Workstation for Solidworks

We're shopping for computers to run Solidworks, can someone tell me what
are the latest workstations being marketed for that? I've looked at HP
xp6200 and xp8200, what other manufacturers are people using?

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.

 

* JKimmel:

You probably mean xw6200 and xw6800 ;-) @work we use xw8200 and xw9300
(Opteron machines), and at home I have a xw8200 (2x XEON 3.6GHz, 13GB
DDR2, 3x300GB SCSI 10k, PNY GF7800GTX 256MB) for around 1.5yrs now, too.
And since a few weeks also a xw9300 (2x Opteron 285, 12gb DDR, 2x74GB
10k SATA, 2x QuadroFX4500). The machines are great, they are rock solid
and reliable, they are relative silent, and the service is (at least
here in Germany) really outstanding. Another point is that the prices
are (compared with other workstations) usually quite good, too.

The xw8200 you mentioned is a very good machine, but it's using the old
Netburst-based XEON processors which produce a lot of excess heat and
are relative slow compared to AMD Opteron and especially intels new
Core-based XEONs ("Woodcrest" aka XEON 51xx). It's already on the end of
its product life cycle, the successor (xw8400) is already available.
Same is valid for the xw6200 btw, the successor xw6400 with Core
technology is already there.

The xw9300 which is Opteron based also is a good system but also
reaching the end of it's product life cycle, but the successor is not
yet on the horizon. It's using the nForce4 Professional chipset and
allows SLI gfx. The xw9300 is much more silent than the Opteron
workstations from Sun or IBM.
One negative thing is that the xw9300 is relative expensive, which
together with the better performance of the xw8400 makes it only
interesting if you want to use two gfx cards in SLI config.

I'd recommend to go for a Core-based machine. They are much faster than
the old Netburst-based systems (P4/XEON up to XEON 50xx) and also much
faster than machines based on AMD Opteron. And they draw less power and
produce less heat. So depending on your needs a xw6400 or xw8400
probably would be the best way to go.


Benjamin

 

Dead horse beaten again and again and again. At least for 2 months
until computer technology moves along.

KM

 

J.

Dell 960 Precision Workstation.
x64 XP Pro
Dual Core Xenon running at 3.73 GHz.
8 Gigs of RAM
512 nVidia 4500 FX Graphics Card.
Dual 20" widescreen monitors.

The run pretty quiet. Have to keep looking at the power button to
figure out if computer on when monitor is in "sleep" mode. Case is
pretty big.

Running SW on x32 mode as SW hasn't released the standard for 3rd party
applications.
PDM system won't run with SW x64 software.

Played with 2007 in x64 bit mode for a while and it was pretty nice.
Not enough keyboard time to benchmark any real differences (Its pretty
nice eye candy - I'm getting tired of the "Is that a server" when
people look at the CPU.

Len