Happy with your Hardware?

[Jrobker]

I am upgrading my machine and I don't want minimum specs.
I am using MEP 2009 and 2010 vertically.
If there is anyone happy with the computing power they have, can you please let me know what your specs are.
I am doing research, but I would like some user feedback.

Does a dual CPU have any advantage?
Does a solid state hard drive have any advantage?
2009-->OpenGL, 2010-->DirectX, is there a Excellent choice for a video card?

Who's machine out there rips?
Is anyone using a MAC with parallels, bootcamp or crossover?

I don't work on small projects. The last 3 projects were a 14 floor downtown skyscraper, a 6 floor medical research building and a 11 story courts building. These files get huge and performance really suffers. I need something that rips.

[smcmillin]

Heres what you have to do, go to Hill Valley and find a man there named Doctor Emmett Brown. He has a time machine that will take you into the future where you can get a PC with a 16 terahertz 32 core cpu....

I too would like to know if anyone has found an answer to speed revit up on the hardware side.

P.S. Don't buy any sports almanacs on your adventure.

[Jrobker]

Well, Doctor Emmett Brown says not to bother purchasing his outrageously priced machines. He tells me no matter what I do, nothing will improve the performance of Revit. It's a software issue not a hardware. I kinda figured so, but was optimistic that somebody out there has the magic combination of hardware.

[james.klatt]

64-bit dual core 8gb RAM and 750mb or 1.5gb video card would be my recommendation. I do not know all the other specifics you are asking about, sorry. However getting a flux capacitor could also do the trick. =)

Also use 2010 revit MEP, good performance gains on large projects from 2009.

[RobertB]

Originally Posted by james.klatt

8gb RAM

Only 8GB?! For a machine that "rips" I would say at least 12GB.

[james.klatt]

Only reason I say that is we moved from 3GB with 32 bit (3GB switch) to 8 GB with 64 bit and the speed of the machine did not drastically improve. So I do not see the need for overloading the RAM. The extra RAM did prevent us from running out of RAM and crashing.

This was on a project that was about 75MB MEP file and over 500MB in linked models. With all that loaded we still only clocked the RAM usage at 5 GB and that is 3D fine detail/shading w/ edges. 350k sq ft new model and 350k sq ft existing model.

So based on that experience throwing a lot of RAM at the software will not fix the problem.

Just my .02.

[RobertB]

Good to know.

[Jrobker]

Thats what we encountered. We have a new station that has 16GB of ram and it actually runs Revit slower than my 3GB. I am getting the feeling that anything above minimum has no impact on performance.

[nubrun.188780]

It has always been my experience that you run out of computing power before you run out of ram. As long as you have at least 3gb of memory I would say get the fastest processsor you can.

Also I have not played too much with 2010, but was the ability to utilize multiple cpu cores added?

[ran.154477]

Don't trust Dr, Emmett Brown. He works for Charles Widmore. They're currently using all the 16gb machines to find the island.