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hardware improvement suggestions


Enigma

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Our company will be upgrading the engineering departments workstations in the near future, and I'm looking for some real world suggestions vs. Autodesks recommended specs.

My current station, which is one of the better ones in our group, is as follows:

 

Dell Precision T3500

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

Intel Xeon 4 core W3565 3.2GHZ

24 GB RAM

Nvidia Quadro 4000

 

I want to suggest something to our IT/purchasing dept that will let me work on the large plant scale assemblies in Inventor 2013 pro so I don't spend half my day watching a circle spin.

 

I think my current bottle neck is the video card, as I can spin my assembly (which is only 91 unique parts and 203 occurences of a large energy plant) around and zoom a few times before it chokes and regenerates awhile with some of the parts visible until it fully regens. This can take several minutes every few minutes, very frustrating.

According to task manager, my PC is using around 45% or so CPU usage and 65% RAm while I'm flying around.

 

Any suggestions? We don't have a NASA budget as much as I'd like one.

 

edit: I'll also add I've followed the "guidelines" as much as possible regarding large scale assemblies to reduce the lag. The parts in it are simplified (while still keeping required detail) shrinkwraps of the various components (conveyors etc), everything is grounded and then the constraints deleted, any colour overrides removed, etc etc.

 

All of our work is run off of a network. I have copied this project onto my local drive to see if that makes a difference, and it did not. Local hard drive is about 50% full, 141 GB free space.

 

I'll keep updating this as I think of things and hope for some insightfull replies.

 

As this current machine is a multicore, I do have a few programs running at the same time, which shouldn't affect Inventors performace as it only uses multiple cores in the drawing state. I usually have running MS Outlook, web browser (Chrome or Firefox), Adept Synergis 2013(Our networked document management system), and at times during the day Windows Explorer folders, MS Excel/word, photo viewer, and perhaps a few personal programs like Uconeer.

I also run 2 24" Samsung SyncMaster monitors.

 

From everything I've read off the internet, my current system meets or exceeds the highest specifications for Inventor, but "I need more power captain". We have 3 other very experienced Inventor users here who share my level of frustration with the hardware performance when we work on these "large" assemblies. And by large they do not have a massive part count as mentioned earlier, but lots of surfaces, lines, etc etc etc.

 

And I have just now realized this is buried in the Autocad forums :oops:

RM ScreenShot.jpg

Edited by Enigma
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Yeah, maybe it should go under Inventor, but anyone with experience with bogged down 3D systems might be able to help here. My system is bogged down by vanilla AutoCAD:cry:, so I'm not going to be any help with that.

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We had one bad experience with a Dell Precision workstation and finally ended up replacing it ahead of schedule. It was a dog. We opted for an Xi Computer workstation which was a heck of a lot faster without any tweaking what-so-ever.

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Huh, never had bad Dell myself but that is why we have warranties. I have used 3 Precisions, 2 inspiron desktops, 1 inspiron laptop and 1 dimension. All but the precisions were bought for home use.

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Since I'm doing some work from home at the moment (different job though, can't bring my day stuff with me), I thought I'd run the Bentley performance test that the Cad Digest article mentioned on my home machine (which has a Windows experience rating of 4.9, specs in the drop down under computer details in my sig) and compare it tomorrow to my work machine . And the PerformanceTest on my home machine rated at 608.7

From the 3D grahpics mark, if one was shopping for a new card the GTX 680 seems to shine.

BENTLEY.jpg

bm test.jpg

3d bm.jpg

Edited by Enigma
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And now my work stations results, which seem pretty good.

Bentley results and Passmark result is 2028, pretty impressive really.

 

 

And while all of this was somewhat fun, still doesn't really help :)

bentley BM.jpg

pm 1.jpg

pm 2.jpg

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Do you have to have microstation to use that benchmark tool?

 

No. It's just a quick download, scans your hardware, and runs some funky visual tests, then spits out a result. You can then choose to upload and share your results.

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The powers that be seem to be pretty set on Dell. It looks like we might give one of the new Nvidia Quadro K5000's a whirl and see how it works. Glad I'm not paying for it. Can buy a whole new rig for the price of that card.

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Wow, so for AutoCAD one comes out better with a high end consumer card as the performance is on par or better than a professional card but at a substantial lower cost.

The Quadro K4000 has a street price of $760 at newegg (link) and the GTX 680 is $390 also at newegg (link). Interesting indeed.

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  • 4 weeks later...

So an update...sort of.

 

Software:

The assembly I have been working was sent to our Autodesk reseller (Imaginit)for evaluation. Nothing really constructive came of it as we had already done the recommended steps for the most part to reduce any system lags. It was then sent to Autodesk with similar results. The general consensus was to simplify the parts as much as possible to make the assembly more useable (which we had done already, just stripped them even further); using levels of detail to remove bolts, fittings, gaskets, etc etc. , and using Levels of Detail to only focus on smaller portions of the plant vs the "world". So it works, still frustratingly slow when placing new components, but the job gets done...eventually. But forget about trying to export this assembly to anything....that will be another thread topic soon.

 

 

Hardware:

We had Dell send us two cards for testing on my workstation; An Nvidia Quadro 6000 and a Radeon 7870. We put the 6000 in a couple weeks ago (it is freaking HUGE) but had to remove it as the single power cable was not enough. Dell then sent new power cables, but problems again as the boards needed to be removed inside to route this new cable, but there was some proprietary bolts that could not be removed with normal screw drivers...The next option was to replace the entire power supply, but from what I have heard this morning that's not going to happen. Something about them being discontinued.

So no news really, just more fuel for my personal dislike of Dell. But it's not my money or my ultimate descision, and it looks like we will be ordering a new machine. I still want to champion the general consensus that we do not need expensive workstations, and save the company a lot of money as we will have to upgrade another 6 or so designers with new machines as well.

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We have all Dells here, so not sure yet how that would fly. But this review on an Xi computer by Cad Digest has me sold anyways :)

 

http://www.xicomputer.com/reviews/2013/CADDigest_April_12th_2013.asp

 

I floated the idea of the Xi systems, but they do not want to buy from "the corner store". Same with any price comparisons of Dell to Newegg.....:unsure:

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ao after having some Dell reps on site to install the Quadro 6000, they will not work with our current stations. On paper they are suppose to according to specs, real world scenario no, too obsolete.

 

So say if one had a budget for around $5000 per machine, and purchasing from Dell, what would you recommend? I still want to test the "gaming card" vs "work station card" options, and potentially be able to buy two machines for the price of the one work station.

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I wouldn't buy a $5000 computer from Dell. I'd look at other companies. Just my personal opinion. If you like Dell that much then by all means continue on.

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Dell XPS 8700: $2,099.99

Intel Core i7 4770

32gb ram

4tb hdd

256gb ssd

1.5gb geforce GTX660 video

bluray combo drive

 

Similar Xi PC comes in at $2,303

 

To each their own ;)

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I'm in charge of purchasing CAD workstations for my company, and we're pretty happy with the Dells we've been getting. We get the Precision workstation line, not the consumer lines like XPS mainly because that's the only way to get a workstation-grade video card from them.

 

I prefer the nVidia Quadro line of video cards, as many of these have AutoCAD-specific drivers that you can install and they're usually on Autodesk's approved hardware list. Generally speaking, any gaming card would get the job done, but some of those have a lot of bells and whistles that aren't needed by AutoCAD, while the workstation cards (like the Quadro) are designed to be most efficient for CAD drafting and 3D modeling. I honestly think you'd be happy with any card that has at least 1 GB of DDR3 RAM on board.

Edit: here is a link to Autodesk's approved hardware list: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112

 

Max out your system's RAM. Buy 3rd party ram after the computer is shipped because it's cheaper than buying RAM from the manufacturer. (This is often true of the video card, as well) This RAM will help everything from render times to the number of files you can have open at the same time before things slow down. Also, you can get by with a slower processor if you're trying to save money, so don't feel bad if you're stuck on an i3 or an i5 instead of the newest i7. We can usually get our workstation desktops for just over the $1000 mark, and laptops at just under $2000.

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