Inkscape Forum Inkscape > Minimum Hardware requirements to make inkscape useful.

Here's my system.

Windows XP
Celeron 2.40 GHz
640 MB of RAM

I'm running inkscape and it seems to render smoothly until I get in the
neighborhood of 300 nodes.  Then things start grinding to a halt.  I'm
looking at upgrading my system which is now 5 years old.

Any suggestions on what configuration I would need to make using 
inkscape
enjoyable?  It would be really great if I could handle 1000+ nodes 
without
too much hassle.

Any tips to increase render speed, ie working in outline mode, locking
layers, using clones, keeping groups of nodes small, etc.

Thanks!

Aaron,

I have a dual core AMD and 4 gig of ram.  My system runs very smoothly
most of the time, even with lots of nodes, but I still get slowdowns
(usually in the neighborhood of tens of thousands of nodes or lots of
effects, like blur).  But the nice thing is that slowdowns only affect
one core, the rest of the computer is still usable with the other :)

I'd definitely recommend a multi-core cpu.  If you're building your own
(which I also recommend, from cost perspective), even quad-core amds are
fairly inexpensive these days (less than $200 for the cheaper ones).

I'd also recommend at least 2 gig of ram.  Not that you'll use it all,
but that's the point.  I often use up to 3 with other apps open at the
same time.  And faster ram is going to be better, too.

However, if you're short on money, the best option is as much as you can
get ;)  I'd go for at least a dual core cpu and as much ram as you can 
get.

BTW, motherboard throughput (bus speed) is also important, so you should
do homework on that as well for any system you'll buy/build.

Apart from that, you made some pretty good suggestions yourself for
speeding things up.

JF

Thanks Josh.

I see now why I'm having difficulty.  I have about a third to a quarter 
of
the RAM I need and a wimpy processor to boot.  Time to upgrade.

Thanks for the advice.

~Aaron