Been looking into hardware for running Revit, and what I've come across is pretty much "get the fastest and latest CPU you can". Seems simple enough, except that most of the threads I've read on the subject are over a year old, and hardware changes with time of course.
Currently I'm stuck between an i7-4770, or a similar i5 (4690?) variety. The i5 is about $80 cheaper, so I could go i5 and add an SSD or more RAM to the build (I'm thinking 16 GB of RAM currently and with $80 maybe I could go to 20 or so).
The i5 has 4 cores, 4 threads. The i7 has 4 cores, 8 threads. So the question I have is, does Revit actually take advantage of 8 threads? I've seen posts saying Revit at the most will use 4 threads, so the other 4 threads on an i7 processor would be wasted.
The machine in question would be doing arch/structural modelling 95% of the time, maybe a little rendering work here and there but nothing of the "I need the whole thing rendered in 15 minutes" variety. And the machine would have to be solid enough to be able to import and work with detailed MEP data for collision detection.
So, any advice on i5 or i7s? What about RAM requirements? Is 16 good, or would it be a better idea to start with 8 GB and then move up to 16 if necessary?
