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Forums >> Workflow & Implementation >> Hardware >> 64 bit revit, 64 bit vista and multi-cores...
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Joined: Thu, Oct 20, 2005
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I have a question I am hoping someone has an intelligent answer to. Currently my office is running a Dell Precision T5400 with 8GB of Ram and a quad core xeon running at 2.5Ghz. I am using Revit 2009 64 bit and running it through some tests before we go buying up 30 of these machines. Our current heavily used setup is a Pentium D machine thast way outdated on 32 bit XP. The question i have is this: When I run a model in through Revit and I check my task manager it is only showing 25% of CPU usage for Revit.exe. Is this correct or is there some way to allow Revit to utilize multicores? I though this was part of the reason for a 64bit version of Revit? Otehrwise we could all utilize more than 4 GB of Ram with the 32bit application running on the 64 bit Vista platform. I know 64 bit primarily allows users to utilize more than 4 GB of Ram but why make the Revit a native 64 bit app if it cannot use the full 4 cores on a quadcore machine? I do know of course this does work when rendering with Mental Ray. Thanks for your input... Jaysyn
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Joined: Fri, Feb 10, 2006
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revit is not multi-core yet, but that proabably will be the next big improvement to come soon. archicad is already multi-core. in a addition to not having the ram limitation, you should get better performance running 64-bit software on 64-bit operationing system. that's why the 64-bit Revit. i sure there are others that will be posted also. HTH
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best regards, coreed,aia bmpArchitects,Inc. "Revit has to be implemented, Not installed." Long Live Revit |
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As I suspected. It will only use 1 of the 4 cores at the moment even in a 64 bit environment with the 64 bit version of Revit. What a bummer. =) Funny as it shows my page file hitting that 7 GB threshold while having two sessions open one savinga file and the other opening one..... I guess it takes all it can!
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you might want to check into the new Intel Core i7 Processor based systems also.
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best regards, coreed,aia bmpArchitects,Inc. "Revit has to be implemented, Not installed." Long Live Revit |
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The rendering engine will use more than one core.
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Hello there.I had the same questions about the multi core and the ram usage of the revit 2009 64bit.From the search I’ve made it seems that the new revit 2009 with the new renderer mental ray can use more than 1 core and if you use 64 bit o.s you can benefit from the full usage of your ram. I hope I helped you.
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" you might want to check into the new Intel Core i7 Processor based systems also. "
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Whats this do for you compared to the Xeon Quad Cores?" I've run a few benchmark tests on the i7, Q6600, and the Xeon Quad...the results....the i7 was a HUGE winner with 64 bit Revit. There was a significant difference between the i7 and Q6600 with the 32 bit version, but not quite as much. The Xeon was a distant last place. The i7 was about 15-20% faster in rendering times than the Q6600 and nearly 40% faster than the Xeon. These tests are in no way to be taken as the final word, just my personal testing between computers at work and home. I've heard results similar to these from other people, so they're not entirely bogus, just not incredibly scientific. Now let me tell you the interesting part...I'm still having issues with getting the i7 CPU over 50% processing power in the render engine in Revit. It'll peg out at 100% with other multicore applications, but not Revit's rendering. That means it's whooping up these other computers at HALF it's potential speed. On top of that, the i7 is seen as 8, EIGHT!, cores. So with everyday Revit actions that only use a single core, it's only using 12.5% of the processor! When Autodesk finally joins the 21st century, this will be THE processor to have. The next benchmarking I do will be an overclocked i7.  Some other benchmarking I did was between 32 bit and 64 bit Revit. There was a small, but noticable, increase in performance, but not enough to justify a new computer. However, if you have large file sizes, 64 bit is a must. Anyway, hope that helps any one looking to buy a new computer!
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great info. if you wouldnt mind keeping this updated with any future tests/info i would appreciate it. We bought a test 64 bit dell t5400 with xeon quad core and 8 gigs of ram and it is performing brilliantly. for comparison sakes with both machines on a gigabit ethernet the two machines are as follows: current machines widespread thru office See attached CPUID log New Test machine See attached CPUID log Both Machines have NVDIA Quadro FX 1700 with 512 Mb RAM video cards pushing a dell 24" widescreen monitor @ 1920 x 1200 resolution Current machine takes 1:48 to open Revit.exe completely Test new machine takes 9 seconds this is just one simple homegrown side by side benchmark. As you can see 64 bit Revit with 8 gigs of RAM is a HUGE upgrade in performance. Which was to be expected given the Pentium D's older outdated architecture.
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I was getting to post the same question with the exact same computer setup. I just spent a day re-setting my computer to the 64 bit version. I am highly disappointed in the performance and the time I spent with the setup. How do you get the render engine to utilize more of the processor speed then? So far, I have not seen a great performance increase in Revit. Very sad................
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that is puzzling. so you haev the dell t5400 spec'd like the one i shown above? I am actually using this machine daily now and the performance improvements are substantial.
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YEah, freaky huh. Have you made any modifications to the bios or system configuration? The system boots slower, revit is slow as far as rendering and modeling. This is where I was hoping for the benefit. I saw a post about the render engine using multiple processor. How do you dedicate one of them to rendering?
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absolutley no optimizing needed. first of all not trying to make you sound potentially dumb but you have a 64 bit processor correct? also did you actually format your harddrive completely before installing the 64 bit OS? and finally which should have been taken care of with the format you installed a fresh copy of revit 64 bit with no other revit version installed correct? you can set the affinity of the cores for specific programs in the task manager. (cntr + alt + delete). i wouldnt recommending doing that though.; its much better to leave the affinities as they were by fdefault. mental ray uses all four cores automatically. you can see this working in the task manager/performance tab at the top
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I wouldn't expect a dual treaded Revit with in the next two releases. So probably not till 2012. It is true that Archicad is dual core capible, but it still takes archicad just as long to do things as it takes Revit. If you are using an OS that is 64 bit you NEED to have more than 4 gigs of ram. If you are just putting 4GB on it, then use XP x86 and turn on the three gig switch, you will get much better proformance out of that than you will from a 64 with 4. A 64 needs more than 4 gigs to run efficiently. 8 is probably pretty optimum, unless you can affords Crucials 4 gig stick that costs 12gigs for $1100. Running a 64 OS with 64 Revit will not get you these better results unless you have more than 4 gigs. As for the I7vs the Xeon...I dont have any benchmarks, but the Xeon completly out proformed the Phenonm from AMD, and the I7 has done the same thing to the xeon. The only thing I would wait for with the I7 would be motherboards that allow 8 or more gigs of DDR3, right now most of the boards are using DDR2, which is going to be gone soon making it hard to upgrade. If you get the I7 get DDR3 ram.
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I just found out that the 64 bit was a free upgrade last Friday. I uninstalled Revit first. Then went through the install process of 64. It appears to have moved my 32 os to a new folder then installed 64. The drive did not seem to be re-formatted during the process. Got everyting back up and running then installed Revit 64 last. Right now I am trying to figure out why the boor process takes so long. I have 8GIG ram and made my swap drive twice that. During a render my CPU usage starts at 100% then teeters down to below 50%. During idle time CPU is 1%, Total memory is 8188, Cached 5967 and free 144.
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