What hardware to buy? 1

[tryitagain]

Hello experts,

I need some advise regarding new hardware. A few years ago, when I was in charge of buying new hardware, I always bought workstations with 2 CPU's.
Today, with the multiple cores is that still a valuable option?

This morning I went to the GTAC website and started searching for certified hardware, but it looks to me, that the comfortable selections of hardware brand, OS, graphics, is no longer available, these are just EXCEL sheets.

Thanks in advance.

 

[looslib]

General guidelines without knowing what your product mix is and application requirements.

64bit OS is a must

Since anything less than a quad-core is hard to find, start with the fastest one.
Multi-core CPU chips don't scale the same way that multiple CPU chips do. A quad-care will only give you the equivalent power of about 3 single core chips due to system overhead. If you do a lot of simulation work, a dual quad-core may be of benefit.

8GB memory for starters, depending on the size of your largest assemblies you may benefit from 16GB.

My preference has always been for Nvidia graphics cards, the faster the better.



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[SDETERS]

One thing I keep reading on this board is that do not go with a "gaming" video type graphics card. More Ram the better. MOre Memeory Better. Solid state drives. Also Like Looslib said a 64Bit operating system is a must!!!!!!!

 

[JohnRBaker]

Multiple CPU's are always better if that's an option over a single CPU with multi-cores.

Memory is cheap so don't cut yourself short. Start with a minimum of 8GB and go up from there.

Consider an SSD drive for your local workstation where the OS and the NX software is installed (it's amazing how fast even a cold-started NX session now launches since we replaced my laptop's 300GB hard drive with a 500GB SSD).

Avoid at all costs the so-called 'gaming' cards. Invest in a certified graphics card, preferably one from Nvidia but most of the high-end ones from AMD (formerly ATI) are OK as well and then make sure that you're using the appropriate certified driver as well.

And to get the most out of any multi-CPU/multi-core configuration, be sure that you've enabled SMP support for NX by setting the environment variable UGII_SMP_ENABLE = 1 and that you've DISABLED HyperThreading.

Anyway, that should get you going in the right direction.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[aluminum2]

Personally I have seen better luck with people running Gaming type grafix cards with UG. I have had a few issues with Siemens approved drivers and cards.

I agree about the ssd's. It's sad to see a 2,000$ workstation that has a WD blue hard drive.

For modeling/drafting a single quad core with the highest mhz rating would be ideal. I had a computer with 2 hex core processors at 2ghz per core and the computer was slow running ug.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Note that anything over 4 total cores, unless you're running something like CAE, will not gain you much with respect to NX for most of it's applications. This does change a bit with NX 9.0 and the introduction of an option to perform Real-Time Ray-Traced Rendering where this particular function will use as many cores as you have enabled on your system.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Tingsryd]

Although not multi-threaded (yet!) NX85 cam can use 8 cores for concurrent operation generation and it is a real time saver. I typically set customer defaults on our workstations for 1 less core than the processor total so users can freely work on the desktop and do other things while cam is crunching.

Be sure to disable Intel hyper-threading in the computer bios.

@Bob Baker...care to comment on floating point performance with regards to Intel Xeons vs. non-Xeon chips?

NX85

 

[JohnRBaker]

If the "@Bob Baker' question was directed at me, I'm John, 'Bob' was my father's name. As for the question, if it was indeed directed at me, I'm not really a 'hardware guy' so I'll have to let someone who actually is answer that, however, I will put the question to some people here at Siemens who really ARE 'hardware guys' and if I learn anything I'll post it.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Tingsryd]

Sorry John! I knew that but it's just a pitfall of copying and pasting from a word processor. I am getting lazy with spell checker!

From playing around with different cpu's it seems cad is floating point intensive and I feel the original poster should consider only Xeon cpu's and stay away from more generic computers that have simply been upgraded with a nice graphics card and a SSD. Also if he's seriously considering a motherboard with dual cpu sockets then he'd have to go with Xeon anyway.

NX85

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, you are correct about CAD being floating point intensive, in fact, that's a gross understatement ;-)

But that brings a very good point, particularly when considering the purchase of a laptop to install NX on. Of course, for my job, going to user meetings and visiting customers, I don't have much of a choice, but today there is a class of laptops know as 'Portable Workstations'. These are the ones you should consider if you're looking to install NX on them. Prior to the introduction of theses sort of machines, BTW. I'm running on a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel quad-Core 'i7' processor, laptops were just not all that usable for something like NX. In fact, in those days when I went on the road I had what was called a 'luggable workstation'. Basically a full-fledged workstation in a large briefcase. It wasn't technically considered portable since you had to plug it into a conventional power source, but you could carry it onto a plane as hand baggage (although it was always exciting explaining to the security people that it was a just a computer). For most trips I sent it has luggage inside it's own fully padded 'Pelican' hardcase. It came complete with a full size keyboard, mouse and 19 inch monitor but it took time to unpack and setup. I went through 3 of these machines before the laptop vendors finally started to provide true 'workstation' class units.

Here's a photo of me taken in 2006 where I'm using this system during a demo. Shortly after that I switched to using a laptop:

Note that the 'flags' on the back of the case indicated the various countries that THAT particular machine had been 'lugged' to ;-)

These 'workstaions in a briefcase' I used were from a company named 'MaxVision' out of Huntsville, AL (it was started by some people who left Intergraph when they were contemplating exiting the workstation business back in the late 90's) which is still in business today providing 'portable' workstations for people who REALLY need to be able to move fast and yet have to have computing power that can only be found in a TRUE workstation type configuration.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[frankbe]

Hi,

At home I was setting up a Mac Mini server for my wife;
16GB RAM and 256GB SSD
i7 4-core
Screen is 24" Samsung 1920x1200

Then I installed parallels and Win7 64bit.
I assigned 8GB for Win7 and 8GB RAM for MacOSX
For fun I tried to install NX...
NX 8.5 and NX 9 on Win7 on this system just work great; no graphical issues at all. I also installed the Space Pilot without any issues.
And the thing runs like a charm. I haven't tried dual screen setup yet. but I will. And if that runs OK, I know what my next machine at home will be ;-)
Funny thing was however that NX wouldn't install on this system on MacOS and this probably because of Xquartz in combination with the "poor" graphics card.


2x NX8.5.1.3 Mach Design
on win7 64bit and MBP MacOS 10.8.3
NX Beta Tester
1x Solid Edge ST2

 

[JohnRBaker]

I know several people who've installed NX on Apple hardware using Windows as their OS and they seem very satisfied with this arrangement.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.