Hardware Help 2

[JPFX]

Hi,
I am currently running SolidWorks 2008 and am having some performance issues. Is this hardware good enough?

AMD Athlon 64+ 3200+
2GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro FX 570

It was ok until I started building more complicated assembles with more parts.
I am currently looking at a DELL T5400 is this overkill?

 

[jwarnke]

If you have a 32bit operating system you should have 3gb of ram in you computer. Solidworks will only use 2 of it, but the other GB with be put to good use elsewhere.

Your processor is very weak. You should try and get a hold of an AMD Athlon X2 FX 6000 or higher. You really want around 3ghz of processing... or more!

Your video card is acceptable, however you should really have something between 512 to 1024mb onboard GPU memory, yours only has 256mb.

Make sure you harddrive is good too. You want to get at least a 7200rpm harddrive. Although 10,000rpm is preferable. SATA vs. IDE connection will real help too.

There is no such thing as overkill in solidworks when it comes to hardware.

go to spec.org and find the SPECapc benchmark for solidworks 2007, download it and run it. Your computer will probably clock at about 280 -300 seconds (my guess). In my opinion in Solidworks 2006-2008 you should clock 180-220seconds.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

The Dell T5400 only offers xeon quad cores which, unless you are doing FEA or rendering, will be wasted. One model offers a couple of dual core xeons, but all the xeons are expensive.

The lower end T3400 offers more options of the Core®2 Duos and will give better value for money ... and probably better performance for core SW use.

 

[Theophilus]

I'm with CorBlimeyLimey on this one. Swap your main board to something that will take a Core 2 Duo (E8400, E8500, etc.) and you're spending only ~$300 for quite the fast processing power. Maybe make sure the new main board has the same sort of port for your graphics card, since it will be worth keeping if you're not doing huge assemblies.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[ctopher]

A search here shows several threads on this topic.
One of them...thread559-224176

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

 

[JPFX]

Thanks for your replys, I tested my PC with SPECapc and scored 318secs.

My assembles I am working with have about 600 components.

Regarding the graphics card for my assembly size what Nvidia Qaudro do you recommend? How much performance is in the Graphics Card?

What PC specs do you recommend for this situation?
Is it worth going to 64bit?

 

[MadMango]

NVIDIA Quadro FX1700 (512mb) is your best "bang for the buck" and run around $300-$500 depending were you look.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Actually, according to this link the FX570 would be the best value. There aappears to be little difference between it and the higher level cards ... using the SPECapc Solidworks 2007 benchmark.

Someone else posted something like this recently but I don't remember who and cannot find the thread. Thanks goes to them anyway.

 

[JPFX]

Do you think that the Nvidia Quadro FX 570 is good enough for the size of my assemblies? Also do you think it is worth the hassle of changing to 64 bit operation system and SolidWorks?

 

[JPFX]

I have narrowed it down to the following processors:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33Ghz Wolfdale
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 3.0Ghz Quad Core Penryn

Is tthe QX9650 worth the extra money? Not thinking about price will the QX9650 perform better with future versions of SolidWorks?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Again, unless you are using FEA or rendering in SW, the quad cores will be wasted. SW will basically use only one core. If you have other programs which can make use of the cores, then that's fine.

 

[JPFX]

Thanks, what do you think about this system?

Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33Ghz Wolfdale
Ballistix DDR2 4GB PC2-6400 Dual Channel
ASUS P5Q-E Motherboard
2 x 300GB Velociraptor 10,000prm RAID 0
Nvidia Quadro FX 570 256MB
Windows XP Pro 32bit
Solidworks 2009 SP0.0

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I don't know much about motherboards, but from a quick search it appears to have received good reviews.

 

[JPFX]

Thankyou for your help

 

[Theophilus]

That looks like a great system. I've had two systems in the past with Asus main boards and each had failures (the boards, not the systems). Through the whole time a client had a system with a similar Asus main board and never had an issue (and is still using it today--six years later). So Asus is hit and miss with reliability.

My current main board is a Gigabyte, and I really like how they laid things out and the quality of the accessory parts that came with the board. Great performance so far.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[jwarnke]

I think you should do an XP 64 OS, but otherwise, it all looks good!

Joel C. Warnke
Mechanical Designer &
Infrastructure Technician
Integrity Design & Mfg. Inc.

http://www.integritydesignmfg.com

Solidworks x64 2008 SP5.0
Windows XP Professional x64
Nvidia Quadro FX 3700 512mb GPU
AMD Athlon X2 FX 6400+ CPU
4GB Corsair pc2-6400 DDR2 800mhz RAM
WD Velociraptor 10,000rpm SATA HD
Motherboard M2N-SLI
GPU OC (2

 

[JPFX]

Regarding Solidworks would I notice much difference between p45 and x48 chipsets? Which do you recommend?