# which paraview archive is preferred?

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/which-paraview-archive-is-preferred/2029
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [June 13, 2019, 2:17am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/which-paraview-archive-is-preferred/2029 "2019-06-13T02:17:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![skypickle](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/skypickle/32/1580_2.png) [@skypickle](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/skypickle)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2019, 2:17am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/which-paraview-archive-is-preferred/2029/1 "2019-06-13T02:17:39Z")

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There two different paraview archives:  
ParaView-5.6.1-Windows-msvc2015-64bit  
and  
ParaView-5.6.1-MPI-Windows-msvc2015-64bit

The folder and file structure of both seem similar. What is the difference?

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/mwestphal/32/17_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2019, 7:43am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/which-paraview-archive-is-preferred/2029/2 "2019-06-13T07:43:46Z")

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**You probably want the "ParaView-5.6.1-Windows-msvc2015-64bit"**

One is build with MPI, the other is not.  
The one with MPI requires Microsoft MPI to be installed on your computer to be able to start.  
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/message-passing-interface/microsoft-mpi](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/message-passing-interface/microsoft-mpi)  
It enables you to do parallel work with pvserver and data parallelism.

The non-mpi build does not requires Microsoft MPI and can’t be used with data parallelism.