Bad performance on newly-built monster machine, need some serious help!

I need help. Here's my story. I'm an IT guy at a company where I was asked to build an AutoCAD machine for an architect. I mainly know gaming machines though so I did lots of research, and ended up building him something that I figured would rip through AutoCAD like a hot knife through butter.

But it didn't.

Core i7 980x 6-core overclocked to 3.9GHz

nVidia Quadro 4000 2GB

12GB triple-channel 1333MHz RAM

Two HDs in RAID-0

Windows 7 x64

AutoCAD Architecture 2011

... and the AutoCAD viewport is still jerky as hell when rotating one of this guy's drawings, which are complex 3D scenes in wireframe! The scene keeps disappearing and takes a few seconds before it even starts to rotate.

I'm thinking this is a video card issue (he doesn't need any 3D rendering just a smooth-running live viewport). But, I thought the Quadro 4000 was tight for AutoCAD. What is the problem here? Why is this monster machine not performing any better than my home Phenom x4/Radeon 5830 setup when it comes to CAD drawings?

I'm considering trying a video card replacement to an SLI or Crossfire setup with high-end gaming cards, like two GTX 470s or Radeon 6870s. Would that improve performamce in the viewport?

I'm so lost here. I spent a lot of the company's money on this machine and I'd like them to see some proportionate results. Please help me. Thank you!

Have you gone through the settings in3Dconfig > Manual tune? Is hardware acceleration enabled or disabled?

Unfortunately, there seems to be lots of unknowns and conflicts that make it impossible to know whether a high performance machine will ultimately outperform other systems with lesser hardware.

Here are some things that are known to cause poor performance under certain circumstances.

Windows Themes, Features, Gimmicks - Turn of unnecessary Windows features such as themes and Aero

Window Size - Sometimes resizing the AutoCAD window size slightly will solve sluggish performance.

Open Layers or Properties palettes - Close Layers and Properties palettes

Docked Layers or Properties palettes - Undock Layers and Properties palettes

Selection Cycling - Turn off Selection Cycling (SELECTIONCYCLING = 0)

Selection Preview - Turn off Selection Preview (SELECTIONPREVIEW = 0)

Display Driver - Using an Autodesk certified driver does not necessarily ensure trouble free video performance. You may need to try several versions to find one the one that works best for your setup

Hardware Acceleration - Disable hardware acceleration to help isolate video related conflicts, Use 3DCONFIG to further tune performance

Mouse drivers - Disable mouse software and use the built-in Windows mouse driver when possible.

AntiVirus/Firewalls - Disable AntiVirus and software firewalls temporarily to eliminate them as a source of conflict

Networks - Under certain circumstances, network configuration can slow down AutoCAD dramatically. Temporarily disable the network connection.

AutoCAD updates - Apply the latest updates/service packs, or at least review the readme file for the update to see if you're experiencing any of the problems addressed in the patch.

My home computer specs are not quite up to yours yet I have no problem running 2011. It puzzles me too that some screaming machines slow down like molasses in winter when it comes to a particular version of AutoCAD. It's like the software and the hardware are adverse to each other.

I run counter to just about everything nestly listed above (got all the bells and whistles of the OS and AutoCAD enabled) yet my system seems to be oblivious to the fact. I really don't understand it.

BTW...is your AutoDesk software current with all updates and/or hotfixes?

Software is all current, I'm only aware of one update for AutoCAD Architecture 2011 ("Update 1") which I installed. I also installed the nVidia AutoCAD performance driver.

I tried disabling all Windows effects, but there was no difference. I tried playing with the AutoCAD manual tuning too but unfortunately again didn't see any improvements. Hardware acceleration is enabled.

I will try disabling the mouse driver (Mionix Naos), antivirus (avast free), previewing, cycling, etc, when I go in on Monday. I can try disabling the network connection too but leaving that off permanently isn't really an option for the office. I'm not holding my breath that those alone will do the trick but here's hoping...

I've been reading some other threads about lagging AutoCAD 2011 performance under Windows 7 x64. I might try throwing Windows XP x32 onto a second partition of this machine and see how that performs, and also try an earlier AutoCAD version, see if there's any improvement with any of those combinations.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far, and definitely keep them coming, if anyone can think of anything else. This is so frustrating. I really appreciate the input!

If you haven't done so already I might suggest that you disable the Aero function in Win7. The best way to accomplish this would be to set the Windows theme to Windows Classic. This will disable the desktop compositor which I've seen cause performance issues within AutoCAD under some circumstances.

Sean

Sean Kilbride

Technical Marketing Manager, NVIDIA

Welcome to the CADTutor forum Skilbride.

NVIDIA? And what brings you to our neck of the woods?

Welcome to the CADTutor forum Skilbride.

 

NVIDIA? And what brings you to our neck of the woods?

Thanks for the welcome. Since many Quadro users frequent these forums, I'm hoping to provide some support and assistance to our end users whenever possible. I hope I'm able to provide some help or useful information for forum users.

Sean

Well then maybe you can take the time to answer something that has been discussed here many times. What part does the graphics card play in the rendering process if any?

There seems to be an early point of diminishing returns with AutoCAD and higher end hardware.

Take a look at the list I have attached and go through them all one at a time, for obvious reasons.

Turn VSYNC off in the graphics card software interface.

I have 2011 Mechanical on a 3year old laptop at home on Win7 32 and it runs fast, even with small 3D models. My work machine is a dual Xeon with a 3800 Quadro and it does handle larger 3D models fairly well.

A few settings can make a big difference like turning off LAYERDLGMODE, the security settings in options, the command line docked, etc.

SPEED UP AUTOCAD 12-17-10.pdf

Well then maybe you can take the time to answer something that has been discussed here many times. What part does the graphics card play in the rendering process if any?

First we need to define what we mean when we say "rendering" as it is used in quite a few different contexts. Most of the time however, it breaks down to "real time rendering" and "final rendering". Real time rendering is the process of drawing objects in 3D to the output display, basically drawing your models on the screen in whatever visual style or 3D mode you have chosen. However, most people use the term to refer to "final rendering" which is taking the models and elements of your 3D project and outputting them using a rendering engine (Ray tracing, scanline, etc.) to create a more realistic version of the model or scene. Traditionally this process has been almost entirely CPU based as the processes involved are more mathematical then graphical. In many applications it is still the case that final rendering is more or less completely in the realm of the CPU. However, that is an area that is quickly changing. The latest subscription release of 3DSMax includes the new iRay renderer, which can utilize both CPU and GPU resources, (http://area.autodesk.com/renderingr/iray). Products like v-ray offer similar options to use the GPU to provide final renders at impressive speedups over using the CPU alone (10-11x improvement).

Standalone products like Shot from Bunkspeed allow you to import models into the application and use the rendering software to create virtual product photo shoots (Bunkspeed uses a photo studio analogy for its rendering tools). All of these products use the GPU to provide extremely high quality final renders in a fraction of the time needed to render a similar level of realism and quality using a CPU only method.

So while in the past the GPU would provide very little to the process of final rendering, that is actually no longer the case today, and so the answer becomes a little more complex once you start exploring all the final rendering options available using the GPU today.

Sean

Hallo

Did you ever get the i7 sorted out ?

We are getting the same results with our i7 - it is no faster than the i5 when rendering the same file (ie 1h14min vs 1hr15min)

Frank:

Welcome to the CADTutor forum. Can we get some more details about your system (hardware and software) and the drawing you are trying to render? Thanks.

Hi

We have unsucessfully tried to reduce Revit 2011 Final rendering time by getting the following machine (compared to a i5 - 4 core)

i7 980x - 6 core

24G (2000 Mhz)

nVidia 4000 (2G)

Thank

And the drawing file is what size?

What parameters have you set for rendering?

The more information you provide the better.

Hi

For the test we use a frontal veiw of a house plan with 36 lights on (.rvt = 40Meg) and rendering at Best. The CPU runs at 100%, but we can do backround rendering and continue working on email etc. If renderinng is set to High it takes 13 min on both PC's.

We bought the i5 and i7 and are testing them before we transfer the licenced versions to them from our old PC's. We loaded the Revit DVD and set it to trial version (30days) untill they have been sorted out. The i7 costs 3x more than the i5. It appears as if we should rather have bought 3 x i5 PC's instead of one i7 ?

Thanks for your trouble

Frank

Have you considered setting up a render farm or using a "cloud" render farm?

We use them in the rural area and the internet connection is too unreliable - thus we want the fast PC. We wanted speed without going the overclocking route.

We have not tried 3DSMAx yet -- I guess the i7 will show its worth there

some of even 2011's code is based on some older microsoft code, so i've actually found some interestingly slow issues with for instance browsing for files through the gui aspects of 11's dialogue box for finding a file....

i've found the multiple core's doesn't always help, we've had more trouble with quad core machines than our dual core machines. really, you have a 3.x processor in that machine (which is good obviously) but there is definitely something about quad core that 11 just doesn't seem to play nice with.