64 bit computers again....

Hi all,

In a recent thread on 64 bit systems the following list was posted. I
actually got a quote on this exact system at 4,800 cdn. Now, that is a
lot of money when I can get a rockin' p4 3.6 system (without a fancy
video card) for 1500$.

Question is: Is this worth it for solidworks alone? Is the 64 bit
thing going to solve the 1.6gb memory limitation ( I read that sw2006
would be 64 bit by sp? ) My employer is willing to buy this but I'll
feel guilty if it's not worth it in the end.

Thanks,

Zander

Single CPU system

List of components for single CPU machine I would choose:
- 1 x Asus A8N-SLI Premium
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=0&model=539&modelmenu=1

- 1 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800 Dual Core
- 2 x Western Digital 74GB SATA Drives (RAID 1)
- 2 x Seagate Baracuda 400GB SATA Drive
- 2 x Crucial Ballistix 2GB Kit (4x1GB) -
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.Asp?IMODULE=BL2KIT12864Z503
- Antec Advanced Super Mid Tower P180
http://www.antec.com/ec/productDetails.php?ProdID=09180
- 1 x 460W Noiseless PSU
http://www.silenxusa.com/productcart/pc/configureprd_z.asp?idcategory...

- 1 x CPU cooler Zalman CNPS7700-Cu http://www.zalman.co.kr/
- 1 x nVidia Quadro 4500 - http://www.nvidia.com/page/qfx_uhe.html (I'm
not
sure if this card will fit in P180 chassis).
- 1 x Dell 2405FPW 24" LCD
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?sku=320-4221&c=...

 

Using the word Rockin and Intel in the same sentence doesn't make
sense. An AMD system of the nature you are building will be about 1.5
to 2 x the speed of the Rockin Intel in SW.

 

I have just got my two Amd r2 4800 Asus force4 motherboard Nvidia 3400 PCIe
4Gb ram systems today.
Problems getting hold of the processor as they are in short supply.

If you can hold off for a week, I will get some bench testing done and let
you know the results.

So far xp64 is slower than xp pro, takes a long time to get out of a lockup,
networking mainly( my fault!)
Ctrl Alt Del end program, only works sometimes and takes longer to get your
desktop back.
Note this was built by a professional 3Dcad system builder, not by myself.

Internet explorer(32) and (64) in blooming fast!

Note if your are using a dongle, minimum is 2005 sp4.0.

Remember to NOT have the dongle connected to your pc.

Install sw, remove dongle driver, using the dos prompt window, (c:\program
Files (x86)\solidworks\setup\i386\Hinstall -r -kp).
Or where ever you installed SW.
Download new xp64 dongle driver, (from hasp which is still in beta), install
this.
http://www.aladdin.com/support/hasp/hasp4/enduser.asp
Restart your pc, insert dongle and presto, it works!

Pete

 

For that Nvidia card get a 550W supply, 440W is a bit low and will restrict
any future upgrades.
SLI, bigger or more hard drives etc...

 

I hope you will run Patbench and see if you can get all 4gb. Might take
a week though.

http://www.engtran.com/SWBM001.html

 

Hey Zander,
I myself have changed philosophies over the last couple of years. I
used to think
getting the biggest, baddest, and fastest possible system was the way
to go.
Honestly, unless everyone besides myself has unlimited supply of money,
have a different approach since computer technology is moving so fast
(especially Video Cards).

I would go with what Zander initially purposed.... approximately a
$1500 system.
This should get you middle of the road processor (3.6 GHZ Intel or
3800+ Athlon)
and a very modest amount of memory. Now TOP may be correct that his
4800+ Dual Core would be 1.5 - 2 times faster. This very well may be
true.... but I highly DOUBT it. I bet you would only see maybe 10-20%
speed gain in PURE, raw cpu computation. Unless of course your
rendering pictures or something that takes advantage of two cores.
Truth is, most applications (including SolidWorks), won't even utilize
dual core or True 64 bit software for at least another year.
(This year is including the time it takes everyone else to work the
bugs out of it course!)

Now here's the Kicker.... Let's say about 2 years from now, the year is
2007 already folks!

For about the same amount of money... $1500-2000 in 2007 or early 2008
Zander or myself would purchase another system. It would be again all
middle to top of line. It would contain of course Dual Athlon 6000+ 64
bit dual processors.
The video card would be of course a middle of the road Nvidia 9800 GT
and again
a modest 4 gigs of system memory with a screaming new bus architecture
from today's.

Now of course at this time Solidworks 2007/8 will be FULLY 64bit & Duel
Core compatible and be now SCREAMING fast. This will also be run on
Windows
64 Bit Vista or of course Apple's new OS Tiger-2 newly compatible with
x86 architecture.

So what does this all mean? With these 2 combined systems I've still
only spent
$3000-$3500, which is still far less than $4800. And you can bet your
ass the second system purchased a couple of years from now for $1500
will make today's
$4800 system look like a dinosaur.

Sorry for rambling, but I guess it's just a matter of how much you have
to spend.
But remember, if you spend an extra thousand or two today to get that
extra 10-20% of performance. That same thousand dollars 2 years from
now gets you 1 to 200% in performance.

Don Van Zile

 

I have just opened an assembly on my new system in less than 20 seconds.

On my P4 2.8, 2Gb ram,Quadro900glx, 2 x Raptor Sata in raid 0, it takes over
3 mins to open the same assembly!

Same sw2005 Office Pro sp 4.0

Am I happy at last?, you bet I am!

 

Good idea!
I will sort out a drive to use the stand xp pro tomorrow.
Thanks
Pete

 

The only problem with that approach is that time is money. If take the
cost of a computer across two years, and you're saving $3500, if I waste
$1750 worth of time (at $75/hr = 23 hours) less per year, or am able to
do that much more work, the new computer has paid for itself. It should
be easy to save that much time over the course of a year.

I'm all for the 80/20 rule instead of the 50/50 rule. I get one or two
ticks off of the top of the line where the price curve flattens out a
bit. I get a small fast internal hard drive for work and a much larger
external for storage, who cares about the speed. Old computer gets
relegated to an email box or a backup for doing a couple of renderings /
animations / FEAs at the same time.

 

The bloatware will keep up. No matter how much faster
the hardware is.
It might even grow faster.
Imagine DOS from an 80386 on the latest Intel
CPUs .....

 

That all depends on how you are using SW. Mentioning a 1.6 Gb
limitation leads me to believe that you are dealing with some fairly beefy
assemblies, complex surfaces, or is doing some related analysis.

10-20% increase in CPU speed in those situations can easily lead to
5-10% increase in productivity. On an 18 month technology cycle, it does
not take a very large salary to justify the increased cost, not to mention
the intangible added benefit to an employer from the increased productivity.
Maybe the employer manages to get an additional product to market or does
not have to hire/train an additional operator.

For myself, every second I stare at the hourglass the aggrevation level
increases exponentially. Less hourglass equates to a happier work
environment. Generally I can refrain from strangling co-workers 30% more
often on a new computer.

Even if you opt for the less expensive 1500 computer, spending a few
hundred more for a good graphics card is a virtual no-brainer.

For reference, my work computer is getting a little bit old and I am
beginning to notice it. Therefore, my opinion, of course, is biased and
will only become more jaded with time until I get a new computer

 

Hi

I made this list of components in a previous tread assuming you are a power
user; you want a silent and reliable computer which you are going to use for
at least 3 years.

If you design only simple parts and assemblies are made of max. 100
components and you generally don't switch to other apps while you are
waiting for SW to finish then replace the dual core A64 CPU with a single
core. A64 3500 has become reasonably priced. I would still recommend you A64
CPU instead of P4, because of the following reasons: performance, power
efficiency. Also remove two 400GB HDs from the list. 2GB of RAM is enough
for small assemblies; also replace the Quadro 4500 with a cheaper Quadro.
But don't replace the 24" LCD with any smaller LCD or CRT.

On the other hand if you design complex parts then let me explain, why I
would buy the components from the list. For me, the computer must be silent,
reliable and last but not least the performance must be top notch.

I simply can't tolerate noisy components. High end P4 CPU can generate more
heat under load than the fastest dual core A64. That means fan on top of P4
cooler must rotate faster thus producing more noise. Also the intake fans
must rotate faster to convey cooler air and exhaust fan must rotate faster
to expel all the hot air. If more air is conveyed the chassis will sooner
become filled with dust. That means cooling will be worse, fans will become
noisy sooner. Also if the CPU needs more energy the power regulators on the
motherboard generate more heat.

The reason why I would buy Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard is because it
doesn't have noisy fan on top of nForce4 SLI chipset, in other words it's a
silent solution. I always use Asus motherboards because in my opinion they
are reliable.

Western Digital 74GB SATA Drives are simply the fastest desktop drives you
can buy. Although they are not cheap, and spin at 10000rpms they are not
noisy. On the contrary they are quite silent.

Seagate 400 GB drives offer you huge amount of disk space. If you are making
any animations or you simply need a lot of space, then I recommend you
Seagate drives. You probably wonder why Seagate. The answer is simple. I had
a very bad experience with the Maxtor and IBM drives in the past. In a
company where I work all 40, 80 and 120GB Maxtor drives died (more than 30
HDs). We all know about the IBM dead stars, but surprisingly we still have
some IBM drives, also only a few WD HDs died, but not a single Seagate HD
died so far. I repeat once again, not a single Seagate HD died. Maybe we are
just lucky with the Seagate drives, but.

Crucial Ballistix 2GB Kit. Don't save money on RAM. Use the best quality RAM
you can buy. Crucial is a spun off Micron which in my opinion besides
Infineon produces the most reliable RAM modules. Before I install OS I
always test RAM modules with the dedicated RAM test software. I run such
tests at least a week on high end servers and a few days on a workstation
machines. Some would say this is insane, but on servers I run simulations
for weeks and I simply can't afford to have a bad DIMM module in my
machines.

Antec Advanced Super Mid Tower P180. All fans are 12cm, which means they
produce less noise than the 8cm or 92mm fans. Constructors of P180 realized
that some people appreciate silence. Thus vibrations from the drives are not
transmitted to the rest of the chassis. Also PSU chamber resides at the
bottom of the case which is in my opinion the best location, because the
heat from the CPU and other components don't compromise the PSU stability.

460W Noiseless PSU. This is one of the components for which I'm not sure if
it was wise I recommended. Although it's completely silent, I'm not sure it
will suite your needs best. Let me explain why. The theoretical maximum
power consumption of PC with the components listed is around 370W (CPU ~90W,
motherboard ~ 40W, RAM ~ 30W, HDs ~80W, graphics card ~ 109W, rest of the
components ~20W). I repeat this is the absolute theoretical maximum and most
likely the average consumption will be way bellow 370W. The PSU is rated at
460W and efficiency under load is 80%. That means under load 460*0.8=368W
are available for the system the rest is transformed into a heat. In my
experience the PSU work more reliable if it is not driven at its limit. Let's
say, if it is driven at 50-70% of its max load then it will work more
reliable.

CPU cooler Zalman CNPS7700-Cu. One of the biggest and heaviest coolers for
A64 CPU and at lower speed setting it's almost silent, because of the 12cm
fan. Check if it will fit on the Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard.

1 x nVidia Quadro 4500. Here is a review:
http://www.3dprofessor.com/review.asp?id=148

Dell 2405FPW 24" LCD. If you want to increase your productivity, you are
wearing spectacles or you just want to reduce the number of headaches buy
this LCD. You won't regret your decision. This is the only piece of HW you
are staring at all the time. Your eyes will be grateful, if not now then in
20 years, believe me.

A co-worker is a professional PCB designer. He was using 21" LCD (Samsung
213T, 1600x1200) for two years, until few months ago. Then we decided to buy
him a 30" ACD (2560x1600). Lately our PCBs become quite complex with many
1000+ pin BGAs and other high density chips. In order to manually route
large designs he had to first zoom in the starting region, place the trace
segment pan and place new trace segments several times and at the end
zoom-out. Each operation required a redraw of a display which took approx
2s. In his case placing 500 wires/day meant at least 500 zoom in, 500 zoom
out, 2x500 pan commands. All in all display refreshing took 2000s/day or
more than half an hour. Now, he doesn't have to zoom in, because he can see
the whole PCB. He has become more productive because of the new display. Let's
do some math. If he cost a company 70$/hour (I don't know how much he really
cost the company, this is just a random number my head generated.) then the
3200$ investment in 30" ACD will return in just 90 days (1/2hour per day *
90 days = 45 hours, 45hours * 70$/hour = 3150$) just because he doesn't have
to zoom-in, out and pan every 10s. Some would argue that you can't simplify
things like that but at the end he really is more productive and he really
finishes his jobs faster.

Think yourself how much time you wasted last year just because you had to
wait for SW to finish? How many times you had to restart SW, because you
broke the RAM limit? Ok, I admit you could go to coffee machine in such
breaks but you must ask yourself "Do I really want to become a coffee
addict?"

IgI

 

Hi all,

Igl thanks for all the great hardware info! This is a copy of my
quote based on your list, they've put a matrox card in the quote for
some reason, I have to talk to them about that tomorrow.

1 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core System 1 $4807.00

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard 1
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual Core CPU 1
WD 74GB SATA 10,000 RPM Hard Drive 2
Seagate 400GB SATA 7200 RPM Hard Drive 2
Geil DDR400 Dual Channel 2048 MB RAM Kit (2x1024 MB) 2
Silverstone TJ05 Chassis 1
Silverstone ST65ZF 650W ATX Power Supply 1
ThermalTake A1838 CPU Fan 1
Matrox QID LP QID-E128LPA PCI-X16 128M Video Card 1


In Canadian money. So sounds good right? The speed argument is a no
brainer, I charge 80 to 100/ hour. Last week I was working on a part
with a sweep that everytime I touched it (causing a rebuild) it
consumed 3-4 minutes of my life. This adds up fast. I've often wanted
an 'efficiency' meter that would show in a given day that 'I' worked
for 4 hours and the computer worked for 4 hours. You can kind of get a
sense of this my viewing sw's cpu consumption time in the task manager.


Also OT: I've noticed lately that if windows media player is running
while I'm using sw then sw crashes occasionaly, whereas when I keep wmp
closed, sw rarely if ever crashes. Is this a coincidence?

Zander

 

I guess it't a matter of what end of the productivity curve you look
at.
For the price of your 4800 dollar computer you keep for 3 or more
years,
I would be able to buy brand new hardware every year keeping up with
the technology at the same cost. So, my productivity curve goes
dramitcally back up every single year even though I losed some in the
beginning. Conversely, at the end of your 3 year computer life, your
productivy has dramatically went into the floor. I guess it would make
for an interesting statistical analysis. I know when my company spends
5 grand on a computer, we don't get upgraded for at least 3.5 to 4
years. By that time, my productivity curve looks really bad compared
to the beginning. The dividing hourly wages vs time or minutes saved
in the beginning is definatley an easy calculable, but this doesn't
necessarly reflect real life productivity gains over time.
Either way... I wish we could by a top of line machine every year.

 

There is one problem with that. Look at the performance numbers I
posted in this thread. $4,500 computer purchased in May 2004. Bested
once and not by much and never by Intel. So my question is, "What
computer are you going to buy every year?" The only choice you have is
to buy a slower Intel and go along with their Ghz war with themselves.
Right now performance has pretty much stagnated at really fast but not
fast enough to keep up with the slow decline of SW performance. Until
CAD can utilize multiple processors we are pretty close to hitting the
wall on upgrades. So for a little while if you have to hit deadlines
you have to spend the big bucks.

 

I guess one approach for SW would be to use an older fast card. Rebuild
time is what you are after. While graphics helps to an extent is isn't
the end of the world. Benchmark the 4500 against what you have been
using and show users where the real beef is.

 

I ended up scaling back the hard drive space. Data is like a gas, it
expands to fill it's container....

Zander

 

There is a rumor going around about the unavailability right now, I
have no idea if it's true or not: Nvidia made the heatsinks so big,
that there are a substantial number of motherboards where two of them
(for SLI mode) will not physically fit. So they are hurrying to
correct the problem, which isn't an easy matter since Quadro's have to
pass rigourous testing and standards. Again I have no idea if it's
true. Nvidia forwards all inquiries to PNY, and PNY just keeps
replying with "updated" ship dates. They told you 8/14, now they are
saying 9/5, on 9/5 they will probably say 9/15. You can bet whatever
the problem is, nobody from PNY or NVidia will comment.