Best config for Solidworks?

Hi everyone,

We're using Solidworks 2005 SP4 here at work to design plastic injection
molds. It's getting slower and slower with bigger designs.

Our computers (3) are P4 3ghz and 3.2ghz with 2gb of ram and ATi FireGL T2
cards. We also have a Dual 3Ghz Xeon with a Quatro FX1300. All of them are
too slow for my standards.

I'm not a designer but a computer technician and I've talked about that
issue with the designers. They say that it takes a lot of time to open a
file, save it and also whenever Solidworks needs to calculate something. The
graphic subsystem seems to be fine tough. I think that Solidworks does not
make a great use of dual cpu system (the dual xeon is not that much faster
that the P4s). So basically I need faster cpus and maybe a better drive
subsystem.

Is SCSI the solution for faster "open" & "save" operation in Solid? How
does the Athlon X2 performs with this app?

Considering time is money, what would be the ideal configuration? I'll be
building brand new machines from scratch.

Here is what I tough :

AMD Athlon X2 4400+
2GB of ram
Nvidia Quatro xxxx?
A fast 15k rpm SCSI drive and a controller

Opinions much appreciated.

 

Those Intels aren't particularly fast. The AMD is the way to go. The X2
AMDs probably won't help much except in drawings. The FX55 or FX57
will likely be just as fast with SW in modeling parts and assemblies.
Running 64bit does not really help either unless you are running out of
RAM.

A pair of Western Digital Raptors will be more than fast enough. Spend
the money saved over SCSI on another 2Gb of RAM.

I use an NVidia Quadro FX3000 and it is plenty fast.

Someone on the group just published specs for a really fast machine.