A393 Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 We,ve decided to take a look into the revit world, upgraded 2 full acad licences to Building Design Suite Premium 2013 and now just need to purchase a couple of PC/Laptops to run the sofware. We are uk based and as a 1st port of call we have looked at a couple off the shelf options for laptops. We will probably end up with models for decent sized structures, lets say a typical project may be a 10 story upper block/more detailed ground floor block/underground basement works etc etc. At present you seem to be able to pick up a laptop for a grand (£1000 give or take a little....thats my limit)...one im looking at has a spec as below Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM processor Windows 8 Memory: 16 GB Hard drive: 1 TB & 8 GB SSD Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M would the above suitable...... maybe a PC is a better option?....... oh and one more thing does revit run fine on windows 8........... any advice gladly taken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hugha Posted March 22, 2013 Share Posted March 22, 2013 Win8? You'll know soon when the 2014 versions debut. But why not stay away from the bleeding edge? Lenovo (for one) still offer Win7 64-bit as an option. Surely you meant a 128GB SSD? Even so, as a rule you'll get grunt less per coin on a laptop than in a desktop and when you add a docking station to hook up extra screens the laptop becomes less portable than it seemed. Lappies make sense only if you rerally need the inherent portability but without multiple big screens CAD becomes awkward. Then there's the risk of theft / loss. Just my 2p, but go with i7 Desktop PC's with 32GB DDR3 RAM a 128GB SSD and a 10krpm HD. Maxxed out RAM is the cheapest way to get Revit to gracefully handle your biggish models. This link http://www.revitforum.org/hardware-infrastructure/72-revit-hardware-video-graphic-cards.html#post478 may help you select a graphics card - you'll see that Revit's demands can be modest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f700es Posted March 22, 2013 Share Posted March 22, 2013 Since this is a laptop I am sure he is correct with the 1TB w/8GB SSD. It is called a hybrid hard drive. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2012223/hybrid-hard-drives-how-they-work-and-why-they-matter.html I think you will be just fine with that setup. If you need Win8 to look and feel like 7 there are a few ways to do this. StarDock sells a $5 program called Start8 that make Windows 8 look and feel like it should have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReMark Posted March 22, 2013 Share Posted March 22, 2013 What happens if a hybrid hard drive crashes? Can one still somehow retrieve data files off of the drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f700es Posted March 22, 2013 Share Posted March 22, 2013 Should be just the same as a normal drive I would imagine. I am actually looking at something very similar. A 32gb SSD to be used as a cache for normal hard drives. No need to move data or reinstall the OS. The provided software does all the work for you. Looks like some of the reviews tried to use it as a boot disk. Totaly not what it is intended for. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-171-667&IsVirtualParent=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A393 Posted March 22, 2013 Author Share Posted March 22, 2013 Thanks for your comments and links, a laptop option would give me a bit more flexibility whilst learning revit as i could play around with it at home. That would be a plus whilst learning. However if i find a better desktop option ill consider that also as most of my work will be done from the work office. I'll look around for a few more days then make a decision. with regards to the windows 8 question, most 'off the shelf' options seem to have win8 loaded on and ive read that a couple of people have had a few problems with revit & windows 8......others say they've had none at all. id be more than happy with win 7 or 8 whatever works best From the small amount of time I've spent on revit so far I've got to say I like the look of it, totally different from acad so a complete new learning curve. Thanks for the advice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tzframpton Posted March 22, 2013 Share Posted March 22, 2013 Those specs are just fine for Revit. Good choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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