DesignBuilder is a professional graphics application and requires a high standard of computer hardware for successful use.  This page contains information on the minimum system requirements and also the recommended specification. The main areas you should pay attention to if you are buying or upgrading your computer system to run DesignBuilder are:

• Graphics adapter - a good 100% OpenGL compatible graphics adapter is required to run DesignBuilder. Most of the cards based on the Radeon chipset seem to work very well (provided they have the latest drivers installed) and we have had no problem with the mid-range and better NVIDIA cards.  Some graphics adapters integrated with the motherboard we have tested are unable to run DesignBuilder. See also note below on Windows Vista.
• Memory - DesignBuilder will use all the memory you can throw at it - at least 2 GB is recommended for serious modelling or more if you are running under Windows Vista which itself uses 1 GB.
• CPU speed - get as fast as you can afford.
• Cores - having more than one processor core does not necessarily speed up simulations in DesignBuilder version 1 but it does allow you to continue using your computer while simulations are running. Dual core processors also make the software more responsive in use.

Minimum Requirements:

• Windows 2000 or XP SP2 running on  
• 1000MHz processor (or faster)
• 800x600 pixel screen
• 512MB RAM
• 200MB free disk space
• Pointing device
• 100% OpenGL compatible 3D graphics adapter with hardware acceleration running in 32-bit color mode

The above specification will allow you to successfully model small buildings using DesignBuilder
but we recommend a more powerful computer for best results especially when working with larger
building models.

Recommended:

• Windows XP SP2
• 2.4 GHz dual core processor (or faster).
• 2GB (or more) RAM
• 5GB free disk space
• Pointing device
• 100% OpenGL compatible 3D graphics adapter with hardware acceleration running in 32-bit color mode
• 1280x1024 pixels or larger screens for efficiency during the modelling process and for displaying high-quality visualisation images and walk-throughs of DesignBuilder models and CFD results. DesignBuilder works well with wide screens.

Windows Vista 

DesignBuilder works under Windows Vista, but we do not currently (June 07) recommend it because a) many of the early graphics adapter drivers written for Vista have bugs and b) we have not tested it extensively ourselves.

If you do plan to purchase a computer with Windows Vista installed we recommend choosing an NVIDIA graphics adapter as these, in our experience, have more reliable drivers where new operating systems are released. This is possibly because NVIDIA take OpenGL more seriously than ATI.