AMD Athlon 64 vs P4M

[BomberAIA]

I'm trying to research a new laptop w/ either a Intel Mobile chip 2.0 or an AMD Athlon 64 4000. How does Revit run on an AMD 64 bit? Is there an advantage to the 64 bit architecture?

[rodneyf]

BomberAIA,
Myself and 8 others are running the AMD Athlon64 4000+ w/ 2 GB of ram and are having no problems and are also seeing a slight increase in performance but I think that has to do with people really starting to understand the Revit way of doing things. Well I hope that helps.

Thanks,

[Wes Macaulay]

The main advantage to the 64bit OS is being able to work with much, much more than 3 Gb RAM.

[iru69]

I'm trying to research a new laptop w/ either a Intel Mobile chip 2.0 or an AMD Athlon 64 4000. How does Revit run on an AMD 64 bit? Is there an advantage to the 64 bit architecture?

I know that a lot of this just seems like technical jargon, but some of the terms and concepts are kind of important. The P4M (the term you use in the subject line) is basically a P4 with some additional power-saving features. The PM (Pentium Mobile) is a completely different chip architecture than the P4. I think it's safe to assume you're referring to the PM. A PM at 2GHz is going to be much faster and energy efficient than a P4M at 2GHz. The PM at 2GHz can very roughly be estimated as being equivalent to a P4 in the low to mid 3GHz range.

The Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz) is rated by AMD as being equivalent to a P4 4GHz chip (if such a P4 was available, which it is not). Many would argue that AMD is a little "generous" with those "equivalent" figures, but it's in the ballpark.

So the A64 4000+ is going to be faster than the PM. However, for that speed, you'll most likely be giving up battery life or portability or both. So if that's important to you, the PM may not be a bad trade off.

Regarding 64 bit part, Wes said it in a nutshell, but I'm not sure how you missed this recent thread:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.ph...ighlight=64bit

Good luck!