SPECapc SW 2007

And here are the rules. Anybody care to backup to SP0 to run it?

# Solidworks 2007

1. The benchmark must be run using Solidworks2007 service pack 0. 2. The application window size must not be changed from its initial size. 3. The submission must contain a result.txt file generated by running the benchmark. Its contents are extracted from the file apcresultsN.txt, generated by the benchmark, where N is the number of the benchmark test run. 4. The submission will be derived from the best composite generated by the default 5 benchmark runs, as controlled and reported by the benchmark GUI. 5. The appearance of the the application's Quick Tips / Dynamic Help box, or other pop-ups that do not dismiss themselves, will cause the benchmark run to be invalid. The benchmark FAQ has information on how to prevent this. 6. The directory structure of the submission must be as follows: .../company-name/system_1/sw2007/result.txt .../company-name/system_2/sw2007/result.txt etc... 7. The submission file must be named company_apc_sw2007_vN.zip where company is the member company or organization name in lower case and vN is the file version (e.g. ibm_apc_sw2007_v0.zip.) The initial submission is v0. Resubmitted files must have the version number incremented.

TOP wrote in news:1178821795.509658.107260 @n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:

I believe a requirement for sp0.0 was stated in the instructions for previous versions as well. I'm fairly certain it wasn't enforced in the software then, and I hope it isn't now. I'm certainly not rolling back for it, and a lot of people don't have sp0.0 install media.

snip..........

I have SP0.0 on my Dell M70, and I'm downloading now....at 8kbps!!!! Only 3 hours to go :( Their servers must be saturated.

Art W.

It is a requirement in order to submit results to SPEC. If you use the benchmark to compare hardware it is necessary. If you use it to compare SW service packs it is not necessary but SPEC won't accept results.

TOP

It will be interesting to compare results from "real-world" users. Please include the resolution that you're running at if reporting results. Standardized tests are always run at 1280x1024. Running at higher resolutions will result in lower scores - but may be more realistic, too.

Which just goes to show that SPEC is a graphics benchmark.

TOP

hours to go :(

Here are my test results, run at 1280x1024:

SolidWorks 2007 Workstation Benchmark User Name : Art Computer Name: M70 Manufacturer : Dell Inc. Model : Precision M70 OS : Microsoft Windows XP Professional OS SP : Service Pack 2 CPU : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.86GHz # of CPU : 1 Memory : 2047

**** Overall Test Results **** Note: All results are in seconds. Lower scores are better.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 306.56 Graphics = 101.71 CPU = 86.77 I/O = 118.08

Test Number 2 Test Total = 322.02 Graphics = 102.82 CPU = 85.69 I/O = 133.51

Test Number 3 Test Total = 313.28 Graphics = 101.21 CPU = 81.79 I/O = 130.28

Test Number 4 Test Total = 301.9 Graphics = 103.41 CPU = 81.42 I/O = 117.07

Test Number 5 Test Total = 301.56 Graphics = 105.44 CPU = 81.15 I/O = 114.97

Test Averages for 5 tests(s). Test Total = 309.06 Graphics = 102.92 CPU = 83.36 I/O = 122.78

Compared with the 2005 benchmark your processor scores are awesome unless you somehow got graphics and CPU mixed.

TOP

Here are my scores for my home machine, SW2007 SP2.2, GeForce 6150, Onboard video.

This is cut and pasted directly from the report output by the benchmark.

FWIW,

Anna Wood

SolidWorks 2007 Workstation Benchmark User Name : ------------- Computer Name: ---------------- Manufacturer : System manufacturer Model : System Product Name OS : Microsoft Windows XP Professional OS SP : Service Pack 2 CPU : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 144 # of CPU : 1 Memory : 1983

**** Overall Test Results **** Note: All results are in seconds. Lower scores are better.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 354.73 Graphics = 174.95 CPU = 81.01 I/O = 98.77

Test Number 2 Test Total = 354.65 Graphics = 174.02 CPU = 81.91 I/O = 98.72

Test Number 3 Test Total = 350.68 Graphics = 173.76 CPU = 79.03 I/O = 97.89

Test Number 4 Test Total = 352.61 Graphics = 170.58 CPU = 82.22 I/O = 99.81

Test Number 5 Test Total = 355.63 Graphics = 173.98 CPU = 82.22 I/O = 99.43

Test Averages for 5 tests(s). Test Total = 353.66 Graphics = 173.46 CPU = 81.28 I/O = 98.92

Here are my scores for my other home machine, SW2007 SP2.1, EVGA e- GeForce 7100 GS video card. The original Nvidia FX550 died and I replaced it with a low end gamer card.

FWIW,

Anna Wood

SolidWorks 2007 Workstation Benchmark User Name : ------------ Computer Name: ------------ Manufacturer : Dell Inc. Model : Precision WorkStation 390 OS : Microsoft Windows XP Professional OS SP : Service Pack 2 CPU : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz # of CPU : 2 Memory : 2045

**** Overall Test Results **** Note: All results are in seconds. Lower scores are better.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 227.5 Graphics = 104.45 CPU = 53.58 I/O = 69.47

Test Number 2 Test Total = 226.46 Graphics = 104.41 CPU = 52.83 I/O = 69.22

Test Number 3 Test Total = 226.11 Graphics = 103.96 CPU = 52.97 I/O = 69.18

Test Number 4 Test Total = 225.53 Graphics = 103.76 CPU = 52.72 I/O = 69.05

Test Number 5 Test Total = 226.05 Graphics = 103.9 CPU = 52.93 I/O = 69.22

Test Averages for 5 tests(s). Test Total = 226.34 Graphics = 104.1 CPU = 53.01 I/O = 69.23

Here is the cream of the crop on the 2005 Benchmark. Apparently CPUs and IO have gotten a whole lot faster and graphics cards have gotten a whole lot slower.

SPECapcSM SolidWorks2005 Benchmark Result

Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M90 2.33GHz NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M Submitted by: Dell, Inc.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 447 Graphics = 88.75 CPU = 183.03 I/O = 175.22

Test Averages for 1 tests(s). Test Total = 447 Graphics = 88.75 CPU = 183.03 I/O = 175.22

Dell Precision Workstation 690 3.00 GHz nVidia Quadro FX 3500 Submitted by: Dell, Inc.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 325.68 Graphics = 64.96 CPU = 132.23 I/O = 128.49

Test Averages for 1 tests(s). Test Total = 325.68 Graphics = 64.96 CPU = 132.23 I/O = 128.49

My report was a cut-and-paste of the text file created by the test.

I don't have any previous results for comparison, mainly because I never thought the SPEC tests related directly to real CAD usage.

Art

P.S. The graphics and CPU fans spooled up higher than I've ever heard them go. It didn't sound like a Dell product -- more like Pratt & Whitney.....

I am trying to make a couple points about SPECapc for SolidWorks.

1. SPECapc is really not what you would call a benchmark in the strictest sense of the word. Maybe a relative benchmark is as far as I would go. You can't compare results from one year's benchmark to another. It doesn't run reliably across different releases of SW. I can't run the SPECapc2007version on SW2003. And if I run SW2007 on SPECapc 2005 there will be the overhead of file conversion.

1. SPECapc does not reflect real world. If you look at the CPU scores between 2005 and 2007 you will see a tremendous difference. Likewise the graphics scores. If you take a 2005 assembly, one that you struggled with in 2005, convert it to 2007, do you see the same level of improvement that SPECapc shows on the new hardware you are testing?

2. SPECapc does not reflect the real world in that it is heavily biased to graphics card performance. Just visit the results page on their site or look at the source code. Years ago when SPEC was a hot item on the NG I did a lot of testing with it. I found that a good graphics card could make a mediocre CPU look stellar and a bad graphics card would make a good CPU look like a dog. In the real world you can work around a slow graphics card by setting SW graphics to their lowest settings. Sure circles will look like hexagons, but work can get done. You can't work around a poor performing CPU and that is where a lot of time is spent waiting on large assemblies and complex parts.

1. SPEC does not benchmark a significant subset of SW functionality. And it doesn't go out of it's way to test the functionality in SW that causes bottlenecks.You won't see a lot of complex large assembly drawings or assemblies with lot's of mega-multi configuration parts in them. A lot of it is concerned with graphics eye candy.

2. Given that SPECapc 2007 is just out and that 2008 is now in beta it has a limited lifetime so that in six months it will be relegated to just another curiousity.

Here is a list of uses for SPECapc: Home hardware evaluation Business purchasing evaluation Internal hardware development Internal ISV development User system evaluation/optimization Research study Vendor competitive analysis Magazine or online publication

In other words you can't use it to evaluate one version of SW against another.

I should mention that you hit on one of the strengths that SPEC has always had, the ability to really stress a system. Any system that won't run through all five iterations of SPEC probably has problems. I have used SPEC in the past to evaluate registry tweaks. The newer versions aren't as handy because they take so long to run. It is the first thing I would run if hardware problems are suspected.

Why SW raises the CPU temperature so much still is a mystery to me. But it does and more so that other types of software like FEA.

TOP

This one I think I know. FEA is almost entirely floating-point math and block memory transfers, which only exercises those areas of the chip. SW will exercise the integer and logic portions of the chip as well and probably work the caches harder, thereby causing another portion of the CPU die to generate heat. This will be more pronounced in recent chip designs that can lower the clock speed or even switch off unused parts of the chip. Currently, Intel's Core processors are the most agressive about this. It's a significant portion of their power saving (in addition to the 65 nm process, etc.).

TOP,

I would not make the assumption that graphic cards have gotten slower. My graphics cards on my systems are very low end onboard video or game cards (that is why I noted the graphic card specs in my post). Art's system is a laptop and probably a bit lower end on the graphics cards scale.

I will post numbers from my work machine which has a P4 dual core Intel and an FX 3450 graphics card Monday evening.

I would like to see some results from folks with the Intel C2D E6700 and with the FX1500 and up graphics cards. I would expect even better numbers from the benchmark.

Regards,

Anna Wood

Anna, Here are my results from SW2007 x64 SP2.2 on an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe mobo with Quadro FX1500:

OS : Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional x64 Edition OS SP : Service Pack 2 CPU : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ # of CPU : 2 Memory : 2046

**** Overall Test Results **** Note: All results are in seconds. Lower scores are better.

Test Number 1 Test Total = 344.65 Graphics = 94.49 CPU = 102.05 I/O = 148.11

Test Number 2 Test Total = 350.02 Graphics = 100.17 CPU = 104.85 I/O = 145

Test Number 3 Test Total = 396.4 Graphics = 107.95 CPU = 104.68 I/O = 183.77

Test Number 4 Test Total = 331.93 Graphics = 99.97 CPU = 95.51 I/O = 136.45

Test Number 5 Test Total = 345.76 Graphics = 92.98 CPU = 103.02 I/O = 149.76

Test Averages for 5 tests(s). Test Total = 353.75 Graphics = 99.11 CPU = 102.02 I/O = 152.62

Cheers,

Gil

Anna,

I was being a bit sarcastic about SPECapc because it should be obvious that CPU and IO should not flip flop with graphic scores. If SPECapc was really a benchmark scores from one year would be comparable with scores from another year. They are not.

TOP

TOP,

You are using the benchmark differently then what I plan to use it for. I really do not care about past performance of older version of SolidWorks. For us the biggest performance issues we have are typically user induced.

We use the latest software versions from SolidWorks, for us it is important to keep up with our customers. My interest at the moment is to see what is the best, most cost effective hardware I can get to get the most out of the current version of SolidWorks.

Different strokes for different folks.... :-)

Regards,

Anna

Anna,

I use it for the same things you do. I just question using the term benchmark because benchmarks aren't supposed to move and SPECapc moves from release to release and year to year.

Call it a stress test or something else because that is all it is.

TOP