Not getting necessary performance. What do I upgrade?

[Skozlowski]

I have an i5-4430 processor on a DX4665 motherboard apparently w/ C220 chipset. I'm running Solidworks wich only uses ~1.5 cores. I've been told that my 4 core processor is adequate running at ~3.2GHz. Will upgrading my mobo to one with a Z97 chipset help me get better performance or do I need to look at upgrading something different? I've already added a quadro K4000 gpu and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. I'm not sure what else to replace but the motherboard. please let me know if I'm at least going down the right road here or if I need to make a U-turn and focus on a different component.

 

[basroil]

A Z97 board will do literally nothing for you. If you mean you need better Solidworks simulation (constraints resize, etc), you'll need a faster CPU like the 4770. If you mean the models render slowly, you'll need faster graphics with more graphics memory.

 

[Skozlowski]

A Z97 board will do literally nothing for you. If you mean you need better Solidworks simulation (constraints resize, etc), you'll need a faster CPU like the 4770. If you mean the models render slowly, you'll need faster graphics with more graphics memory.

Dear lord. I just had a question similar to this and was told my processor is just fine. GRRR. OK, The mobo is proprietary and doesn't have any info available. I've called acer and they don't even have anything to give me. How can I be sure I'm not going to ruin something by upgrading to a new processor?

 

[Skozlowski]

A Z97 board will do literally nothing for you. If you mean you need better Solidworks simulation (constraints resize, etc), you'll need a faster CPU like the 4770. If you mean the models render slowly, you'll need faster graphics with more graphics memory.

Dear lord. I just had a question similar to this and was told my processor is just fine. GRRR. OK, The mobo is proprietary and doesn't have any info available. I've called acer and they don't even have anything to give me. How can I be sure I'm not going to ruin something by upgrading to a new processor? would changing to an i7 or xeon help. I use massive files with thousands of parts in one assembly.

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

Solidworks was able to utilize HyperThreading if I remember it right, so upgrading to Intel i7 or Xeon indeed would help massively.

Also, do you have and SSD or possibly RAID configuration currently? Because faster data write and read speeds on mass storage definitely would help with loading and handling big files.

 

[Skozlowski]

Solidworks was able to utilize HyperThreadin if I remember it right, so upgrading to Intel i7 or Xeon indeed would help.

No idea if it would mess with the rest of my system at all? I guess just the motherboard is all I'm worried about, it couldn't impact other components could it? I'm pretty new to this building and upgrading BS and I'm just an engineer lol.

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

No idea if it would mess with the rest of my system at all? I guess just the motherboard is all I'm worried about, it couldn't impact other components could it? I'm pretty new to this building and upgrading BS and I'm just an engineer lol.

It wouldn't. The problem is, which chipset your motherboard is using. There is 3 different chipsets on C220 family:
C222, C224 and C226.

C222 being seemingly equal to Z87. Which means it would have possibly too old BIOS version for handling Haswell-Refresh cpu like i7 4790.
But that can only be known by trying, especially since you apparently can't find any more informative motherboard model information.

Luckily, testing won't damage anything. If it isn't supported, 2 things can happen:
1. It won't boot
2. It will boot but works sloppy

 

[Skozlowski]

No idea if it would mess with the rest of my system at all? I guess just the motherboard is all I'm worried about, it couldn't impact other components could it? I'm pretty new to this building and upgrading BS and I'm just an engineer lol.

It wouldn't. The problem is, which chipset your motherboard is using. There is 3 different chipsets on C220 family:
C222, C224 and C226.

C222 being seemingly equal to Z87. Which means it would have possibly too old BIOS version for handling Haswell-Refresh cpu like i7 4790.
But that can only be known by trying, especially since you apparently can't find any more informative motherboard model information.

Luckily, testing won't damage anything. If it isn't supported, 2 things can happen:
1. It won't boot
2. It will boot but works sloppy

I think I was wrong. Its a B85 chipset. Please tell me thats a good thing.

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

I think I was wrong. Its a B85 chipset. Please tell me thats a good thing.

It's a bit of both good and bad thing.

It can hold 4790, albeit it may need BIOS update. But It's not exactly wisest thing to run i7 on B85.
It would be best to have H97 (if you aren't overclocking and get just regular i7 4790) or Z97 (if you get 4790K and want to overclock)

If you can't afford i7 4790, you can instead get Xeon E3-1231 V3.
It would be a middleground between an i5 and i7, getting some good of both worlds:
price of i5, HyperThreading of i7.

 

[Skozlowski]

I think I was wrong. Its a B85 chipset. Please tell me thats a good thing.

It's a bit of both good and bad thing.

It can hold 4790, albeit it may need BIOS update. But It's not exactly wisest thing to run i7 on B85.
It would be best to have H97 (if you aren't overclocking and get just regular i7 4790) or Z97 (if you get 4790K and want to overclock)

If you can't afford i7 4790, you can instead get Xeon E3-1231 V3.
It would be a middleground between an i5 and i7, getting some good of both worlds:
price of i5, HyperThreading of i7.

So in a previous thread when someone told me upgrading to a Z97 mobo would do me literaly nothing he had no clue what he was talking about... I can get one of these mobo's and an i7 and make my computer run like a beast?
ASUS Z97-E/USB3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASUS Z97-E ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H ATX Intel Motherboard
and if i can get tone of these could you give a preference?

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

So in a previous thread when someone told me upgrading to a Z97 mobo would do me literaly nothing he had no clue what he was talking about... I can get one of these mobo's and an i7 and make my computer run like a beast?
ASUS Z97-E/USB3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASUS Z97-E ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H ATX Intel Motherboard
and if i can get tone of these could you give a preference?

Z97 motherboard only helps you if you get i5 4670k, i5 4690k, i7 4770k or i7 4790k.
Those 4 are "unlocked" cpus, which means you can overclock them and for overclocking them, you will need Z97 motherboard.
But if you are not planning on overclocking, then H97 and i7 4790/Xeon E3-1231 V3 are good for you.

If you are not overclocking, 4790 and 4790k give you exactly same performance since they are the same cpu. Just with other being overclockable for higher performance.

 

[Skozlowski]

So in a previous thread when someone told me upgrading to a Z97 mobo would do me literaly nothing he had no clue what he was talking about... I can get one of these mobo's and an i7 and make my computer run like a beast?
ASUS Z97-E/USB3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASUS Z97-E ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H ATX Intel Motherboard
and if i can get tone of these could you give a preference?

Z97 motherboard only helps you if you get i5 4670k, i5 4690k, i7 4770k or i7 4790k.
Those 4 are "unlocked" cpus, which means you can overclock them and for overclocking them, you will need Z97 motherboard.
But if you are not planning on overclocking, then H97 and i7 4790/Xeon E3-1231 V3 are good for you.

If you are not overclocking, 4790 and 4790k give you exactly same performance since they are the same cpu. Just with other being overclockable for higher performance.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! That was not that hard, I thought I had it down then this guy made me feel retarded. Thank you again, it's time to go shopping.

 

[basroil]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! That was not that hard, I thought I had it down then this guy made me feel retarded. Thank you again, it's time to go shopping.

That's quite insulting there, as I said nothing that would demean your intelligence.

And you never answered the question of what is feeling slow! If model display is feeling sluggish, those "upgrade cpu and motherboard" recommendations will not help at all, and instead you need a faster GPU. Hell, if you have a lot of parts in assembly and you notice the memory is hovering above 80%, you might even benefit more from more memory.

 

[Skozlowski]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! That was not that hard, I thought I had it down then this guy made me feel retarded. Thank you again, it's time to go shopping.

That's quite insulting there, as I said nothing that would demean your intelligence.

And you never answered the question of what is feeling slow! If model display is feeling sluggish, those "upgrade cpu and motherboard" recommendations will not help at all, and instead you need a faster GPU. Hell, if you have a lot of parts in assembly and you notice the memory is hovering above 80%, you might even benefit more from more memory.

I'm sorry about that, I was referring to someone in another thread I posted similar to this one. I said that as well, you must have overlooked it. I have a Quadro k4000 GPU and I am definitely getting more memory too. the 16GB I have just wont cut it, so we're definitely on the same page but I was mainly trying to find out if the chipset was something that would improve the performance. I didn't mean to insult you at all.