Sluggish Solidworks

I'm looking for suggestions on how to regain my SW performance. I'm
running SW 2006 SP5.0. I have a brand new dell precision with a 1.6 ghz
Xeon dual processor and 4 gb of memory with the 3gb switch on. My video
card is a Quadro FX3500. I was shocked when I ran ship in a bottle 50
iterations with a time of 43 seconds. My old computer was doing it in
less than 20 seconds. What could be the problem?

Thanks,
--
J Kimmel

www.metalinnovations.com

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

 

What version of SW were you running on the old computer?
Are the options the same?
Dual processor and lots of memory aren't going to help SIB much, it is
raw cpu power there with a fast graphics card.

For starters run your graphics quality all the way up and then all the
way down and test it both ways. If the bottle neck is graphics it will
show up there.

How many processes do you have running in task manager?

Are you sure you have the right graphics driver? Some years back we saw
Dells ship with less than stellar graphics drivers. We saw almost
double the performance on the right driver.

Have you checked the logs for errors?

 

The old computer had an Athlon 64 FX-53 and a Quadro 980XGL and is
currently running 2006 SP3.

--
J Kimmel

www.metalinnovations.com

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

 

Simply put, the Xeon chips are a joke. Intel only woke up and started
performing again with the new Core architecture (Conroe). The FX-53 is
a lot more powerful than a dual core 1.6 Xeon, especially since
SolidWorks is not dual-core optimized software. So you're comparing a
2.4ghz AMD FX core that does a lot more instructions per cycle vs an
Intel Xeon 1.6ghz. Thats why you're getting a worse score.

Next time you go to buy a workstation, do a bit of research instead of
believing what Dell sales team tells you.

 

Since it is a new system with a new FX3500 graphics card, it is most
likely that the CPU is the 1.6GHz Xeon 5110. This is the entry level
product in the Xeon 5100 series that is based on the same core
technology as the Core2 Duo. Clock for clock, Xeon 5100 series CPUs
are faster than AMD Opterons/Athlons and MUCH faster than previous
generation Xeon/P4 CPUs.

Still, the 5110 is the very bottom of the line and dog slow. The ship
in a bottle benchmark scores are exactly what you should expect from
this processor - comparable to a P4 2.6-2.8 GHz or Opteron/Athlon at
1.8 GHz.

The 2.33GHz Xeon 5140 would be about the same as the 2.4GHz FX53 and
either the 2.6GHz Xeon 5150 or the 3.0GHz Xeon 5160 would be quite a
bit faster. You could pop either of these CPUs into your system for an
instant performance fix. Your vendor might even give you a little -
very little - credit for trading in the 5110.

Next time, consider a system with a single 2.66GHz Core2 Duo E6700 (or
whatever is second fastest in the Core2 lineup at the time of
purchase.) It's faster than any dual core AMD processor on the market
and a terrific value. The Core2 Extreme X6800 is faster, but also much
more expensive. Quad core processors will be available for the Core2
platform in mid-November. The only reason to opt for Xeon platform is
if you need 8-way processing or more than 4GB RAM.

 

I'm just disappointed that the new computer is half the speed of the two
year old one. I don't know if I can live with that.

--
J Kimmel

www.metalinnovations.com

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

 

I upgraded my 1.6 ghz Xeon dual processor to a 3.2 ghz Xeon dual
processor. Ship in a bottle times still vary between 40 and 50 seconds.
I was expecting under 20 seconds. The old computer, an Athlon 64
FX-53, gets under 30 seconds on ship in a bottle, and performs better in
most other solidworks processes. I think the new computer does
animation better, though.

Every part of this computer is faster than the old one. Why don't the
benchmarks show this? What else might be wrong?

--
J Kimmel

www.metalinnovations.com

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

 

An upgrade would have been an FX60 and a new motherboard. Dual core and
double the speed of the FX53.

 

Benchmarks imply equal settings. You haven't mentioned your settings on
either box. Verification on rebuild? Software ogl? Image quality?
Display mode? Here's how settings can affect ship in a bottle scores:

Hypersonic Aviator FX7 (laptop)
AMD X2 4800+ (dual core)
2 Gb RAM
nVidia Quadro Go FX1400

HI LO (image quality)

27.2 21.1 edges shown
26.1 20.5 no edges
27.5 21.2 wireframe (not shaded)
27.5 21.4 hlr (not shaded)
27.7 21.4 hlg (not shaded)
21.2 19.0 (graphics window not showing)





Boxx Technologies 3200
AMD FX57 (single core)
3 Gb RAM
nVidia Quadro4 3450

HI LO (image quality)

24.4 18.2 edges shown
23.4 17.5 no edges
26.4 18.5 wireframe (not shaded)
27.3 18.9 hlr (not shaded)
25.3 19.2 hlg (not shaded)
18.5 15.8 (graphics window not showing)





Dual core does not fare well, comparatively, on ship in a bottle. The
ship is not a great simulation for most kinds of real modeling. The two
machines above are actually pretty similar in rebuild speed for complex
surface models, although they go about it very differently.

40-50 seconds is pretty slow. Is this a homebuilt system? Did you just
upgrade the processors? What about the mobo? RAM? I've never heard great
comments about the Xeons. Also, are you talking about real dual
processor or do you mean dual core?

 

New computer is a Dell, processor is dual core. Hyperthreading is
currently on. Memory is 4 gig of ddr2 533mhz. Video is Quadro FX3500
with SW approved driver. Best time for ship in a bottle is 32 seconds
with graphics window not showing, up to 50 seconds with "normal"
performance settings. CPU usage is about 26%, memory usage barely
changes.

2 year old Athlon FX53 best time for ship in a bottle is 20 seconds
with graphics window not showing, up to about 28 seconds with "normal"
performance settings. Processor pegs at 100%.

Rebuilding a complex part takes 15 seconds on the new computer and 7
seconds on the old one.

Performance otherwise seems sluggish when compared directly with the
old computer, files take longer to open, rebuilds are slower, it
crashes more often, but it doesn't seem to be working all that hard.

Ship in a bottle may not be a good benchmark for normal solidworks use,
but is there anything better? Even if it isn't a very good benchmark,
I would still expect this computer to perform better.



Thanks for your help,

John Kimmel

 

We haven't seen a lot of benchmarking on the new Core2 technology.
Intel does know how to make processors that perform better at lower
clock speeds but they have ended up in laptops. The Centrino my boss
has is about comparable to my FX53. But there isn't a P4 in the house
that can hold a candle to it.

What this whole thing suggests is:

1. That performance technology is still at something of a plateau as
far as SW is concerned.

2. You can't buy on brand name or labeling. Xeon means so many things
that it has become meaningless. AMD at least has given a new name to
each new processor technology whereas Xeon is just a valuable (to
Intel, no the customer) marketing label.

 

From what I've read and heard from other folks, and from what your 26%
seems to be saying, I would ditch the hyperthreading. If 2 processors
don't help that much, 4 help even less.

Sounds like Anna has good advice about the Xeons. I don't know much
about the newer Intel processors, but I did have a P4 w/ hyperthread for
a short time before I sent it back and got an AMD. I had pretty much the
same experience as you are having now. Hyperthreading could not be
turned off without reinstalling the OS. Might have been a bios problem,
but I was working with the mfgr on it, and they could not make it
happen. Could have been that there were limited bios choices for that mobo.

Top also has good advice about the Intel/AMD thing. AMD has been the top
chip for SW for a while, although the newer Intels have made some gains
I'm not on top of. The biggest bang for the buck these days would
probably still be the AMD X2 4800+. The fx60 is no bargain, although it
is fast, it has been priced at a premium. I've seen that Dell is
offering AMD in some boxes now.

 

There is a lot of overhead as far as windows is concerned managing a
single threaded process into a dual core/processor situation. It often
outweighs the benefits of the additional processing power. Try opening task
manager, selecting the processes tab, right click the solidworks process,
choose "set affinity" and de-select one of your two cores (does not matter
which) . This is a session only setting, so next time solidworks is started
it will revert back to using both cores. I'm willing to bet that your
benchmark times improve.

I usually leave mine set up to use both cores. But when I am doing
something that I know is going to be processor intensive, I'll switch it
over to single for speed. There are utilities available that will
automatically run a selected processor in single core mode, should you
prefer it that way all the time.

 

Anna Wood wrote:
You say it is

Anna is correct (as usual). The new 5100 series Xeons don't even
support Hyperthreading. HT was a NetBurst architecture feature.

A 2.33 GHz Xeon 5140 would be about the same as or slightly faster than
your old FX53 - and yield the benefits of dual core processing (minor
for SolidWorks, major for PhotoWorks and COSMOSWorks.) A 2.66 GHz 5160
or 3.0 GHz 5160 would be significantly faster.

Pricing (from Dell) for the 5140, 5150 & 5160 is currently $609, $869
and $1279 respectively. The 5110 cost $349 and the 5060 cost $479,
maybe Dell will credit you on the old chips.

(This goes to show that you may not always get what you pay for, but
you ALWAYS pay for what you get.)

Don't worry about the memory. 553MHz DDR2 is just fine. Uprading to
667Mhz would only improve performance by 3-4%. It would have been a
better choice on the initial order, but it's not worth replacing it

 

One of my colleagues had similar problems with a new Dell 690. When he first
set it up, it was slower than his old computer. He eventually gave up on it
and gave it to one of our IT guys to see if he could get it working better.
After a long time working with Dell, it eventually came back and is about
twice as fast as the old one, an Athlon XP2800+ (2.08 GHz). No one is quite
sure what the original problem was or what fixed it.

He has a Xeon 5160 3.0 GHz processor.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"