Friday, May 29, 2009

Which OS Is Best? This OS I Guess.

There has been a great deal of sharing of Civil 3D tips and best practices lately. One that I recently became aware of is "Which operating system is best for Civil 3D 2010"?

As I understand it, the recommendations (in order) are:

  1. Windows Vista 64 bit
  2. Windows XP 64 bit
  3. Windows Vista 32 bit with 3GB switch
  4. Window XP 32 bit with 3GB switch
  5. Window Vista 32 bit
  6. Windows XP 32 bit (my new laptop has this)

I wish that I would have known this one month ago.

Oh, and 8 GB of RAM is suggested for Window Vista 64 bit.

Be Better! ...operate in the best environment.

7 comments:

JTB World said...

Or even better: Windows 7 64-bit with 8GB or more.

For your laptop I definitely can recommend to run Windows 7 RC 32-bit or 64-bit. I use this now as my preferred OS.

PS. With Vista make sure to use the latest SP2.

Anonymous said...

as i understand, civil is not yet coded to 64 bit. would vista64 really let me at 8gb? ctp@rtiabq.com

Angel Espinoza said...

Hello Jimmy, I "think" because Windows 7 is still in beta it is not "officially" on the list. Although, there seems to be users like yourself that would highly recommend it.

Thanks for the input.

Angel Espinoza said...

Anonymous, That is correct, Civil 3D 2010 is a 32 bit application, but it does load, and run on a 64 bit OS.

The 8GB or more of RAM can be managed up to 4GB per application by the OS.

JTB World said...

Even though you can only use 4GB for Civil 3D you have memory to have all your other things running like Office, web browser, etc.

Bill Neuhauser P.E. said...

Just a little very unscientific benchmark!

In XP 32bit I built an intersection with right turn lanes for all 4 roads. Time 15 seconds. (Roadshow test with many witnesses)

In WIN 7 64 bit - same intersection (No witnesses but my 12 year old son who helped with the WIN 7 install) (Proud pappa!) Time.......less than 10 seconds actually closer to 9 seconds....

I'm going to do some more testing/Benchmarking latter this week! But as of now really impressed with WIN 7 RC.

Bill Neuhauser P.E.
www.c3dtrixbybillneu.com

Earl Kubaskie said...

C3D as a 32-bit app gets 4G all to itself in a 64-bit environment. No sharing the 4G with the OS.

It makes a significant difference, and I see operations fail on 32-bit XP every few days, yet I take the task home to my 64-bit setup and get the job done.