Video/Graphics Card: Investing in a good video card is worth every penny sodon’t cheap out here.
This will make rendering much faster and it will allow you use your PC for other tasks while rendering – cost: $120 x 2 = $240
Hard Drive – this is for storing and retrieving data.Īlthough each of these can affect performance,some software programs rely more on one component than others.Memory (RAM) – this component stores things that your computer is working on in the short term so your CPU can quickly access it when it needs it.Video card (also called graphics card) – this is what generates the graphics on your display (screen).CPU (central processing unit) also called processor – this is the brain of your PC, It interprets and executes program instructions.I will try to be as low-tech as possible: It may be helpful to understand which components of the computer that your software uses most and what affects its performance.
It may be time for an upgrade or it may be time to get a new one if your PC is more than 3 or 4 years old.
If you’re using rendering software like Shaderlight you may also have noticed it takes a long time and your computer is virtually unusable for anything else while the rendering software is running.
If you’re using SketchUp for creating landscape models with lots of vegetation, you’ve likely experienced times when working in your model becomes painfully slow. I’d like to to take a moment share my own discoveries with you.
Over that time I have had a number of PC’s custom built, talked to lots of heavy SketchUp users and read all the SketchUp forums. Having used SketchUp and Shaderlight for many years creating large models, I have had the benefit of testing both on various PC’s.