Multi Processor?

[paradox5582]

Is there any indications from autodesk if they will be supporting a multi-processor system in the future? My company is planning on purchasing a computer specifically for rendering stills and video in revit. Ive been given a budget of between 4 and 7 thousand doallars, wich I know should be able to purchase the fastest stuff out there. Should I go ahead and order somthing with dual Xeon's in the hope that revit will support it eventually? This is what im considering.


PROCESSOR Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5450 (3.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
2ND PROCESSOR Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5450 (3.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
VIDEO CARD 512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX1700, Dual Monitor DVI Capable edit
MEMORY 4GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS) edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™ and Roxio Creator™ Dell Ed
RAID CONFIGURATION C1 All SATA drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration
HARD DRIVE 160GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
MONITOR Dell 24 inch E248FP Widescreen Flat Panel, Analog edit

[Henry D]

This is very similar to the system I have, except mine is a MacPro. Buying this Dual Quad machine was the best thing I ever did for increasing my productivity (after dumping ADT and switching to Revit :lol:). Everything is instantaneous...no more waiting.

Revit only uses 1 processor, but you can see from the benchmark results that a Dual Quad is faster in other task besides rendering.


http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=3689&page=3

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=71482

[aaronrumple]

My company is planning on purchasing a computer specifically for rendering stills and video in revit. Ive been given a budget of between 4 and 7 thousand doallars, wich I know should be able to purchase the fastest stuff out there.

Rendering in Revit does use multi-processors. It just doesn't use them while modeling.
However, it is still a slow system for rendeing. You may want to look at Viz, Max or another rending system if you will be doing a lot of video. (Revit videos for the quality I would expect will take weeks.)

Or wait until Autodesk incorporates Mental Ray into Revit like they did with AutoCAD. That may be a long wait however.

[gordonp147484]

Rendering in Revit does use multi-processors. It just doesn't use them while modeling.
However, it is still a slow system for rendeing. You may want to look at Viz, Max or another rending system if you will be doing a lot of video. (Revit videos for the quality I would expect will take weeks.)

Or wait until Autodesk incorporates Mental Ray into Revit like they did with AutoCAD. That may be a long wait however.

The other thing to remember is that while Mental Ray likely will make it into Revit someday, Backburner will likely not. When you have a nice machine for rendering, AND you can have every machine in your office rendering overnight and over the weekend, that starts to open up some possibilities for animations and such. And for that, you will need Viz/Max.

For dedicated (high end) rendering Viz or Max is superior in many ways. For quick, single view, "design" renderings, Revit works well. But those rendering probably should be done by the design team, not a dedicated rendering department, anyway. At least that seems to work better in my experience.

Best,
Gordon

[aaronrumple]

And for that, you will need Viz/Max.


Actually you'll need Max now as the number of nodes Viz can use has been whacked by Autodesk in 2008 from 8 nodes to 2.

...just part of you subscription fee, you know.

[GuyR]

If you're serious about rendering you probably want to up the RAM to 8GB and get dual monitors.

Guy

[iru69]

Tough call on the timing of all this. I think a rendering machine in particular would benefit from the new faster Xeons on the 1600 FSB along with 800MHz RAM. Unfortunately, those chips just came out last month and haven't really trickled into the pipeline yet (rumor has it that Apple is buying up all the 3.2GHz Quad chips for their Mac Pro refresh). It's just that rendering is so RAM intensive. But, who knows how long before Dell and HP refresh their workstations to take advantage of the faster chips (or maybe it's just taking Intel a while to fill the supply pipe). There's no way for me to quantify the potential speed increase, but it will cost more money, so if you're already pushing your upper budget limit, it's a moot point anyway.

I'd consider Vista x64 and would second the notion of 8GB RAM. You might consider ordering the system with the minimum RAM configuration possible and then going to crucial.com (or equivalent) and ordering 4 sticks of 2GB - I'm guessing it would be a lot cheaper.

160GB is not that much if you're working with very big video files on a lot of projects. However, since they can be so big, this is one time where a 10K drive isn't a bad idea. Since you're already in funny money territory, you might even consider getting two of those drives in a RAID 0 configuration for some really serious hd speed. Hopefully you have some kind of plan for managing them and backing them up and such.

My experience with the economy line of Dell monitors (the "e" series) is that they compare unfavorably to their UltraSharp line. Does it even have a DVI connector? Maybe this is the kind of computer where no one's going to be looking at the screen for long periods of time, in which case it might not matter as much. But, if it was my screen, I'd say the extra bucks for an UltraSharp 2407WFP-HC are absolutely worth it. You'll get better color rendition as well, which may be applicable to rendering images.

Just one last thought that doesn't directly have anything to do with your post, but I've seen it happen so many times - you didn't indicate what size firm this is for or what experience you have with rendering and the like, or whether you really expect to be running this thing the majority of the time... so make sure spending this kind of money on hardware + software makes economic sense for your firm in a time frame of two to three years.

Good luck!


This is what im considering...

[rmejia]

I'd consider Vista x64 and would second the notion of 8GB RAM.

I have a Dell 690 dual quad core xeon x5355 with 8 gigs ram. It came with Vista x64 which does not work well with Max/Viz. I had many hangups and had to force end process on the program all the time. I am running XP64 and everything works fine. I use vista at home but would not recommend it for a critical office environment.

Other people might have different experiences, but my problem with Vista was specifically with 3ds max and Viz (although I do get "hangups" and programs stop responding frequently). That and the really slow file transfers really made Vista a no go, maybe in the service pack 2 in two years I will go back, maybe.

Revit worked fine though, from what I remember. No critical problems with Vista there.

[iru69]

I'm glad you shared your experience with that combination. It's unfortunate that Autodesk lists Max/Viz 2008 as being officially supported on Vista x64.


I have a Dell 690 dual quad core xeon x5355 with 8 gigs ram. It came with Vista x64 which does not work well with Max/Viz. I had many hangups and had to force end process on the program all the time. I am running XP64 and everything works fine. I use vista at home but would not recommend it for a critical office environment.

[Haden]

I am looking to buy the best notebook pc I can get some time this month, Jan 2008, primarily to run Revit, with some photoshop, and the other basics such as MS Office, etc. (I also plan to start using Viz, but not nearly as much as Revit.)

So far I found one, a Black Hawk, that uses Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 processors. Can anyone tell me if this is worth buying to use mainly for Revit? I am reading some chatter here on the Forums that doesn't really sound conclusive as to whether the basic Revit modeling and viewing work benefits from dual processors. I don't look to do nearly as much rendering as I do design and documentation in Revit.

Thanks.

[NKramer]

Revit only supports dual cores/ processors for rendering. Otherwise it just runs on a single core. Something that people have been asking about and that Autodesk is going to have to address sometime in the next few years, but for now you are stuck with one.
One the bright side it will not affect your Revit performance (at least significantly) if you are running other apps. The one thing that I haven't tried yet is running multiple sessions of Revit as different users... That could help if you are working on a really large/ laggy file, or it could just confuse your computer and crash Revit....

[Haden]

Revit only supports dual cores/ processors for rendering. Otherwise it just runs on a single core.

So does that mean that a single dual-core processor or a single quad-core processor will not help at all when I run Revit only, and don't happen to be rendering?

Will a dual quad perform better for Revit renderings than a core 2 duo?

[iru69]

One thing to keep in mind is that a computer like the Blackhawk is more of a luggable desktop computer with a built-in screen than a "true" notebook/laptop. For instance the CPU is not from Intel's laptop CPU line but rather a desktop CPU. At 11 lbs., with a desktop quad cpu, it's very heavy and battery life is probably not going to be that great.

Another thing to be aware of is that Intel just updated their entire line of mobile processors to 45nm (penryn) earlier this month. This means faster more efficient processors for laptops. Keep an eye out for laptops using them.


I am looking to buy the best notebook pc I can get some time this month, Jan 2008, primarily to run Revit, with some photoshop, and the other basics such as MS Office, etc. (I also plan to start using Viz, but not nearly as much as Revit.)

So far I found one, a Black Hawk, that uses Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 processors. Can anyone tell me if this is worth buying to use mainly for Revit? I am reading some chatter here on the Forums that doesn't really sound conclusive as to whether the basic Revit modeling and viewing work benefits from dual processors. I don't look to do nearly as much rendering as I do design and documentation in Revit.

Thanks.

[iru69]

Simply put, yes to both questions. However, as already stated, general system performance does benefit perceptibly from multiple cores.


So does that mean that a single dual-core processor or a single quad-core processor will not help at all when I run Revit only, and don't happen to be rendering?

Will a dual quad perform better for Revit renderings than a core 2 duo?