AMD, or Intel?

Time to upgrade again. Anyone running AMD with Solidworks anymore? Otherwise recommend a Core 2 ASUS P5 motherboard, or equivalent. (Gigabit/Biostar?)

ca

Reply to
clay
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Go with an Intel Core i7 cpu if you want the best SW performance.

Cheers,

Anna

Reply to
Anna Wood

here is a good link for reference...

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Reply to
paul

I am using SW maybe 8hrs a week, currently. Performance is not anywhere as important as stability. (I left behind the bleeding edge years ago.)

Nearly every expert Including SW corp says that Core2Duo will benefit SW but NOT Core2Quad, so don't waste the money. Same answer for dual CPU, unless you are doing rendering.

ca

Reply to
clay

I am using SW maybe 8hrs a week, currently. Performance is not anywhere as important as stability. (I left behind the bleeding edge years ago.)

Nearly every expert Including SW corp says that Core2Duo will benefit SW but NOT Core2Quad, so don't waste the money. Same answer for dual CPU, unless you are doing rendering.

ca

Reply to
clay

Anna has done alot of work testing different set ups and CPU's. Odds are well in her favor that she is correct and you should do what she says.

Reply to
KMaren

I dunno. The top end i7 costs $1,000 at NewEgg. The top end AMD Phenom costs $229. The only benchmark that showed the top end i7 doubling the performance of the Phenom was in ray tracing. If you don't go with the fastest i7 the difference with the significantly less expensive Phenom is also less making the price/performance gain less attractive. By going with the less expensive upgrade you can plan to to retire the new system sooner when even faster chips come out in the future. Given that the top end i7 will be surpassed in a year or less the decision might be as much about cost as performance, especially with SW improving performance every year.

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Looks like Intel might be getting ready to throw a curve at SW.

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They are going to integrate graphics and CPU effectively cutting out NVidia and every other graphics chip maker.

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Reply to
manager

i'm not sure what you are using now but for me,... the jump has to be at least 3X factor for it to be worth while... sure,.. if you want to be very conservative... go with one of the E8XXXX processors and nearly any above average mobo will do but ASUS is pretty good. but seriously,.. for the cost/performance, the core i7 920 is by far the best bang for the buck! you know as well as most people here.. what is very important is a good motherboard and memory.. and of course the good pro graphics card. i have built every computer i have used and getting good components is key. which ones... read reviews and base it off what is selling well overall. as for the so called professional SW users and SW Corp? you gotta be kidding, right?? arrgghh... I won't go there. my personal fav for mobo's is ASUS but,... Giga has been producing some very good mobo's lately. my personal fav memory is Crucial but,.. OCZ is suppose to be very good as well. and,.. if you making your own system.. get a above average power supply! hey,.. even if you were to get the BEST,.. the is a chance you will have problems... i've seen MANY clients who have bought the very BEST... it can be the luck of the draw but if you have to be even more conservative.. buy into mega insurance,... next day repair/ replace,... wipe my nose,.... systems.

AMD... i think they have some really good stuff and ideas. as for the lastest,.. if you pair their stuff up well,.. it's a very good bang for the buck as well! their site has recommended systems so that helps. also,.. depending on the mobo socket you have,.. you may be able to upgrade just the cpu and memory to get a good 2X performance jump?

good luck! 8^)

Reply to
paul

Corsair (correction, meant to say,.. heck,.. a lot of them are good nowadays!)

Just make sure they are paired or throw out what you have and get new

4, 6 or 8 gig bundles of what ever your cpu/mobo is designed for!

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Reply to
paul

clay,

Head over to my blog at

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In the right sidebar are links to several SW Benchmark tests. Try them on your current system and also check out the results for yourself. From there you can make your own decision on how much you want to spend for the desired performance from SW.

When you get your new machine be sure to run the benchmarks and submit results.

I will be updating the spreadsheets this weekend with some more results that I have received in the last week or so.

Cheers,

Anna

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Reply to
Anna Wood

I'll look at Annas site.

So back to the questi> KMaren wrote:

Reply to
clay

Paul,

Currently I am thinking Asus P5Q & Intel 8500 will suffice, Or ASUS & AMD Phenom. Maybe gigabit. The only question that matters is reliability. I haven't had a blue screen for years. tells you about how old my system is. My laptop is 2x faster.

The I7 looks good, but considering the benchmark comment by "manager" I don't see the SW real benefit, for what I use it for. 90% of my SW stuff is square corners right now.

you have a desktop? Or are you still a laptop will travel guy?

ca

snipped-for-privacy@zxys.com wrote:

Reply to
clay

Clay,

I have one person who has submitted results for an AMD Phenom system. It is for the Scooby-Doo surface model. It is well down the list for Crtl-Q rebuild performance of this particular model. All of the benchmarks are pretty consistent in their results, so I would expect the Phenom to perform the same in relation to the other cpu's on all the Ctrl-Q rebuild tests.

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Cheers,

Anna

Reply to
Anna Wood

anna, thank you Looks like SW2009 is a shade faster than SW2008.

It would be nice to know what actual motherboard the top Core 2 duo machines had. (Dell & Xi)

You can also see that SW doesn't really take advantage of more than 2 cores. The higher speed top machines probably perform better due to the increased ram speed more than anything else.

Also really interesting to see the low cost, lower speed Dell XPS neck and neck with the top picks, even with the slower ram. Must be the FX3500 that pushed it to the top.

All the programing geeks (That use SW too) tell me that SW doesn't really take advantage of 64bit OS, so it is curious that the 64 bit OS is on all the top machines.....hhmmm....be interesting to see the exact same machine with OS comparison. (Not exactly a fun task)

ca

Anna Wood wrote:

Reply to
clay

Strangely the Phenom comes out just a tad bit faster than the other AMD, an FX60 chip which is quite old. I would think the Phenom would be considerably faster than a CPU that is at least 3yrs old which suggests that settings or setup are playing a part.

The comparison with the i7 is also with different graphics cards and the Scooby benchmark is heavy on graphics. Even so the FX570 is an entry level card. When comparing CPUs it is better to use a benchmark that is independent of the graphics card used. Typically when doing a graphics intensive benchmark there needs to be a standard set of options and screen resolutions.

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Reply to
manager

The Phenom that is listed is a 2.3 GHz part. It is a first generation Phenom X4. It performs about the same as a first-generation Core2 Duo running at 2.4GHz. The new Phenom II processors are supposed to be more competitive clock-for-clock and are available with up to 3.0 GHz clock speed. While not at the same performance level of the Core i7, the Phenom II *may* be competitive alternatives to the Core2 Unfortunately, there really aren't any published SolidWorks benchmarks to prove it out one way or the other.

If absolute top peformance is the goal, then the Core i7 is the only real choice. If price/performance is important to you, then the top end Core2 Duo 8500/8600/8700 are safe buys. The Core2 Quad Q9550 is a good choice for animators/analysts on a tight budget, too.

Also, the Scooby-Doo model is a surface model and does benefit *a little bit* from quad cores. (There is a greater delta in performance between the Core i7/quad Xeons and Core2 Duo processors on the Scooby- Doo benchmark than on the Punchholder benchmark.) Rendering and analyis apps DO benefit from quad cores.

Reply to
jim.zink

If absolute performance is the goal then wait a bit because Intel is going to speed up their CPU again shortly. For the price of the top end bleeding edge i7 CPU alone you can buy 2 1/2 AMD Phenom II x4 Deneb CPUs with motherboard.

To look at it another way, if you are building a balanced system and don't have infinite resources you take the $800 difference in CPU plus motherboard price for the i7 and put it into a better graphics card than you would normally purchase or buy more ram or both. The difference in speed between the top end Phenom and the top end i7 is nowhere near 2x to 3x needed to justify paying top dollar.

I hope Anna can dig up some benchmark results comparing the top end AMD chips to the top end Intel chips because from a price/performance standpoint the AMD appears to be on top. Unless somebody can show that having the bleeding edge fastest chip will provide a tangible time savings in real world performance (read: how much work can be done in a day).

Spec doesn't have any published results for SW since SW2007 took over the benchmarking. In addition I was unable to find any current AMD scores there. There is a distinct lack of competition.

One way to tell how much a fast CPU will help in day to day activities is to look at the CPU time used by the SolidWorks process in Task Manager. What you do is look at this number and compare it to how much real time has passed during a period of heavy SW use. For example, if you are using SW heavily for 2 hours and Task Manager says you have used

1/2 to 1 hour of CPU time you are probably limited by the CPU speed. If in the same 2 hours you have used 15minutes of CPU then you are probably not limited by CPU speed.

====================================== Current pricing from Google search ====================================== Price of a top end AMD processor: AMD Phenom II X4 quad core 940 3.0ghz black ... $236.50 - EWorldSale.com NewEgg: AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor $260 shipped

CPU and mobo combo AMD Phenom II 940 3.0GHz Motherboad Combo (Asus M4A78 PRO) $384.20

=======================================================================

Price of a top end i7 Intel Core i7 3.2 GHz Processor $980 to $1,464 - 123 stores mobo runs around $300

Memory DD3

6Gb $250.
Reply to
manager

I would be happy to add benchmark results to my Google spreaadsheets for current AMD Phenom II systems. If anyone has an AMD system run the benchmarks and send me the results.

Cheers,

Anna

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Reply to
Anna Wood

I would agree that the Core i7 is somewhat overpriced and hard to justify for most users - at least at this time. A better comparison to the Phenom II would be the Core2 series, and here the pricing is very close.

Core2 Quad Q9650 3.0 GHz $324 Core2 Duo E8600 3.3 GHz $264

The Phenom II 3.0 GHz *might* offer comparable performance, but the Core2 has *proven* to be a terrific CPU for SolidWorks.

Reply to
jim.zink

Please be clear, I am not saying the Phenom II x4 is faster. What I am saying is that the majority of people wouldn't notice the difference in a days work and so it wouldn't make sense to spend all the extra money on the Intel item. Unless you are seeing more than 25% of your time waiting on the cpu the 1.5x speed increase of an i7 probably isn't worth it because it will only buy you 5-10 minutes a day.

Both the i7 and the Core2 are overpriced when it comes to performance. At the price differential we see Paul Salvador's 2x-3x speed increase recommendation is in play. As the quotes show below, it isn't just the cpu price, but the cpu + mobo + memory = system price that is important.

While you may cast aspersions on AMD running SW reliably, we have heard that one before. There is just nothing to justify that anymore than saying the i7 cannot run SW reliably. AMD historically has had a very good (*proven*) track record with SW.

Anandtech covered the performance price aspect:

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i7-920 a 40% more expensive purchase. For the difference in platform cost you could purchase a faster graphics card, bigger hard drive, or even put money towards an SSD. Core i7's total cost of ownership keeps it from being Phenom II's direct competition; instead Phenom II is really competing with Intel's 45nm Core 2 Quad processors.

not cache starved, and while not as balanced as Core i7, it's a step in the right direction.

pick. While it's not faster across the board, more often than not the 940 is equal to or faster than the Q9400. If Intel can drop the price of the Core 2 Quad Q9550 to the same price as the Phenom II X4 940 then the recommendation goes back to Intel. The Q9550 is generally faster than the 940, more overclockable at lower voltages, and a high enough default clock speed to keep you happy in the long run.

comparison at the same price point. Compared to the Q9400, the Phenom II X4 920 falls behind. The Q9400 is the better buy of the two, but only if Intel does come through with rumored price cuts. We'll know for sure by the end of the month.

samples. The fact that we weren't able to overclock too high without increasing the core voltage is a testament to the early nature of AMD's 45nm process. Core i7, on the other hand, was basically able to reach maximum clock speed without so much as touching the voltage dials. Remember that Core i7 is Intel's second

45nm processor while Phenom II is AMD's first; it will only get better with time.
Reply to
manager

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