphics cards only speeds up gaming (Direct3D) performance, but has no effect on OpenGL (that SU uses)

Anssi

[charly2008]

I have now taken a decision for the following equipment:

Processor : Core I7 920 4x2,67Ghz

Mainboard : Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 Chipsset

Memory : 6 GB DDR3 1333Mhz

GPU : Nvidia Geforce GTX 275 896MB

Operating Sytem : Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit

[chango70]

Some good info on graphics cards

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=544&card2=552

[chango70]

I heard the latest batch of ATI graphics cards (Radeon HD 5770 and HD 5970)have taken the long held performance crown from Nvidia. Whilst they might be gaming champs do they play nice with Sketchup? Has any early adopters had any experience? I am currently thinking about jumping the bandwagon but are worried about the old ATI driver reputation.

[thomthom]

I just got a new computer at work with and ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
Powerful beast - but some graphical glitches on occasion while working with SU.

Powerful Hardware is one thing - but it doesn't help much if the software isn't to par. IMO - i still prefer nVidia as their drivers and OpenGL support seems more stable.

[chango70]

Cheers. I guess I will have to wait until Jan next year for the next batch of competing Nvidia GPUs (as rumors go). I wish ATI would just sort out their OpenGL driver issues.

[thomthom]

I want my Quadro FX 3500 back....

[charly2008]

Hi,
finally, my new PC is ready for use. I've installed all the software again. Only with the driver for the Creative Audigy sound card, there are problems. Also, some older programs can't be installed any more. Now I have to try the power the PC brings.

I have selected the following equipment:
Processor: Intel Core i7 860
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3, Intel P55
RAM: 8 GB
Grafics card: XFX GeForce GTS 250 512 MB
two SATA Harddisk each 350 GB
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

The first test with Sketchup delivered the following results:

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[brodie]

Good looking computer and good benchmarks there.

-Brodie