Revit 2013 and XP SP2

[MikeJarosz]

The Autodesk System requirements for R2013 ( http://usa.autodesk.com/revit/system-requirements/ ) lists Windows XP SP2 as acceptable for entry level configuration. Everyone I have spoken to about this has told me Windows 7 is REQUIRED.

Has anyone attempted to install 2013 on XP, as ADesk claims is possible? If so, what's your experience been like?

[gbrowne]

Mike, we're using it on HP Z400's with 4gig ram, XP SP 2 and Nvidia Quadro FX380 cards with the latest drivers. The result is pretty terrible. Frequent crashes, extremely unstable graphics, prints with information missing, etc etc. Hope this helps.

[MikeJarosz]

We were hoping to start a new project on 2012, which we have working on all our machines, until the MEP engineer came on board. He explained that Revit MEP was behind Architecture in the development cycle. For architecture, R2013 is an incremental uggrade, but for MEP he described R2013 as a huge improvement. We may be forced to get new hardware to run it.

[DaveP]

I installed RAC 2013 at home just to test out a few ideas, but not for production.
Yeesh! XP? We weren't able to buy new machines in 2008 & 2009, and we were REALLY suffering with XP. People were keeping spreadsheets on how often it crashed, and how much work they lost.
Finally in 2010 we started buying again. 64-bit Win7 with 8 Gig memory, and it was like night and day. NO more crashes and the load time went from minutes to seconds.

Regardless of your version of Revit, you will not regret upgrading to Win7-64.
A decent machine is not that expensive and the ROI makes it a no-brainer.
(Memory's really cheap, too. Don't skimp there, either)

[MikeJarosz]

I understand completely when you say you couldn't buy new machines for a couple of years. Actually, I'm sitting in front of a 64 bit Dell T3500 Win 7 machine with two screens. My concern is that we have some older machines that I would like to use if I can. We are a consulting firm and almost every project we do is a joint venture. Keeping our various projects on the same build as our partners is getting to be a nightmare. I have managed to get all our projects onto 2011 and 2012 only. Now someone shows up wanting 2013, and for a good reason, no less. And 2014 is only six months away!

Has anyone considered keeping the old hardware and upgrading from XP to W7?

[vgonzales]

Has anyone considered keeping the old hardware and upgrading from XP to W7?

My company sells the old computers (notebooks) to the employees. These old computers have been re-imaged and only have the bare bones OS installed. Many are only good for web browsing, email, word processing and spreadsheets. Some companies like mine know the value of purchasing computers every couple of months to replace the ones that are 3 years old or more. One or two notebooks with Win7 Pro 64-bit OS every three months is better than buying 10 computers at one time.

[DaveP]

Speaking of only 6 months out:
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/02/upgrade-to-windows-8-pro-for-39-99.aspx

[MikeJarosz]

One or two notebooks with Win7 Pro 64-bit OS every three months is better than buying 10 computers at one time.

You're running Revit from notebooks?

[patricks]

Yeah we have an XP x86 machine in our conference room, and fire up Revit on that from time to time during client meetings. Man does that thing CRAWL in 2012. We may just have to replace that one for 2013.

All our production machines run Win7 64 with anywhere from 9 to 16 GB RAM.