X4 Ray Tracing - Optimal CPU

[Ian Pellant]

Hi Lew,

CAD generically is: Computer Aided Design... it is NOT AutoCAD!

AutoCAD is Computer Aided Drafting.

One could call Chief Architect CAAD - Computer Aided Architectural Drafting.

Revit can be called CAAD and it is totally OpenGL based... as are many advanced "CAD" apps.

I use Revit a lot and it has always been a pain to enter an architects office and find they have gaming type computers... sold by the local "IT guru". Very mediocre.

AutoCAD tends to use DirectX. It's a clunker... and always was... I used to work for Intergraph (spawners of MicroStation) and we all considered AutoCAD to be a toy... I still refuse to have a frontal lobotomy in order to use AutoCAD.

Revit and Chief Architect use OpenGL... which most gaming video cards are NOT especially designed for.

I've used ATI cards since 1988 (VGA Wonder).... Rage was good. Radeon has been a mixed agony and I will never buy another one. The Radeon team seem to aim totally at the gaming market and after 2 years, dump the previous cards into the Legacy bucket. Support drops off rapidly.

ATI FireGL, now called FirePro is a different story because the cards are designed for modeling design professionals and support is maintained almost indefinately.

Take the time to explore the AMD/ATI web site and discover what FirePro is about and the heavy weight design modeling systerms that it is certified for. (The heavy weight solids modeling softwares used for designing motor vehicles, aircraft, ships, space stations, etc.)

Sorry for getting a bit steamed but the number of arguments I have had with computer store guys trying to tell me I don't need certified OpenGL hardware acceleration when all I need is DirectX, are beyond count.

Gaming cards are optimised for bitblitting - filling the screen with images as quickly as possible. CAD requires vector drawing to the screen... One possible reason Chief Architect uses OpenGL is that DirectX support for vector line and text dropped off after DX-7. I was programming with the stuff way back then, when bitblitting took over in DX-8. (I think it was about Chief version 7 when they dropped DirectX and went OpenGL?)

Cheers.

[lbuttery]

Ian:

CA has stated many times that Chief derives no perceivable benefit from the Nvidia Quadro cards which are CAD based
especially in relation to the extra $$$

they recommend mid to high-end gaming cards

CA has never mentioned DirectX - it appears to have no relation with Chief

you may want to discuss directly with CA's sales team

Lew

[Ian Pellant]

Lew,

The topic of this thread is CPU choice for Ray Tracing.

Choices mostly being between AMD FX-8150 or Intel i7 2600 processors.

My need is to ray trace a lot of models in the shortest time possible.

The video card has nothing to do with ray tracing.

Chief Architect X4 uses OpenGL. Revit uses OpenGL.

AutoCAD used DirectX.

Much earlier versions of Chief used DirectX. Then ART moved it all to OpenGL.

Professional 3D modeling softwares generally use OpenGL. Not DirectX.

There are almost no off-the-shelf PC's to be bought that are optimised for OpenGL.

Microsoft pushed DirectX for it's X-Box which was aimed at home entertainment and gaming. Most Windows based games use DirectX. Most gaming PC's are optimised for DirectX.

At the consumer level, if the choice is between an "office / business workstation" with Intel Integrated Graphics or a "Gaming" computer with accelerated graphics then the gaming computer is the better choice.

Have you ever seen a computer on sale that is labelled: "Optimized for Chief Architect" ?

It is a sales dilema outside the context of this thread.

Cheers.

[lbuttery]

Ian:

just responding to your comment about "top gamers" in post #23

I know that raytrace doesn't use video card
but does use cpu and cores - lots of cores

renders use the video card and renders are also important to chief

thus a good/great chief PC would have a good gaming video card and
lots of cores with a fast cpu to cover both renders and rays

8 - 16 GB of cpu ram and 1 - 3 GB of video ram

Lew

[Ian Pellant]

Lew,

The question is:

Will an AMD FX-8150 with 8 cores ray trace quicker than an Intel i7 that has 4 cores?

Cheers.

[lbuttery]

Ian:

not a clue

good luck

Lew

[Ian Pellant]

Lew,

Me neither... I don't know which is quicker.

The test plan ray trace averages about 68 seconds on the i7.

AMD FX8150 still unknown.

Cheers.