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are architecture programs mainly driven by CPU?

F

farbs

n00b
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
37
Hello everyone

I am a graduate student currently working on my masters degree for architecture

The programs I use:
autocad
revit
3d studio max
rhino
sketchup
photoshop
in design
illustrator

I would say I spend the most time working in 3D and rendering.

Im curious if the CPU is the main driving force behind these programs. I was thinking of upgrading to an i7 920, but just wanted to make sure that I will fully benefit from it before spending the money (cpu, mobo. memory)

Thanks

Scott
 
Yes and no.

a video card helps for live viewing alot!

the cpu comes to play in rendering the items / movies / projects

photoshop
in design
illustrator

is more CPU and Ram - Vid only recently came into play to help with zooming and such but you can get along fine with out it.

What do you have now?

an i7 will likely give you a good boost even if you have saw C2Q.
 
Thank you for the reply

I built my machine about 3-4 years ago but have upgraded a few parts since.

Right now Im using:
Intel Q6600 cpu
6 GB ddr3 ram (upgraded from 2GB)
Nvidia GTX 260 gpu (upgraded from 7900 GTX)
OCZ 600w psu
2 Raptor 10k rpm HDs (one for applications, the other for data)

I know it sounds like a pretty nice machine, but it is getting dated. Its kind of turned into a frankenstein project =)

I was curious if I would see a big difference if I went with something like i7920, 8gb, and a SSD
 
then yes an I7 or even an i5 would be a nice jump over you're Q6600, have your overclocked that Q6600 at all.

i think it would be night and day with the SSD for that, but iw ould keep a seperate working drive and save drive if you do alot of larger projects, this way you wouldnt be bottle necked working and saving projects.


get an SSD as your main OS drive / install your apps on it

use your 2 raptors, one as a save drive, one as a working drive.
 
Okay great. So the i5/i7 will be beneficial.

I had the q6600 over-clocked for about about 2 years to just under 3.0GHZ. I set it back to stock after I was experiencing some weird freezing issues that I thought was because of the CPU

I was planning on doing that idea with the hard drives
 
in my limited experience(Solid works and Google sketch up) the program is CPU intensive, but is definatlly graphic intensive(Sketch-up didnt like me putting it on a 2ndary monitor, wouldnt show images correctly)....so an i7 would be a great jump up for sure.
 
What motherboard do you have? A Q9550 would be a nice upgrade for cheap, but if budget is not a factor I'd definitely go for an i7 and overclock it to at least 3.8GHz.
 
I'm also an m.arch student :)

Basically renders are cpu intensive, while modeling relies on having enough ram + video card (although video card is really not that important for what we do).

For a lot of things (ie, make2d and any other command besides rendering, in rhino) the task is single-threaded, so having a higher clockspeed can be beneficial (ie, 4x4ghz > 8x2Ghz)

I upgraded from a 3.8ghz phenomII to this current rig and I noticed a biiig drop in my render times.
 
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