Hardware Upgrade For V5 1

[Ian63]

We are currently looking to upgrade our hardware from 4 year old IBM E-Pro's (666MHz P3, 512MB RAM, 32 MB Fire GL Video card), to IBM M-Pro's (3GHZ P4, 1GB RAM, 128MB Video).

To justify the upgrade I need to show the performance improvement that we will achieve. Does anyone know where I can get some type of benchmark data for such machines?

 

[puck]

Well the performance gain should be a no brainer in this case but I know those accountant types want to see numbers.
Check the COE website to see if their benchmarks are on the site.
The may have some information on the P3 proccessor but I doubt it.

Check with your suppliers and see if they will loan you a box to do your own benchmarks with.
They should because they want to make a sale.
Look also at the benifits of leasing, shorter the term the better.

Also I would strongly suggest that you get 2Gig of memory instead of just one for anyone that will be creating large assemblies.

The video card is key though the Fire GL are proven performers and the 128MB versions are smoking.

I'm using one in a 2 year old P4 1.7 M Pro with 1 gig of memory and it is still pretty snappy and I make large assemblies from 1000 to 3000 parts and sub-assemblies.

 

[itsmyjob]

Hi,

You can find Benchmark at

http://www.catiasolutions.com/

Eric N.

catiav5@softhome.net

 

[titon]

I wouldn't place too much trust in Catia Solutions' CatBench. Their home page features Dell as main sponsor. Reminds me of PCWorld magazine not too long ago, invariably Dell would win the top spot in any category.

In their charts out of 11 workstations, 6 are Dell, and 100% are Intel based, on a dead architecture, Pentium IV, platform cancelled last week by Intel.

A couple of years ago, when AMD came out with Athlon and Intel was stuck with Pentium III below 1GHz, I emailed Phil Harrison asking him about the lack of AMD processors in the reviews. Deja vu again!

Although Athlon 64 and Opteron processors have been out for over a year now, and they offer superior performance and value compared to Intel, the benchmark doesn't even mention them! Not to mention the fact that they support both 32 and 64 bit operations and can address 4 Gb of memory.

Take a look at PCWorld's top systems in the last few months. Right now: top 3 systems, AMD based.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,115620,00.asp

Ace's hardware consistently presented CAD/CAE and graphics results. The only Intel processor able to put up a fight is Pentium IV EE, good luck finding it and be prepared to pay some $600 extra! Oh, and make sure you don't touch that furnace, Preshot, I mean Prescott.

Athlon 64 FX-53 and 3.4 GHz P4 EE: Premium CPU Shootout:

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=65000288

Workstation Applications Benchmarks

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1403007,00.asp

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1403008,00.asp

Cadalyst:

http://cadalyst.adv100.com/cadalyst/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=88688

Xeon counterparts left in Opteron's wake:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12428

I would ask IBM about their IntelliStation A Pro, which was scheduled to ship in May, based on AMD's Opteron 244, 246, and 248 processors, which run at 1.8 GHz, 2.0 GHz, and 2.2 GHz, respectively. The workstation will be available in both single- and dual-processor configurations....
Fujitsu-Siemens also offers AMD based workstations.See Cadalyst's review for other vendors.

 

[titon]

AMD just released the latest workstation processors:

Opteron 150 and 250 Review

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/opteron-x50/index.x?pg=1

"If I were building (or, implausibly perhaps, buying) my ultimate workstation right now, I'd want a pair of Opteron 250s beating at the heart of it. The benchmarks speak volumes. For single-processor systems, the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet. In a multiprocessor configuration, the Opteron 250 scales up very well, even without the benefit of an optimal memory configuration, a NUMA-aware OS, or 64-bit extensions..."