Whats the hot hardware setup??

a newer, faster computer will definitely help. it'll be like night and day. section views REALLY slow things down.

make sure you get a quadro card with the new machine.

If your company allows, build your own AMD computer. Thousands less than a workstation and comparable performance. Get lots o' memory too. At least 1 Gig. Even if you dont use it all today, you will tomorrow.

Also, look for a motherboard with dual-channel RAM. Thats a small boost in performance as well.

If I was to build an affordable workstation today, I would buy:

ASUS A7N8X Motherboard AMD 3000+ Processor

Priced out at Multiwave Direct: M/B, Processor, RAM bundle is $535 Quadro 4 980XGL Video card is $$600.

So thats a darn good system for roughly $1200

Thats my 2 cents on what I would get :)

Todd

Don't forget a fast HD and legit OS and MS Office licences. Add another $500 or so.

One key to possible slowdowns is in your InPlace mates. Every rebuild SolidWorks has to access data in multiple files to resolve geometry and location between Parts with in-context relationships and InPlace mates, and that takes time. The pros and cons of using in-context relationships has been discussed quite a lot in this newsgroup (search using groups.google.com for the term). The most common consensus is that they are useful, but one should limit their use to only necessary relationships and generally use them only while design is in flux. There are exceptions, of course, but replacing InPlace mates with normal constraints and eliminating non-necessary in-context relationships in features and sketches is a cultivatable habit that I recommend.

'Spork'

Kev>

Building your own is always my choice because you know exactly what your getting and you can save a buck or two. Make sure you educate yourself on the latest tech to make sure your buying the right stuff. If your willing to spend some cash check out xicomputer.com or alienware.com. Alienware focuses on gaming PC's, but they have a very good reputation for high peformance reliable computers. Besides the case and lights are pretty cool (no pun intended)!

Todd,

Is there a still price/performance advantage with the AMD? I haven't researched it this detail, but from what I've heard the latest P4s now have the same price/performance as the AMDs.

Perry

Any downside to running AMD? More fans to keep chip temps down to prevent errors ?

Perry

I have never seen a downside. A long time ago there were some compatibility issues, but those are all gone. I dont know that AMD runs hotter, but if they do I think the extra $8 is still worth it. Intel does have a small amount of edge over AMD, but personally I don't think the benchmarks that back those claims up are that accurate.

A few months back I did a comparison between my workstation at work and the computer I built at home.

If anyone would like the results just e-mail me. In my opinion, the results (price/performance) are amazing.

About 1/5 the price for very comparable performance.

Todd

Do you mean building your own AMD vs. build your own Intel? Then yes thats possible. I was comparing an IBM workstation with my home-built when I was using the 1/5 price. But yes, the fact that Intel flopped with their super-expensive RAM does help since they can use standard RAM now.

TT

compatibility

Kevin, I'm extremely happy with a system I've had for about a month and a half now. It is a self-built system, but I'm sure Dell has a comparable system.

It is the new Canterwood Intel Chip (3.0Ghz) running on an ASUS P4C800Deluxe with a 800Mhz Front Side Bus. I'm also using Serial Drives with a Gig of 3200 DDR memory and Hyper-threading turned on. For graphics I have the Nvidia QuadroFX 1000. I had a few problems with the last driver for this card, but the latest one works fine. Finally the case is a coolmaster aluminum with

Using XP home edition, It is extremely fast on SWX both 2003 and 2004.

One recommendation given to me which I have not heard discussed is the use of RAID to improve read/write speed. I might not regurgitate this correctly but it was explained that at one "RAID level" two drives can be accessed simultaneously giving a notable increase in performance. This is different than the more commonly used RAID level which is used to mirror data for backup (which is not a big deal for me because I have a separate method for archiving). I was told tat it is very easy to get the OS to automatically configure and manage the RAID system.

True or false? Significant difference or not? Has anyone done this?

Thanks,

JJ

processor upgrade help?? Thinking about getting into a P4

I have been using RAID 0 (striping across 2 drives - supported on my motherboard) for approx. 2 years now and I can tell you it definitely makes a difference provided you store your SW data on the RAID drives obviously.

The serious drawback in my case is data security. Twice as likely to fail, resulting in everything being lost. Great speed, but you need a good nightly backup for this. I had one drive fail on me a few months ago and you lose everything on both drives - so keep a good backup.

You can use mirroring for safety in redundancy, but this sort of defeats the whole speed gain of striping...

I've got a Promise 100 raid card that I'll sell you for a really good price.

I wouldn't recommend using raid striping for CAD. Yes, it will increase your file transfer rate, but you're really screwed if you don't also have redundancy amd one of the two drives crashes. For piece of mind, this means you need 4 drives, and also don't forget the extra cooling in your case for those drives.

I've used RAID for about 4 years now for video editing, but recently decided not to put it into my new PC. If you can get at 7200 RPM (or even 10000) ultra DMA 133, you're getting really close to a Promise RAID 100 controller in stripe mode. I've got a 120 Gig Serial drive, (they have a really nice thin cable interface and are a breeze to hook up). They theorically can run at transfer rates of up to 133 megs per second!, but I doubt that mine has done that yet.

The one nice thing about RAID stripe array, is the the transfer rate is sustained no matter how full your disks get, this isn't true for one Drive IDE or serial; the transfer rate will slow as the disk gets more full.