Dell Precision 490 system specs - any thoughts?

[christhorn82]

Hi there, thanks for taking the time to help.

I'm to get a new Dell workstation at work with a budget of around £2000. I've specced the following system and would appreciate some comments (i.e. over the top, lacking in certain areas...)

I tend to work with assemblies of 500-1000 parts and recently have started more intensive rendering and COSMOS work.

Base system: Dell Precision 490 with Windows XP Pro x64
CPU: Intel Xeon 5345 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 2x4MB) quad-core
Memory: 4GB DDR2 667MHz quad-channel FBD RAM (4x1GB)
Graphics card: nVIDIA Quadro FX3500 256MB
Hard drive: 73GB 15,000rpm SAS HDD

I want the machine to be quite future-proof, hence I think the Dell 490 has space for a second CPU?

Also, with eight DIMM slots for RAM, I was wondering which would be better performance-wise - 4x1GB or 8x512MB?

Lastly, the Intel Xeon 5160 (3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB) is the same price as the quad-core E5345 - which processor is likely to give the best performance now and over the next couple of years?

(I've referred to

http://www.cpubenchmark.net

in choosing the CPU...)

Thanks very much for the help,

Chris Thorn

 

[EEnd]

I do not know which would be better performance wise, but I would choose 4x1024 over 8x512 for the following reason. If you later decide to increase your RAM, all of your slots will be filled and you will have to toss out some 512 sticks to make room for something larger.

Eric

 

[christhorn82]

Ah of course, good point! Thanks Eric.

 

[StefanHamminga]

I would take the single Xeon 5160 and replace both cpu's when you feel you need more power. This cpu will perform a lot better for SW. Also it is good practice (with Intel cpus) to use 2 CPUs from the same production batch in SMP systems. This to avoid minor bugs caused by small revisions in the CPUs.


Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
Searching Eng-Tips forums

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

As a follow-on to EEnds post, it might be even better to go with 2x2048 or even 1x4096 if you plan to max the RAM to 32GB.

BTW, to get the 8 DIMM slots you would need the 1KW chassis option (whatever that means) in which case "512MB DIMM not available on the 1KW chassis".

 

[christhorn82]

Thanks very much for the info guys - exactly what I'm looking for

I was wondering about quad-core/lower clock vs dual-core/higher clock. At the moment I have a Pentium D 3.40GHz processor with two cores - I take it I should notice quite a difference between that and the Xeon 5160 (when combined with fast HDD and RAM)?

With regard to RAM density I think 4x1GB will do for now... I could always, for example, put four new 2x1GB in the first DIMM slots in a year or so to take it up to 12GB...

 

[StefanHamminga]

Actually you should always use 4 dimms, as the chipsets for the Xeon 5xxx series can access 4 channels simultaniously, eg. 4 times the bandwidth. Going with 1 dimm seriously hinders performance. This can be found halfway page 3 here

The 5160 would be around 50 to 100 percent faster than your 3.4GHz Pentium (closer to 100% in most cases I'd say).

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer
Searching Eng-Tips forums

 

[christhorn82]

Blimey that is quick! 4 channels simultaneously - quad channel - of course thanks!

 

[FiveOJester]

Defenitely go with the fastest dual-core you can get. The quad cores aren't going to help you any over a dual core in Solidworks. I recently went from a 2.8Ghz Pentium D to the Xeon 5160 (3.00 GHz) and the improvement in performance in AMAZING!

We also went with the Precision 490. If it's still available I would save the $300 and get the Quadro 3450. About the same performance, just doesn't support as much of the new RealView stuff in SW2008.

Also you won't really need that 15k rpm SCSI drive as you only use the hard drive when loading file. Go instead with the 10k RPM SATA drive. That's the Western Digital Raptor which actually performs close to most 15k SCSI drives.

This will all save you lots of $$$ which you can put into two SWEET monitors. Dell's Flat panels are awesome and if you've got the space get two 22" ones.

 

[christhorn82]

Thanks ever so much for the reply - I'm sure you've just saved my company quite a bit of cash! Although they'll probably say "Ah good, money saved" instead of "Great, get two monitors with the remaining cash" C'est la vie!

 

[AnnaWood]

Be sure to get yourself an FX3500 video card. The video card requirements for SolidWorks 2008 will require the newer cards from Nvidia to get the RealView shaders to work properly.

See the SolidWorks website for the approved/tested cards for SW2008,

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

Cheers,


Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[christhorn82]

Thanks Anna. To be honest I'd made my mind up about the 3500 - seems like the best choice for the time being.

 

[MPCLima]

I highly suggest the dual monitor setup.. you won't be disapointed. There are a lot of tricks to avoid having to buy such an expensive graphics card. There are ways to trick the graphics card into thinking its actually faster than it is. look into it. My company paid 1500 for an fx4500, good but I would spen my money on faster and more processers and memory.

http://www.morrisonpump.com

 

[christhorn82]

Hmm OK... I've heard quite a lot about this I guess... What are the main advantages of dual monitor then? What would I have being displayed on each monitor and how would it "improve" my work?

Where my company is coming from is mainly that I can be spending a lot of time (a couple of hours a week sometimes) just sat there waiting for my PC to render a picture or rebuild a drawing of a large assembly.

A faster PC should dramatically reduce that time... but I don't quite know how I'd pitch getting two monitors to them!

Thanks for the continued interest and support,

Chris

 

[swertel]

The two monitors come in handy if you have multi-processors. You can have word processor, email, or internet open on one screen while Works is open on the other. Without two monitors, switching tasks still bottle-necks you on how quickly the command to switch apps can be timed through the bus for your graphics card to process. Two monitors = two paths so less delay, i.e. don't have to do a big screen refresh (assuming you run Works maximized).

--Scott

http://wertel.eng.pro

 

[christhorn82]

Ah, that makes sense. I shall have a think about it! I already have a Sony 19" so if I got a Dell 19" to go with the system and stole someone else's Sony 19" from the office I guess at least then I could have matching monitors

Cheers,

Chris

 

[J-C]

Two monitors is the best upgrade ever....I don't print out stuff nearly as much. Just pull it up on the 2nd monitor.

Jason

SolidWorks 2007 SP4.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[swertel]

And I'll second Jason's quote.

Two monitors means I print out much less. Looking at information on one screen while it is entered into another is better than having to print it out because <ALT>+<Tab> is too inconvenient. No, I can't just copy-n-paste for the examples I'm thinking of.

I currently don't have 2 monitors and really wish I did. I actually prefer turning the second monitor 90 degrees (portrait mode) so it reads pdf files, word docs, and internet pages with the proper perspective, i.e 8.5X11 instead of 11X8.5.

--Scott

http://wertel.eng.pro

 

[AnnaWood]

Two monitors is the way to go. Much more efficient to have stuff up on one monitor while working on the other. I would not be happy to give up my 2nd monitor.

Scott,

Looks like we are going to need to work on getting you another monitor. Actually we need to do that for all the guys in the group. May take some campaigning but I am sure we can make that happen for you....

Cheers,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[Tmoose]

Just repeating what I've heard - The common feeling here is the folks with more video memory run a bit faster. 256 MB is considered not very much.