Processor inquery...

[Albion]

We're looking at upgrading our Engineering computers to something with a little bit more umph. I've been looking at the Core i7 processors for this venture. HP told me that I'd be unwise to go with those processors because they're really for "gamers". They told me that I should go with the Xeon W5590 instead. Now I kinda have an incling that they're a little bias because they really don't offer any i7 options for the Workstation end. So I figured I'd go right to the source and ask the guys (and gals) who are using them.

So, Is anyone here running the Core i7 processer with Solidworks? Can you give me your experience with it? Are you over clocking? Have you had any crashing problems while in production?

Thanks in advance for the info.

-Craig

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Go to

http://www.solidmuse.com/

and check out the Pages section at the top of the second column. It includes benchmarks and results from many different types of systems. The top 18 fastest use the i7's (mostly overclocked) ... the xeons follow.

 

[Albion]

Unfortunately that page doesn't give much of a _personal_ experience from the users. Benchmarks are cool but they're still just numbers, not opinions.

-Craig

 

[AnnaWood]

Core i7's are based on the same cpu architecture as the Xeon's 35xx and 55xx series.

Consider the source, HP, giving you the Core i7's are for gamers line. Of course they will say that, they want to sell you what they have to sell. Dell and Lenovo will tell you the same thing.

A nice Core i7 or a Xeon 35xx or 55xx series system will be you a great computer for SolidWorks. The Xeon based systems will be a touch slower then the Core i7 systems.

Look at Xi or Boxx for Core i7 systems. All the major OEM sell Xeon based systems for their workstation class computers.

I am very happy with my Core i7 systems performance for SolidWorks. I do not hesitate to recommend them as great systems.

Cheers,



Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2010 SP0, Windows 7

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[AnnaWood]

Also HP is trying to sell you most expensive Xeon processor option that they have the W5590. Very expensive for very little gain in performance over the cpu that are a step or two below that model.

The better question we have for you is what do you do with SolidWorks? Mainly solid modeling or do you spend a lot of time rendering doing FEA?

How big are your models and assemblies? How feature rich?

Give some info there and we can make some recommendations on what would be some good hardware to look into.

Also spend some time on the SW forum reading in the Hardware and Perfomance section. There are always discussions on hardware going on.

https://forum.solidworks.com/community/administration

Cheers

Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2010 SP0, Windows 7

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[DonMgt]

Just happened to notice your question. We have several seats for UG NX. Our previous systems were fairly dated (mostly single core, 1-2 GB RAM, 3-5 year old processors). We wanted to make a major jump in technology but still be economical. We really are liking the HP gaming machines you were told not to buy. We now have 6 HP i7-975 machines with 18 GB RAM and the 260 1.8 GB graphics card. Basically it's a 10 fold increase from our old machines. We also have one dual processor quad core W5590 machine for our heavy CFD work. When not doing CFD we do use it for UG NX work. Obviously it's the fastest machine, from a Specmark benchmark it's about 220% faster than our i7-975 machines, (which are over 10 times the speed of our old machines). For the money the 975s are a better value for us as the W5590 which was more than 300% more expensive and the tasks that it is much faster our engineers do only occasionally.

We could save more money by using 920 and less RAM but we found we are using 12 GB plus rather frequently, and the jump in price for the 975 in my mind was worth it.

Someone will probably tell me this setup is not supported by NX (which is true). It was signficantly cheaper than a single processor workstation so we bought one to see how it worked. What you give up in the gaming systems from what I can tell are: 1) No ECC memory, 2) Fewer expansion slots, 3) If we need more RAM it's really expensive as we have remove all the existing RAM and buy higher density RAM, 4) the graphics cards are not supported but in our application everything works just fine.