Dell Optiplex GX260: Any Good?

Kevin,

These machines are the lower end of the Dell line. They all seem to have integrated graphics. I'm assuming your model also has an AGP slot if you've got an FX500 in it (unless you got a PCI card). PCI cards are slow because they're limited by the speed of the PCI bus. P4's are not very efficient at running SW. A 2ghz P4 will run SW about the same, or a little slower, as the fastest P3.

SW needs a ton of horsepower to run acceptably. This is defined by the whole system, CPU, memory, FSB speed, disk IO, and graphics. Dell's are slower, mhz for mhz, than the equivelant custom built system. That being said, you should look at the upper end of the Dimension line. Dell doesn't "officially" support technical workstations. You can, however, customize a fairly respectable configuration. This would include the fastest P4 you can get, 2gb of the fastest memory, SATA Raid 0 disks, and at least a PNY FX1100.

Some IT departments set policy without thinking things through very well. Most IT professionals don't know anything about CAD/CAM, or the hardware/software requirements of these systems. Companies that do it right also have a CAD/CAM administrator to make sure people have the proper tools.

Regards

Mark

Your ram looks a little meager at first glance. Also you don't mention your OS.

jk

According to Solidworks, the amount of memory I am using is adequate. I am only creating individual parts with few features, in most cases.

I started out using Win XP SP 1 and experienced many crashes. Yesterday, our IT guy took a spare machine and loaded Win 2000 Pro on it to see if the operating system makes a difference. It does. The file I could consistently make crash with Win Xp works well with Win 2000 Pro.

The machines have all been checked with diagonsitcs and are deamed healthy.

To confirm Mark's comment about the Video card. Yes, we did disable the on-board video and make use of the AGP slot to add the FX500.

Regards, Kevin