System requirements - Not Autodesk minimum

[Chad Smith]

I am still evaluating Revit for our office, and was wondering what the recommended system specs should be. I can't find anything on this forum or at alt.cad.revit.

I have seen the Autodesk minimum, and they seem quite low.

I have been evaluating Revit on an AMD 1200 with 768 RAM, 32MB video, and on small files it struggles and with the larger example files is dead slow. :(

I would like to get some input on systems specs that you the users are running it on.

What are you using?
Is it enough grunt?
If not, then what would you upgrade to?

Thanks.

[Steve_Stafford]

At work I have: P4 2.4ghz w/ 512mb and a basic video card (I say basic because I don't know what it is at the moment, a Dell PC with whatever IT ordered)

At home: I have an AMD 1700XP w/ 1gb ram and a Matrox Millenium G450 Dual head card.

Both are quite satisfying though quite different in specs. My prior work PC, a PIII 833 w/ 384 mb was sluggish and frustrating.

In some instances additional ram can "improve" a weaker processor but not much if you are not taxing your available ram already. Effective use of worksets can offset the "load" an individual PC has to carry too.

If I were going to generalize, okay, I am....I'd say at a minimum, ideally a PC should have a 1.5 - 2.0 ghz processor w/ 1 gb ram minimum with a quality video card. If you are tackling larger projects, you can't go wrong with buying as much processor and ram as is available and can afford.

[aaronrumple]

Min: Alienware 3Ghz Area-51 Laptop.... and send me one too.

...but seriously. A good 1.5-2 GHz seems to do pretty good. 1 Mb memory is the good value. Honestly, I never really noticed a big difference from a 32Mb video to a 64 Mb video. Maybe that 128Mb video in the Area-51 you send me will be noticable.

[Martin P]

We are just getting rid of - as we speak - my computer, which to be fair has been running Revit - but not very quickly. It is a P3 800mhz - 512ram - 64mb geoforce graphics card. - The graphics card was an upgrade from the on board one, and to be honest - I didnt noticae ANY difference with the graphics card. The memory was upgraded from 256 - I did notice a big difference with that.

Then one of the guys got a new 2.0ghz P4 - 512 ram - on board graphics card, the difference was really noticeable, much smoother, much quicker to do EVERYTHING, including drawing lines!! - I run it at home on an AMD 1700, with 512 ram - and it works very well on that.

So.. I am now getting a P4 2.4ghz 512 ram in work - I expect the difference to be startling compared to the P3 800mhz

The stated Minimum Requirements will run Revit, Just very slowly. to the point that anything other than the average house is really not worth doing
as bigger stuff is like trying to run under water.

[Chad Smith]

Thanks for the inputs guys. :D :D :D

[hand471037]

My computer is pretty much the same as Martin P's: it's a P-III 900 w/512 megs ram and a 64 meg video card. It's slow at times. I would definately recommend a P4 or upper-speed Athlon (I run Revit at home on a Athlon MP 1.5 and the difference is *very* noticable).

Duals only help if your going to be rendering a lot and/or doing more than one thing at a time. Both my systems are duals and I love being able to set up a render, and then opening up Word and writting out a memo or opening up Mozilla and posting to this web board. :)

But if you're not doing much rendering, and you need a real production machine for heavy drafting, your money would be better spent on the fastest P4/Athlon you can get along with at least 1 gig of memory (or more). The dual thing doesn't help Revit very much, IMHO.

Finally, the machine I've got at work uses RDRAM rather than SDRAM. What this means is that it's an error-checking memory that is much more stable than typical systems. This comptuer I've got is Dell's lower end server/high end workstation (for it's day) and as such is very very stable (much more so than my home computer, which is a home-built clone on a Tyan Tiger motherboard w/SDRAM). This stablity I think lets me get away with more on Revit than I normally would; I normally (when Rendering) push it to the limits and have vitural memory sizes being used by Revit that are greater than the phsyical memory of my system without too many problems. On my home computer when I do that I start having problems; but my work computer just gets slow- but it doesn't crash and it finishes the job. But RDRAM is *way* more expensive than SDRAM, so while I think it's kinda cool that my work computer has it, I certainly wouldn't pay for it, and would just put up with the fact that the system is a little more unstable. I would love to double the amount of RAM in my work system, but it would cost more than buying a bare-bones P4 system...

Just some other things to think about.

[Anonymous]

isnt graphics card memory just for dealing with textures?


Honestly, I never really noticed a big difference from a 32Mb video to a 64 Mb video. Maybe that 128Mb video in the Area-51 you send me will be noticable. :?