Revit 2013 Upgraded Hardware No Performance Improvement

[mattlberge357491]

I'm helping my new employer transition to Revit from AutoCAD. I have some experience using Revit on my fairly new computer at home. However, my employers computers are from maybe 2005 and not quite as sophisticated. I've done some research on what piece(s) of hardware are most critical to performance and I seem to be getting conflicting information so I'm posting my situation below. If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it.

***

We have two systems we are considering installing our new version of Revit on (it is not a network license so once we install it is on that computer alone, at least for the short term).

System A's original specs were:
Dell Precision 380
Intel Pentium R D CPU 3.4 GHz
2 GB RAM
128 mb NVIDIA Quadro FX400 video card
64 bit system
Windows XP 64 Bit OS

System B's Specs are:
HP Compaq dc5750
AMD Anthlon 64 x2 Dual Core processor 4000+ 2.09 GHz
2 GB RAM
Two ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 display adaptors
32 bit system
Windows XP 32 Bit OS

While trying to run the exact same rendering on trial versions of Revit 2013. On system a the render time was about 10 minutes. On system B the render time was about 6 minutes.

I spoke to a salesman at Best Buy as to why a 32 Bit system was running so much better than the 32 bit system. I asked if upgrading the RAM would help. He suggested upgrading the RAM and investigating the video card.

I passed this recommendation on to my boss and we installed 4 more GB of RAM and a 1 GB NVidia Quadro 600.

System A's new specs are:
Dell Precision 380
Intel Pentium R D CPU 3.4 GHz
5.97 GB RAM (2 old slots of 1 GB and 2 slots of new 2 GB)
1 Gb NVIDIA Quadro 600 video card
64 bit system
Windows XP 64 Bit OS

The first time I ran the rendering the time actually doubled from around 10 min to 19:01. I subsequently copied the same Revit file from the server to the local hard drive of both machines. The new render times were about 10 minutes each.

For a frame of reference, my personal computer runs the rendering in about 2-3 minutes, it's an i7 w/ 6 Gb RAM, Windows 7, a 1 GB video card. Not really a fair bench mark since it is a new system with a different OS and actually has Revit 2012. But I just though I'd add that piece of info.

Why didn't I see an improvement in performance on the 64 bit system?

Is it:
A.) Is the processor in fact the bottle neck and not the RAM or the video card and the hardware upgrades I made won't help rendering performance?
B.) Did I need to remove the existing RAM because 1 GB modules and 2 GB modules cobbled together is hurting performance?
C.) The video card seems to be running fine and I did use the standard install disc of drivers that came with the hardware, but is it possible I failed to install the video card correctly?
D.) Is it possible that the trial version of Revit 2013 installed on the 64 bit system is in fact the 32 bit system and that is the bottleneck?

I know that is a lot of information to type, but if anybody out there has any ideas I'd be grateful. Thanks in advance. :smile:

[damon.sidel]

I'm not an expert, but I'm happy to report some of the findings at our firm. One big problem with 2012 was that it simply didn't run well on WinXP 64. It was OK on WinXP 32 and Win7. That may be something. Good luck! (For what it's worth, for the time you and others are spending figuring this out and the time you'll spend in the long run not waiting for renderings and other things to finish, it would probably be cheaper to just buy new machines. 7 years old it way beyond the useful lifespan of today's computers.)

[cliff collins]

Sorry but those old machines are really not worth upgrading--they are long past their lifespan. You can easily replace them with newer, better machines with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, an i7 or Xeon CPU, 12 or more GB of RAM,
and a newer GPU/card with 1 or 2 GB of memory for not too much more than you will spend on parts and time upgrading those old machines.

[mattlberge357491]

Thanks for the input!

I kind thought that might be the case. But just out of curiosity, was there ever a consensus on what is more critical for Revit renderings, processor, RAM, video card, etc.

[cliff collins]

For renderings--Processor is most important. As I recall, prior to Revit 2012, it was limited to 4 cores--but now it is unlimited. So for rendering, the faster and more cores the better. RAM is probably the second most important factor, the GPU/card does basically nothing for rendering, since Revit uses Mental Ray which is a CPU calculation-heavy raytracer.

[patricks]

Two things: for one, those machines are really old and not worth sinking any money into, as was already mentioned. For two, Windows XP x64 was really MS's first attempt at a 64-bit operating system, and it was a pretty bad one, at least compared to a modern OS like Windows 7 x64 (which is pretty much standard these days).

I recommend something like a Dell Studio XPS machine with i7 processor, at least 12 GB RAM, and a 1GB graphics card. You can spec a machine like that for *wow* under $1500 on the Dell website - the XPS 8500. Or you can go to 16 GB RAM for only $100 more. And it includes a 24" 1080p monitor (though I'm partial to the 24" Ultrasharp 1920x1200 display myself).

That would **greatly** increase your Revit performance over those machines you have now, so much so that the productivity improvement would likely pay for the machines in short order.

*edit* Don't fall into the money trap of Dell Precision workstation machines and nVIDIA Quadro graphics cards. Those could easily send the cost of a workstation north of $3K, and they're totally unnecessary for awesome Revit performance.