topic Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations in ArcGIS Desktop Installation Support Questions

ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

MoritzSchilling — Tue, 09 May 2017 13:34:43 GMT

Hello,

I'm aware that this topic is not installation related as such, but I can't find a better fit...

As I'm about to order/build a new GIS-rig, I'm asking myself and you what would be the perfect setup to work (mainly) with ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro in the (near?) future.

I'm confused about what would be better, higher raw CPU power as in higher clocked CPU's or more cores/threads?

I read that an Intel i7 would not make sense for ArcMap as it does not utilize multithreading!?

For ArcGIS Pro I'm much more in the dark, especially concerning the GPU utilization!

To specify the work I will be doing (all 2D):

-digitizing 30 %

-cartography/layout 50 %

-geoprocessing 20 %

Hope you have some advice!

Cheers

Moe

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 09 May 2017 13:39:28 GMT

I would just read the hardware specs and exceed them when it comes to ram, video and buy SSD drives. Basically a good gaming machine... although nothing will speed up digitizing

arcgis-pro-system-requirements

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

curtvprice — Tue, 09 May 2017 20:16:29 GMT

Commodity hardware is generally fine for ArcGIS as long as you don't starve it of RAM (8G min for ArcMap, 16G minimum if you plan to be Pro-ready). If you plan to do a lot of 3D or especially video fly through etc then you should consider higher-end display adapters, but current generation is usally fine for GIS (thank you, gamers).

With respect to your question on fast CPU versus multiple cores or hyperthreading, ArcGIS Pro is true multi-threaded which is why the specs recommend quad core and hexacore if you've got it. So if I had a choice between a faster quad and fast hex, I'd go with the hexcore for Pro for sure.

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

RobertMuller — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 16:50:47 GMT

This post is a bit old but maybe someone will see my comment. With ArcGIS Pro 2.1, my 2011 iMac i7-4 core 16 gb RAM, 2 GB VRAM running 10.13.3, Windows 10-64 and Parallels 13 is finally not going to cut it even with the SSD & RAM I installed that gave me extra 2 years of life. With the unknown timeframe for the i7-6 core "regular" iMac and ArcGIS PRO 2.1 optimal config now up to 10 cores I am going to buy an iMac Pro. My use is 2D maps for printing with minimal geoprocessing except for geo-referencing very large (20 gb, 8 bit) rasters, maps with many large rasters and complex symbology and labels with halos and callouts (which seem to particularly slow things down to the point I changed them) and while my ArcGIS PRO RAM usage is typically <6gb, I regularly hit 100% CPU Usage in Windows with 2 cores assigned to the VM (MacOS shows 200% thus the 2 cores maxed).

The base configuration iMac PRO with 8 Core Xeon, 32 gb RAM, 8 gb VRAM is way above the optimal hardware (except for the cores) even with splitting the resources between the MacOS and Win10. I would LIKE to get 6 years out of my new machine too (with hardware upgrades bring difficult or impossible and no crystal balls) but I am wondering if I need to add to the base configuration. I got bounced around and talked with 5 techs at ESRI regarding the options best suiting my needs, but I could get no answer other than use the online hardware requirements. So would increasing to 10 or 12 cores, 64 gb ram or 16 gb VRAM (or any combination of these) potentially give me better long term performance. I know I could get a Windows box much cheaper, but GIS is only one of my many jobs and the other are tied to MacOS.

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

NorthPark — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 17:28:51 GMT

Why not just dual boot the Mac instead of running in a VM? That would likely solve all of your problems.

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

RobertMuller — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 17:46:01 GMT

Thanks Eric:

It might, I thought about doing just that, but my system is still a good bit below the minimum ArcGIS Pro requirements. Moving to a BootCamp Partition would be the same amount of trouble (but not cost of course) and if it was still slow I would need to do it again for a new system. In addition my workflow is such that I am regularly moving things between ArcGIS and various applications in MacOS so using BootCamp would be a big pain

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

BobChristensen — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 14:38:51 GMT

I can't help a lot with the crystal ball but the last time I compared VM to bootcamp, VM was not even close. So it seems that if you get a new machine, no matter the specs. you should still start using the bootcamp approach.

Re: ArcMap & ArcGIS Pro Hardware Recommendations

MattWilkie3 — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 19:12:01 GMT

In our experience (early 2018) commodity hardware in terms of motherboard, cpu, ram, etc. is fine for Pro, but commodity graphics cards -- as found in enterprise bulk buys -- are likely not to be, even when only using 2D.

Installation and initial trial runs were fine, but as soon as we started anything moderately complex, like importing an ArcMap mxd with ~30 layers and page size of Arch D we'd get plagued with errors like "GPU resources exceeded. Consider closing some views or modifying layer settings to reduce the amount of data being displayed.". The ArcMap compositions were created and used on that same hardware without issue.

[update]: Our graphics cards met the minimum of 2GB un-shared memory as posted in the min requirements. I don't remember the other specs, but the "Can I run it?" tool said the card was ok, not great, but ok. Given that, it could have been driver issues, but upgrading to current didn't help.