Solidworks system and var

Hi

I am looking to purchase a decent system shortly for running SW2005. I have
seen a decent spec dell dual xeon 3gig with 2gig ram, decent HD and an ATI
X2 256m gfx card. any opinions on this system? assemblies would be in the
order of a couple of hundred parts only. Does photoworks take advantage of
dual processors? or would a faster single processor make more sense? I will
be doing a lot of rendering.

Also, I see a couple of different VAR's in the UK, does anyone have
experience of any of them with regards to support etc? I'd like a
recommendation prior to purchase.

thanks for your time

Rich

 

I would go with an approved Nvidia card. PhotoWorks will use dual
processors but I'm not sure of the performance gain. SolidWorks will not
take advantage of dual processors.

 

Why DELL?
Why XEON?
Why Dual CPU?

None of the above items really helps SW perform although they look good
on paper.

AMD64 or Opteron
Good quality motherboard (see www.anandtech.com or tomshardware.com)
2-3 GB of fast, quality RAM like Corsair or Mushkin.
Quadro or WildCat graphics (as much as you can afford)
WD SATA HDD or two
A decent power supply and cooling system.

 

We use NT CADCAM (01565) 621150 who have been very good and were recommended
to me.

We just bought seats from them so I can't comment on training etc but their
telephone support is fine.

Jonathan

 

I'll agree with Rob that you should go with different video card. PNY
Quadro FX500 is good quality with decent price (around 300 € in
Finland). I'm using NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL which is around 800 euros
but it's worth every cent.

 

Thanks guys. I'm still not sure if dual processors are going to be better
than a faster single. The only reason I looked at dual Xeons was because
there are a lot of offers around and you could pick a system up pretty
cheap.
I have also looked at NT Cadcam before, so I will probably go with them.

Thanks

Rich

 

Can't believe you can by a slower dual Xeon cheaper than a faster
single CPU.