Hi, I’m a PhD candidate at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and we are planning to buy a workstation to work with PLAXIS 3D available in the university. However, I have some concerns about the system requirements. The recommended processor is a Quad Core CPU. Nonetheless, I would like to know if there are other processors with more cores which improve the speed calculation? I have a similar doubt with regard to the graphic cards; the system requires discrete GPU with 1 GB of RAM, but I am wondering if better graphic Cards improves in some aspect the performance? Is it preferable invest only in RAM memory for larger projects than in CPU, Graphics Cards and RAM memory together?
Dear Mauro,
All our recommendations we provide are based on single desktop computers with a natively running Windows 64-bit environment (Windows 10/11) since this is what we design the software for and run all our tests on. The system requirements are mentioned here: https://communities.bentley.com/products/geotech-analysis/w/plaxis-soilvision-wiki/45417/system-requirements---plaxis
To get quick operations in the program:
If you need to make a choice between more CPU cores or faster CPU cores, I would go for the faster cores if your main concern is the Plaxis calculation speed. We have seen once you have at least quad-core processors, you benefit more from a faster CPU than from more cores.
PLAXIS does not enforce limits on the number of items in a 3D calculation, but of course, the more elements you have, the more memory the program needs, and then you can run into hardware limitations.
Of course, this is the experience we have with the current program.
See more details here: