Desktop PC or Workstation?

[deek05]

This might be long so bear with me. We have noticed a big slow down in Assemblies with 200-300+ parts, especially when inserting parts, mating or moving. I have heard it's a graphics card to cpu to hard drive speed. We are working locally not off a network.

I ran the following bechmarks:
Ship in a bottle:
average 92sec

SolidSolutions benchmark:
Total - 629
Graphics - 285
CPU - 173
I/O - 171
This is what we are running now:
P4 1800 (IBM)
GeForce4 Ti 4600
1GB RAM
Instead of buying new pc's my boss wants to try a new video card (Nividia 900XGL). If this doesn't show any improvement he can't justify purchasing new pc's. I would like to show him or explain to him why this is not a good test. Would the new video card make much performance difference at all?

We did look at new pc's, here are the specs:

1.
Dell GX260 P4 2.8GHz
533FSB
1GB memory
Nvidia Quadro4 900XGL

2.
Dell Precision Workstation 450
Single 2.8GHz
XEON/533
512K Cache
Multi-Orientation Desktop
1gb 266MHz Double Data Rate SDRAM ECC 2x512
Nvidia Quadro4 900XGL

Obviously 2. would be the better machine, but how much better? There would be about a $700 difference but my boss can't see spending the extra $$$ and why 1. wouldn't work for us. How do I explain the difference between the machines to him or would we be ok with 1.

I think new pc's (2.) would be the best choice especially with SW 2004 coming out later this year. I think the video card test as not a fair performance test. Anyone care to offer some suggestions?

Thanks,

DT

 

[SBaugh]

If you go to the SW website

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

your GF4 pass With Limitations. I think getting a new video card would help your performance vs buying new machines with more bells an whistles. You get a good card now it will last longer than you think sometimes. I have and OLD Elsa Gloria II and runs great. Heck that company went out of business awhile back.

Operating systems make a difference to what OS are you running? Get XP Pro or Windows2000 all others are either outdated and not going to be fully supported or they are bad memory managers.

1Gig of ram is more than enough to run 200-300+ part assemblies on.

What is Multi-Orientation Desktop? I can't find any info on this...

Just to let you know SW doesn't take advantage of Hyper-threading yet either.

I would check your installation of SW. Did you install with AV on. Also I have seen this FAQ to help repair slow downs faq559-507.

Good Luck,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[TheTick]

Are the hard drives SCSI or IDE?

I didn't know the difference until it was too late. Our newest workstations are IDE. Our IT guys said SCSI is faster.

 

[deek05]

<<What is Multi-Orientation Desktop?>>
I don't know either...that was on the spec's from or IT people.

<<Are the hard drives SCSI or IDE?>>
the less $$ machine it doesn't say and the more $$ machine the hard drive is SCSI.

 

[MadMango]

I had SCSI drives in my box, and IT had a lot of trouble with them, so they replaced them with an IDE drive (singular). The problems I was having was due to an Over Temp alarm that was very annoying.

SCSI or IDE, it realy depends if you pull files from a network (like me) or work locally on your machine. If you work locally, then SCSI can speed things up.

Besides Processor speed, graphics card, and hard drive concerns, you also need to be aware of network connection issues and FSB (front-side bus) speed of your mother board. All of these things can contribute to bottlenecks in your system.

As for the box you have now, I think a new graphics card will make a world of difference. Like SBaugh says, check out the SW website and choose a card that has passed the testing with flying colors... in this case GREEN.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
&quot;Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.&quot;

 

[SBaugh]

I don't like SCSI drivers had nothing but trouble with them. I use the IDE Ultra ATA100 with a 7200RPM HDD and I have found them to be a lot faster, friendlier, and cheaper than SCSI drives.

I just spoke with a customer the other day that is using SCSI drives, and he says he will never get another SCSI drive. Because of the problems it has caused him. Plus you can get 100gig IDE HDD for what you would pay for a SCSI 20GIG HDD. That maybe exaggerated but you get my drift.

I would have your IT Department look at IDE Ultra ATA HDD’s.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[TheTick]

Valuable input regarding SCSI vs. IDE. I shied away from SCSI initially simply because it is an older interface (that's all I knew about it).

Stupid computer trick: if you use a lot of virtual RAM (pagefile.sys), scrounge up an extra drive and use it exclusively for pagefile.sys. Must be a separate physical drive. Partitions don't count. This has brought some improvement to my NASTRAN solving times.

 

[deek05]

I just found out that they want to go with just a graphics card. We will order 1 and test it. Which graphics card would be best, Nvidia FX500 or 900XGL? I didn't see the FX500 on the SW website.

 

[StarrRider]

TheTick

On my old system – I had a fairly large hard drive but I wanted a small SCSI drive so that I could use it strictly for the OS and page file. I too had problems and it went belly up after 6 months. I replaced it with a large fast ATA100 drive and got a noticeable improvement in performance.

In response to your Stupid Computer Trick – Adding another drive for this is beneficial but you need to do some testing too. Adding an old IDE drive on the same bus as an ATA100 will cause the ATA100 to operate at the same speed as the old drive.

If anybody is using XP that doesn’t have Tweak-XP (or something similar) – beg – plead – threaten – coerce – or anything else you need to do to get it installed on your system – even if only for a week. Then go through all the Tweaks and turn off all the bloody shadows / transparent garbage that was added to XP. It does make a difference.

Lee

ALL of your computer problems have a simple solution - run FDISK and start over.

 

[ramell]

Have you given ATI cards a look? we just purchased a ATI FireGL Z1 and are really happy with it. I mention this b/c the NVIDIA cards (non-Quadro/post TNT2) are shown in the SW site to work &quot;with limitations&quot;...

/me deposits 2 cents

Ricardo

 

[DetroitPickles]

My 8 cents worth. ATA Ultra 100 HD's win out over SCSI for User's boxes. SCSI is good for a big old server, thus the IT guys like them 'cause they use them, but the new IDE's are pretty darn fast and it isn't like your going to &quot;see&quot; the difference, unless you got a huge assembly and it is local. And, didn't that new computer come with a built-in IDE controller? Why add a SCSI card and some SCSI drive to drive the internal temp up?

The FX500 card I think is too new for the SW website. It is supposed to be pretty nice, but I haven't seen one. I like the 900XGL. ATI cards are not horrible. It is their history of lack of support and drivers that is horrible.



Mr. Pickles

 

[JNR]

Good input, everyone. BUT don't get a FireGL for SW2003/XP. Read back though ALL the old speed/performance posts on SW2003 for information. Right now about the best option seems to be the Quadro's. (We are using 750's with 2.4 Gig CPU's and 1.5 Gig RAM and truley huge assemblies with really nasty geometry - like entire aircraft cockpits with structure and avionics.) We tested some of the others
reccommended and they were awful. So get a loaner to test first, or a written return agreement so that if you get problems you can switch at no cost to you. (Yer boss will luv ya!)


Be very careful reading the SW web site (or anyone else's) for data on graphics compatibility. Look at the DATE. Some of them are SW 2000 vintage!!! I have begged them to improve on this (fill in their surveys when they email them to you - they DO listen and MAY act.)

I doubt whether SW will ever be multi-threaded (that was straight from JH's mouth at SW World 1. Parasolid feature based modelling like SolidWorks is a serial solver - has to be. Actually it is multi-threaded if you have the capability, but just the graphics and user interfaces, so no big deal.

I agree on th SCSI thing too. In fact, our VAR did give me a very good logical explaination of why SCSI is not good for this type of software anyway and our IT guys agreed - just can't remember why now (hey I'm 54, gimme a break....).

One point that someone inferred but did not say outright: If you need to be frugal now, upgrade your graphics today to the best you can get. Then when you can justify a full upgrading again, keep the graphics card and reduce the upgrade cost.

Good luck.