P4 2800, 1GB Ram, 30gb Hard drive Solid Works 2006 runs really slow

It would be really helpful to know which model MacIntosh he is running on.

Sorry:- Windows 2000 SP4

Oops, me bad. It's in the subject line.

P4 2800, 1GB Ram, 30gb Hard drive Solid Works 2006 runs really slow

First off, we can attribute a major portion of the slow performance to:

1. Intel processor. A P4 2.8Ghz cpu is way out of date. (Dual core AMD64 2X 4800+ is about state of the art and 2006 should take advantage of the dual core in drawings.)
2. Pagefile setup. Your pagefile may not be setup right. See the SW website for instructions on how to set this up.
3. Insufficient RAM. Make sure you have enough RAM. 2GB should be enough.
4. Fragmented hard drive. Clean out temp and defrag hard drive.
5. Poor assembly technique. Clean up your assemblies for performance. See SWW presentation on assembly performance.
6. SW. SW has steadily degraded performance over the years.
7. Not hiding section, detail and other high overhead views when not in use.

Now some perspective:

I run one of the fastest systems on the newsgroup and it took me an hour to place 5 dimensions on a complex large assembly detail view two days ago.

And look up XPTC and read it before implementing it.

You dont mention your GPU... Grapchic card... it's crucial part of the SW performance...

Here is TOP's original message.

----- Original Message ----- From: "TOP" Newsgroups: comp.cad.solidworks Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 8:41 PM Subject: TIP of the DAY: Keeping XP Humming

Kvick wrote in news:%1Xjf.201$ snipped-for-privacy@read3.inet.fi:

Quite right Arto. Based on the description of the problem, I'll bet there's a Radeon or GeForce in there.

Blast, The problem wit hthese gaming cards is the lack of support for a unified z buffer. Every OpenGL window will use it's own z buffer, which quickly runs the video card out of memory. The Quadro (not NVS) or FireGL cards will not have this problem.

The GPU is a Nvidia 64MB Quadro 4 580 XGL, Direct X version is 7.0. The page file says 523MB used / 1903MB available. The hard drive has already been defraged.

If windows task manager performance tabs values result in "commit charge" > physical memory total-available, then the system is paging to disk and more ram will be a big help.

The next thing is a visit to the benchmark doctor.

A graphics card doesn't really help with drawings that much. Drawings are 2D and most of the heavy lifting is done in the CPU. The GeForce issue won't crop up unless you have had a lot of SW windows open. Since you have a Quadro the point is moot.

Also, make sure you have your journal file set to a local disk in Tools/Options/File locations.

GPU Drivers are also as crucial... and mayby most recent directx helps also (cause the most recent drivers are ment for it)

I assume you DON'T mean the FireGL 8800

Another thought on the Quadro card, just something to check: It is possible to disable the unified z buffer through the OpenGL settings of the nVidia drivers. Make sure the "cutom OpenGL application setting" is set to Solidworks.

I only mention this because the description of the problem sounds so much like a unified z buffer problem. Granted, this doesn't seem to make sense for 2d drawings...

Does the 8800 have trouble with this?