CPU/Memory Usage Question

[diamondcat]

Hello,

I am in the process of updated a view in one of my drawing files and it is taking along time. I open task manager and it says my CPU Usage is at 100% and my memory usage is 486,392K/4,035,016K. I am not sure what I am looking at, but is it possible that I have something set wrong, like my swap file? Why wouldn't the computer be using more of its memory? I just switched from another Zeon with exact hardware, but this one seems alot slower (same network line).
My computer is a Dell 1.7G Xeon Processor, 2G RAM and I am running SWX SP3.1.

 

[NathanN]

If the hard drive light is flashing on a lot whenever you try to rebuild the view, then your comp is probably paging to the hard drive and slowing things down horribly.

Windows can be extremely dumb when it comes to using the swap file. You could try reducing the size of the swap file. Normally your ram and swap file should add up to 1 - 1.5GB. Since you're already beating that quite handily with your ram alone, it wouldn't hurt to drop your swap file size. If I'm reading your numbers right, you've currently got a 2GB swap file. Try setting it to 512MB.

 

[diamondcat]

Thanks, I will try that.

 

[LoveAeris]

I guess you are reading numbers on the bottom of Task Manager.

"Mem Usage: 486,392K/4,035,016K" means Limit is 4G and 486M is used. You stated you have 2G RAM (How I envy you!) and as of the result, Swap is 2G. Basically, up to 2G (RAM), swapping should not happen and Usage is only 486M. Therefore, the bottleneck is not going to be the memory, especially when CPU usage is 100%. However, I am not sure how you confirmed you have 2G RAM, but look at "Physical Memory (K)" of Task Manager. If Total under Physical Memory (K)" says about 2G, it's OK. Otherwise, RAM is not recognized. By the way, I have never seen a drawing (SLDDRW) which is 486M big.

Next is CPU usage. You stated you have 1.7G Xeon and I am sure it should be fast enough. CPU Usage shouldn't be 100%, unless you have a low level video card, that I hardly doubt through. Execute SW and go to Tools>Options>Performance. Uncheck "Use Software OpenGL" and see if the speed is improved. As long as you have a qualified OpenGL video card, it should handle graphic without using CPU.

If the speed is improved by un-checking the option, you have a video card issue including drivers. If it isn't, check with other drawing. If only the drawing is slow, go to File>Find References and make to see how many files are loaded through network. Copy all to your local and try to open. If it's OK, then you have a network issue.

Hope my troubleshooting helps. Good luck.

 

[diamondcat]

The physical memory is listed as a little over 2G and the "Use Software OpenGL" was already unchecked. I have a NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro video card (good?) The slddrw file I am working in has a customer part shown in it that seems to be a speed bump. Although the total of the customer part files is only 14.5M it seems to really slow thinks down. My paging file is set to 2046M. You mentioned that the CPU usage should not be 100%, what would cause it to do that (if the video card is not an issue?

 

[LoveAeris]

The video card is passed.
Go to the following Web Site and select nVidia to see the result.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html

As I mentioned at last, most likely bunch of files are loaded over the network. Copy them temporally as I described to see the speed improves. You can just see how many files are leaded over the net by going "Find References" without phicically copying.

CPU Usage becomes 100% time to time, but if it should not stay 100% for a while. In that case, the PC is not optimizes to handle the file, like needing faster CPU, bus, HD or etc.

 

[diamondcat]

This may be a way too general question, but...
What components determine the speed of a network connection?

 

[LoveAeris]

As far as I know, NIC is only component on a client side and typically handles 10 or 100Mbps. There should be orenge and green LEDs and orange indicates you have 100Mbps. If you don't, ask IT if you can get 100Mbps connection.

You dodn't indicate how many files are loaded over the net, but I can see two cases, Intranet and Internet. I don't know how your network (file server) is connected, but the net speed varies by many thing and typically you can't do much about.

I believe you want to make sure if it's network issue at least. Otherwise, your PC is just fine. (hardware and configuration)

 

[NathanN]

Most good hard drives can be read at about 40 - 50MBps. The network can only do 100Mbps, which is only 12.5MBps, so having the files on your hard drive is definitely the way forward. Or you could upgrade to a gigabit network...

 

[EdDanzer]

Your problem maybe that you have too much RAM for the CPU. Intel and the computer manufacture don’t like to talk about the dirty problem of handling paging files in RAM, paging files are stored in the cache, too little cache in relation to RAM and things slow down because the CPU is trying to find the page file it needs. I’ve been down this road several times. The other problem maybe a bad RAM chip. To test remove all but one chip, boot and run the file, be sure to time how long it takes to boot, load the file, and make a 1 change to the file. Install one more chip until performance goes down. If you have not used all the chips, take the last one out and try another to see if that chip is bad. This process can take lots of time to do but I don’t know of any other way.
I have had 2 different Intel clone boxes have too much RAM, one Dec Alpha with a bad chip, and a 933 Dell box with too much RAM.

 

[diamondcat]

Thanks for the info. Our IT guys are coming to replace our servers next week, so hopefully that will help with the speed. We have had a couple bad instances lately where all of a sudden all of the files on the network, that are not open at the time, disappear. Not a good feeling to all of a sudden loose everything. I am also going to start working off of my hard drive and uploading my stuff to the network once a day, I'm sure that will help some.
Thanks again fore the ideas.

 

[JNR]

If you set SW to using hardware Open GL, you also usually need to set your graphics driver to that also. Plus there is a slider setting to remember. There are lots of old posts on this stuff or ask you VAR.

It does sound like your problem is elsewhere though. If it is loading over the network, you should find a way to change that and bring them locally to your disk to work on. PDM systms usually handle this automatically while managing the potential conflicts of concurrent use.

Remember also that total network traffic can drag down even a fast network. Also other interference or bad connections, hubs, etc. We have seen these things happen.

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