What spec computer are YOU using with Solidworks?

I was very serious about getting this Opteron based Alienware but they do not yet have it with PCI Express. Maybe I'll get it for one of my employees when it becomes available.

Can I become one of your employees?!

There is a lot of credible benchmark data on Opterons running SW. In fact HP makes one of the fastest machines around. I tend to shy away from benchmarks intended for AutoCAD when testing for SolidWorks. Try searching the web with these keywords: Opteron benchmark +SolidWorks

I was told by my VAR techie, that it was explained to him, by SW, that SW will likely never benefit much from MP. The nature of the data dictates that one line of processing be completed so that its result can be passed on to the next line. So the 2 of 30 tools that Geomagic threads may be a similar number to what can be expected of SW mp capability.

This is not necessarily the case for any of the SW add-ins. I also understand, for example, that some FEA software benefits greatly from mp. For an equivelant core clock speed the difference in SW performance may not be noticible, but the add-ins may be greatly effected by type, mp, ect of the processor. You might allow that to drive some of the decision making when building a system.

As a side note, the die size of the 64 bit athlons is HUGE and allows for good heat dissipation. All of the Fx systems that I've been around ( never operated one myself ) were deathly quiet compared to my Athlon xp at home, and much quieter than the P4 at work. For that reason alone, I'd like one myself.

I also have been using a system from XI with the AthlonFX,2gb ram and FX1100 video card. It has been rock-solid. I bought it a little more than a year ago-no problems.

jk

Which FX chip do you have and have you benched it with the Ship in the Bottle?

Thanks,

Dan

I got a pretty good machine from CAD2, as reviewed in MCAD magazine, except I have an ATI Fire GL5100 video card.

Shame the Solidworks programmers are getting so lazy as it doesn't seem to matter how powerul your machine is, the software just gets slower and slower.....fundamentals such as the sketcher and rolling back the history tree just grind to a halt after a few hours of modelling.

Hello Lee-

"fundamentals such as the sketcher and rolling back the history tree just grind to a halt after a few hours of modeling."

I restart my computer every 1 hour or so. Also, I have shortcuts to my Temp folders and I delete the files inside every 2 hours or so. At lunch, I defrag my drives. I map the SolidWorks journal files to my desktop and delete those also. This seems to have eliminated the slow downs.

Best Regards, Devon T. Sowell

Devon, I am indeed going to have to learn how to do more sophisticated setup of SolidWorks to make it run faster. I have managed to avoid that to date, but it is time to install a new hard drive, OS, and SolidWorks and set it up from scratch with better control.

For the long run, I do suspect that "Major CAD" applications, regardless of brand, are fast outpacing the Windows OS. I predict if MS does NOT deliver a highly efficient Longhorn quickly, the pressures will build to move high end desktop CAD to flavors of Unix. SolidWorks can't keep ballooning their code and complexity without the hardware & OS keeping up. Something gives, and it is speed and that costs us users big time.

User time loss each year totally dwarfs what the OS costs (even Windows) & certainly even the $3k cost of a desktop machine. I think Microsoft is basically at least 6-7 years late in releasing Longhorn. Apple is now 2 weeks away from releasing its 4th generation of Unix, & lots of other boxes capable of running Unix are out there. The time has come.

Speaking of "time loss", I know I am through with beta testing OSs & CAD applications. Will there be any brave SWks soles who will jump on the first Longhorn release?

Bo

Dev> Hello Lee-

in

magazine,

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Mine's an AMD Opteron148, 2gb ram, FX1100, at 1024x768 for comparison

@ 1024x768 LoQuality 21.4 sec. HiQuality 27.8 sec.

@ 1280x1024 LoQuality 21.8 sec. HiQuality 28.3 sec.

These were done last June, so I imaging it's slowed a little since, but it's still schmokin'! :o)

Whit

Dan Bov>