Revit 2009 - Performance

[Jim Merritt]

We are not having any performance issues with our Nvidia cards running on Vista. The time to open files is a few seconds longer, but everything else seems fine.
--Jim

[Mike_Maloney]

I just wish I had my Copy.STILL haven't recieved it yet. Anyway, even if it does come soon, after ready all this I may just hold off. I have a Dell M90 with a Quadro 2500m/512 Card...........Doesn't bode well at the moment.

[cipa11]

-on quadro FX 4600 works fine (...slower than revit 9.1 that was great)
-on FireGL 3400 works fine but slower than fx 4600 where it started to do model reduction on pan/orbit
- and hey! on Dell XPS 140 laptop with integrated VGA and shared mem still works fine! but the model reduction is drastic (you can see only the floors, ground and few other small things). In 2D you still have most of the elements on a dimensioned plan.

So, I'm thinking, (for factory!) that the problem is located where the software decide how many objects to show on the screen when pan/orbit/zoom-ing, based on the graphic power that revit see on your system.

By the way, I've oppened a large file (medium size stadium) and few others with shading & shadows and RivaTuner didn't count more than 67 Mb of Video RAM used including PhShop open with a large file in the same time....interesting!!! on both FX 4600 and FG 3400...
So, the speed counts! not the size...in this case.
Reed the specs of both cards to understand.
No crash-es yet.

[gwnelson]

The blackout over plan areas problem that I was having yesterday has disappeared. I did close the program last night & restart it this AM.

BTW - I filed a support request and got:

(Factory) Is Open GL enabled?

(Me) Yes.

(Factory, hours later) Try toggling Open GL on/off.

[barry.124831]

I just updated my driver for my graphics card and found that the issues i had yesterday no longer exist. I am using the ATI FireGL V3300 card with latest driver installed. The only issue is 2008 doesn't like it, esp schedules and it kind of freaks out when switching between views on different screens. Will continue to monitor and report back any new issues i find if any.
In response to the zooming using the mouse wheel, the new driver sorted out this problem.

[Wes Macaulay]

We also have ATI's drivers from December 2007 and they have NOT sorted out the mousewheel problem -- it's still half the speed (i.e. framerate) that it was under 2008. This means that you roll the wheel and see nothing while you're zooming -- everything just disappears until half a second after you stop rolling the wheel.

They HAVE to fix this.

[ws]

Ah, so that is the same for everyone - thought maybe it was just me, thanks.

I have reverted for the time being to Ctrl+Middle mouse button which is much smoother.

[ilya.bass]

I would like to know as well. If you look in the Revit 2009 Program directory, you'll see GrphDX9.dll and GrphOpenGL.dll files which seem to indicate that Autodesk is trying to support both (which would be awesome) or is migrating to DirectX for reasons I'd like to understand better.

So yes, Ilya, if you can divulge this, then the masses will know and understand.

Just so you all know -- the release version is faster than the final beta version, at least here on our FireGL-equipped machines using the latest drivers.

When you enable hardware acceleration (Options dialog, Graphics tab), the text states "Use OpenGL Hardware Acceleration". Whatever binary components happen to be installed, Open GL is what Revit supports and that has not changed from R2008. There is no DirectX support in Release 2009.

[andyw.167227]

Hey Everyone......I work for a Design/Build firm that has grown quickly and we are trying to decide whether to purchase Revit 2008 or 2009. Any thought??? We currently use sketchup and are unhappy with its rendering capabilities.

[Wes Macaulay]

When you enable hardware acceleration (Options dialog, Graphics tab), the text states "Use OpenGL Hardware Acceleration". Whatever binary components happen to be installed, Open GL is what Revit supports and that has not changed from R2008. There is no DirectX support in Release 2009.

Ilya -- thanks for the clarification!