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solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?
3

solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
Hi all, can anyone recomend a workstation build-standard to run solidworks 2007 - 2008 onwards. I have a HP xw6200 (3.2G Xeon) with upgraded RAM (4GB) and upgraded graphics card (nvidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI. Every day at work this machine struggles like hell to cope with assemblies of more than 300 parts and its really grinding me down. There are 4 other users aswell as me and we are getting really fed up with it. Solidworks wont help. Solidsolutions are also no help.I have tweeked and tuned my settings to the best i know and still no good. I would expect on a workstation of this standard to be capable of assemblies 1000 parts and greater but there is no chance.

Any advice would be really appreciated. Is it me or has solidworks got more and more CPU hungry every year!!

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

Quote:

Every day at work this machine struggles like hell to cope with assemblies of more than 300 parts
Can you provide examples of how it struggles? Is it rotating slowly, opening slowly, or?

Make sure that your video card driver is approved by checking at: http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html.

Also, are you working locally or across a network?

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog
Dell M90, Core2 Duo
4GB RAM
Nvidia 3500M

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
Loading the model or assembly gives me 100% CPU usage for 5 min + or for long enough for me to give up and end the program.

Rotating - slows down the bigger the assembly

switching between configurations - slows down

sheetmetal - very very slow working with fold and unfold and configurations

all my drivers are certified. I have no graphics issues

Everything seems to load the CPU and it cant cope but according to solidworks web site, the spec i have should eat this kind of work for breakfast.

Ive tried 3GB boot ini file - no real change

Ive tried hyperthreading - no change

Ive tried the network and working locally and it makes a very small time difference to open a part/assembly

Im recently starting to use animator and i dont want to be here all day for 1 animation so i plan to eat into the IT budget but id like to know why the hell these xw6200's dont cut the mustard?

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

Are all 5 users using the same hardware and software?

Do you all have dual monitors? Is SW running on monitor 1?

Are the parts in the assembly very complex?
Do they have sketch or feature patterns, sweeps or other processor intensive features?

Do you have the nVidia Applications settings set to SolidWorks?

cheers

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
All of us have the same software and all have the xw6200 workstations but i have the upgrade.I have a HP xw6200 (3.2G Xeon) with upgraded RAM (4GB) and upgraded graphics card (nvidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI. The other 4 have 2G ram and Quadro fx 540 (128mb). All have 1 monitor. I tried a second this week but it had no positive or negative effects.

some of our parts are complex but 99% are very simple. A good example is a cicuit board with 200 tiny componant blocks on it. all simple blocks with no patterns or sweeps etc just little coloured blocks on a flat plate with cuts and extrudes.

Yes i have Nvidia settings to Solidworks.

I can only stress again i have no graphics issues only loading and editing issues. Task manager reports CPU maxed out all the time when opening assemblies or editing medium sized ones.

Its a 3.2Ghz Xeon!

This assembly crashes on 2 machines and opens fine on mine. then i can try opening it a day later and it crashes on mine?!?!?!

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

In their day the Xeon CPU you have was the cat's meow, not anymore.  I would guess your computer is about three years old.  HP spec sheet for the xw6200 dates from 2004/2005.

The new Intel Core 2 Conroe and Xeon Woodcrest and newer CPU's are far superior to what you currently have.

SolidWorks benefits most from the fastest CPU you can get.

SolidWorks 2007 and also 2008 needs more computing horsepower then previous versions.  I suspect also you are doing more with your computers and SolidWorks then you have in the past.

Here is a spreadsheet you can look at and also download the file so you can try for yourself and see how your CPU stacks up against more current hardware.

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse/workstation_performance/index.html

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pz7wTpIkC7LA28ybEyxyTPw

Here is a list of threads that Stefan Hamminga has participated in.  He is very good on hardware and there is good info a number of the threads he has participated in.

http://www.eng-tips.com/userthreadparticipate.cfm?pid=559&handle=StefanHamminga

Your systems do not have the headroom to use the newer software like they had when new.  Probably time for some new computers.

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

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

The computers you have should easily handle a measly 300 part assembly. At home I am running a several year old Pentium 4 single core 2.4Ghz, 1.5GB RAM and an nVidia Quadro FX500, and commonly work with assemblies well over 300 parts. I see very little slow down. I used to have an ATI Radeon which sucked and made SW run really slow.

You can easily find more powerful and faster machines than you currently have, but I honestly don't believe that is the problem. Running the various performance tests and comparing times will indicate if it is your machine or not. It could be something in one of your parts or sub-assys causing the slow-down.

Here's acouple of performance testers;
http://www.solidsmack.com/007-is-soldworks-2008-faster-the-top-5-questions-answered/2007-06-22/

Perhaps ask your VAR to run the assembly on one of their machines for a quick comparison.

cheers

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
Anna your post is very very helpfull thank you very much. I have finally found a bunch of people who speak my language insted of salesman giving me bull sh*t. Ive been on your benchmark and downloaded the puch test. I get 287.98 second re-build but solidworks still hangs (egg timer with white sceen) for a further 250 seconds after that?!? so its more like a 540 second rebuild! i have the go go go to spend the IT budget and have 2 new workstations coming on loan (test) from HP

1.xw4400 PW391EA - core 2 duo
2.xw8400 PW430EA - dual core Xeon

Ill run the test on both and make my decision based on the results.

I knew my graphics card was a beast and the Ram. I'm glad other people have confirmed its the Xeon single core.

CorBlimeyLimey - Id like to know how your P4 stacks up running the simple benchmark from Anna???????????????

cheers

K3rsh

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

Using Anna's benchmark netted a poor result on a similar works computer (listed near the bottom of her linked spreadsheet) sad ... but that is for a part with several large patterns. Patterns are performance killers; which is why I asked about them in my first post.

Your assertion that the assys consist of simple parts led to my statement that they should not be overtaxing your system.

But if you have the budget to upgrade then go for it.

cheers

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
No problem CorBlimeyLimey thanks for all your help. The assemblies i have been fighting with do not have patterns in or major power-killing features but still eat all my processor power since upgrading from sw2006 to 2007. its clear that DS decided to make 2007 far more power hungry.

Thanks for everyones help

ill let you know what we buy and how it does

cheers

kersh

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
Well Guys i Have been doing a little Benchmarking since my last post!

I can report back that after getting my hands on a couple of test workstations that the Core 2 is far far greater than the Xeon for Solidworks workstations

Workstation 1

HP xw4400
Intell Core 2 Dou E6600 2.4Ghz
2.00GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 (256MB)

Workstation 2

HP xw8400
Intell Quad Core Xeon E5335 2.0Ghz
2.00GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 (256MB)

Both tested with Anna Woods Punch test.

Results:-

Workstation 1 Time = 127.21

Workstation 2 Time = 153.69

Both tested with SPECapc for Solidworks 2007

Results:-

Workstation 1 Time =

Complete 192.21
Score Ratio 2.34
Score Time 191.01

Workstation 2 Time =

Complete 238.82
Score Ratio 1.93
Score Time 237.42

As you can see the Core 2 Duo is around 45 seconds Faster Overall with SPECapc and around 30 seconds faster at Re-Building the Punch test.

Solidworks has clearly been built to optimise around 2 core's not 4 and the Core 2 design not the new Xeon's

Im going to recomend my IT guy's Spec the following for SW 2007-2008

HP xw4600
Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93 Ghz
3 to 4 GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro FX 3500 (256MB)


Hope this is of use to others

Cheers

Mark Kershaw

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

Note that your results correlate to the fact that SW is a single processor program that doesn't benefit from multiple cores.  2.4GHz is 1.2 times faster than 2.0GHz.  Your reported results are very close to 1.2 times faster for the dual core 2.4GHz than for the quad 2.0GHz machine.

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
This is an interesting point. One which is not valid when comparing to the Old workstation which prompted this Thread.

The reason i started this Benchmaking process in the firstplace is that my 3.4Ghz Single core Xeon workstation with 4GB RAM & same GPU is on its knees with SW 2007

the results for the 2 year old xw6200 are as follows

Workstation Old boy Time =

Complete 277.68
Score Ratio 1.63
Score Time 275.62

SW may have been designed around Single Cores up till 2006 but id argue in 2007 they revamped the process for 2 cores!

3.4 is 1.7 times bigger than 2.0 but is slower!!

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

Your old workstation benchmarks are irrelevant in this case.  I assume your two new machines have the same MOBO, FSB, etc, the only difference being the processors.  Your old workstation's other hardware factors into its performance statistics.  I have the same three year old HP xw6200 you do, except only 3GB ram and two single core 3GHz Xeons.  My rebuild time for Anna's model is pretty much the same as yours.  The RAM in these old machines is awfully slow (PC3200) compared to what is available now.   That being said, only one processor is in use by SolidWorks.  This is true in SW99 or SW08.  But don't take my word for it, check your performance statistics in Task Manager while you rebuild Anna's model.

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
I here what your saying but again i must question your logic. Your old xw6200 with 2 3.0Ghz chips on are in seperate sockets which solidworks does not support. solidworks will only use on chip! New technology chips with multi cores are a different kettle of fish. Multi chip boards rely on th MOBO to alocate where CPU 1&2 get used and when. Most CAD packages do not support Multi CPU MOBORDS.

Task manager reports full usage of dual core single package chip sets and alows affinety to be changed dependant on application. for example i can set the 4 core Xeon to only allocate 2 core to solidworks. This actually improoves the test results!!

If i set the 2 core Duo to only use 1 core on Sw it slows down!

Your issue is old MOBO 2 chips!  

The new design of the Core 2 Duo is getting great results from a larger opinion than mine. read back through this Thread and follow the links to compare with other SW benchmarks.

see bellow

Posted by: Kirk L. Jess | August 30, 2007 at 06:37 AM

I have some interesting results... for this test Core Quad is slower the Core Duo.

I have two nearly identical Dell Precision 390s that I bought at the same time, the only diffrence is one is a Core Quad and one is a Core Duo

Both systems have these stats:
RAM 2gig
Windows XP -32bit
Nvidia Quadro FX 550
Same Dell Motherboard
2.4ghz CPUs in both. One is a Core Duo and one is a Quad.

Core Duo 2.4ghz E6600 129 seconds
Core Quad 2.4ghz Q6600 136 seconds

I ran the test several times and got the same results.

I thought to myself, hmmm... Why is the Quad slower? What if I set the processor affinty on the solidworks process to only use two of the four cores, I did just that and re-ran the test and it came in at 129 just like the Duo machine.

Looks like maybe Solidworks is optimized around two cpus. I am going to test that theroy with the solidworks benchmarks from SPEC.ORG and once I figure it out I'll post the results.

--Dennis

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

Try testing this result just giggles and see if it makes it worse or better.

Open SW (no files open), Go to Tools\Options\System Options\Performance\ Select "Software OpenGL" and then close SW and test with your benchmark and post your results. Don't change the CPU. Keep the fastest processor way you have setup already.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP pc2
www.scottjbaugh.com

Quote:

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
OpenGL is always slower with SW in my experience but just for giggles ill do it on the core 2 Duo for you :)

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

(OP)
Belive it or not in Open GL Mode its 126.53. not much to write home about but ill give you it is .7 secs quicker. lol

RE: solidworks 2007 sp4.0 Hardware question?

if the OpenGL turned on is faster then off.. I would honestly start suspecting a VC or driver problem. How much of a problem is not known until you fully test all the VC that are certified along with the drivers that you available to you.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP pc2
www.scottjbaugh.com

Quote:

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

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