PC upgrade for SOLIDWORKS HELP!

[joshhussey]

Alright, so I need a little bit of advice.
I'm an engineering student and I'm having a lot of trouble with the Solidworks (CAD program) parts I'm drawing on my computer. Here is the "how to ask for advice" copy paste before I get started!


Approximate Purchase Date:

Everything already purchased besides Liquid cooling, which is going to be purchased as soon as I figure out which one to get!

Budget Range: Unlimited.

System Usage from Most to Least Important:

1) CAD drawing
2) Remote File Access
3) Watching movies

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade:

1) CPU Cooling
2) Possibly CPU

Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Preferrably Canadian sites, but anything will do if they do shipping to Canada

Location: St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Parts Preferences: Anything! Currently running AMD but it was due to Budget issues during build.

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080 LG TV

Additional Comments:
Built/building mainly for SOLIDWORKS

Why Are You Upgrading: Having trouble with some complex SolidWorks drawings.



Current Specs

PSU: Thermaltake Smart M 750W

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 (Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z will be here for christmas )

CASE: Antec (Can't remember model Name/#)

CPU: AMD FX8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core (Debating on the FX9570)

CPU COOLING: Currently stock...

MEMORY: 32 Gb (4x8Gb) Kingston 1500MHz (32 Gb (4 x 8Gb) Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz will be here by friday!)

GRAPHICS: AMD FirePro W5000

OPTICAL DRIVES:
1) LG Blu-Ray/DVD Combo
2) Cheap Asus DVD drive I can't remember the name of.

STORAGE:
2x 180 Gb Intel 530 Series SSD's (RAID 0)
2x 1 Tb Western Digital Black 7200RPM HDD's (RAID 1)

FANS: 9 Rocketfish (I KNOW) Case fans... I think the model is something like LOUD_NOISY or something...

OTHER: Some funky Dynex Multi-Card reader drive


So my question may be a little general but I need all the advice I can get.
I am looking to OC my CPU, maybe get the FX9570 (Because I can get it for free if needed) to increase the performance I'm getting with CAD drawings.
I may either get an FX9570 CPU or get another FirePro W5000 and crossfire.
I'm going to buy a liquid cooling system of somekind, preferably closed loop, something pre made I don't want a custom loop.

Once I have the hardware situation figured out, I'd like to know how you guys think I should mess with things to get the most performance out of my system...

I hope I gave enough info!! If you guys would like more, just let me know and I'm ON IT!

 

[Outlander_04]

You have a powerful processor and plenty of RAM

What are you having trouble with exactly?

 

[joshhussey]

Some parts which have long threads (Bolts, threaded shafts, ect.) and some assembly which have a lot of parts can be difficult to work on... I am hoping to be able to do almost anything without too much trouble, but currently weird stuff has been happening such as I have a motor assembly with a few bolts and some bearing and what not and it seems to want to be choppy when I try to rotate the parts, I think it's mainly due to the threads but I would like to upgrade my PC to be able to handle it..

 

[bambiboom]

Some parts which have long threads (Bolts, threaded shafts, ect.) and some assembly which have a lot of parts can be difficult to work on... I am hoping to be able to do almost anything without too much trouble, but currently weird stuff has been happening such as I have a motor assembly with a few bolts and some bearing and what not and it seems to want to be choppy when I try to rotate the parts, I think it's mainly due to the threads but I would like to upgrade my PC to be able to handle it..

joshhussey,

The frustration of balky 3D navigation almost inspired me to toss Sketchup into the rubbish bin, but there is hope both through software and hardware changes.

I tend to agree with Outlander_04 that your system in general seems to have a good specification for Solidworks- far above the minimal requirements. There may be techniques within Solidworks to speed up navigation, such as making it a component, purging unused lines and layers, running only essential layers to the part of the assembly, repairing connections.. You might look at specially at the view settings and run in monochrome, wireframe, and at lower anti-aliasing. Have a look at the Dessault site and download a specialized, "partnered" Solidworks driver. I tried these on a Dell Precision T5400 with a Quadro FX 4800 and they were very good. These have amazing features: I ran 128X anti-aliasing when I was having trouble snapping to exact points on a curved surface in Solidworks 2010. There are good Solidworks forums and someone there might spot a whole pile of settings / workspace optimization right away. Perhaps bolts are navigation killers and should be on a layer that gets turned off unless they are involved with the work of the moment or similar.

There's also the hardware approach and you mentioned doubling up the W5000. Checking Passmark Performance Test baselines, there are three systems having an FX 8350 and Firepro W5000, and these have respectable 3D scores of 2972, 2946, 2925- similar to a Quadro K4000. However, benchmarks don't necessarily reflect real-world use and from reading a lot of reviews and comments, plus in my limited use of Solidworks, there is a stronger affinity with Quadro cards.

If the techniques of tuning the software doesn't help working, the possible solution might be to consider the value of your current W5000- that was a $400+ card plus the cost of a second and instead consider a new Quadro KX200 series GPU. A couple of reasons- one Quadros seems to have the affinity with Solidworks, the W5000 is now obsolete (there's a W5100) so a less future-looking investment, and perhaps most importantly, the last time I checked, Solidworks does not support SLI. You will want to verify that this is still the case as things change.

The new Quadro series in effect moves the corresponding card to the performance of the level above in the previous series: a K2200 performs above a K4000 (the competitor and very similar performance to the W5000), a K4200 above the K5000,and the K5200 is in a class of it's own, not K6000 but very good, certainly far above a Quadro 6000 (6GB). About three weeks ago, I changed a Quadro 4000 (2GB) for a K2200 (4GB) and in Passmark, the 3D score of my HP z420 went from 2044 to 3553 and the 3D navigation in every program noticeably improved as did the speed of the shadow views.

So, as mentioned, if there is not enough improvement in software techniques, have a look at the new Quadros and if you believe you need a hardware change, I'd suggest a Quadro K4200 (about US $850);

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G28N5480&cm_re=Quadro_K4200-_-14-133-558-_-Product

> would be smart, long-term investment, . On Passmark, an i7-3770K system and K4200 makes a 3D score of 4719- this is GTX 680 territory. The K2200 is quite good, and more like US $450, but the bandwidth is quite a bit smaller and the K4200 would accommodate projects as you undertake larger and more complex assemblies. You might easily use it for 5 or 7 years.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro K2200 (4GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark Rating = 3949 > CPU= 9222 / 2D= 835 / 3D=3553 / Mem= 2573 / Disk= 2118]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB DDR2 ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Dell 24" and Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit > [Passmark system Rating = 1859, CPU = 8528 / 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

Dell Precision 390 (2006) Xeon x3230 quad core @ 2.67GHz > 6 GB DDR2 ECC 667 > Firepro V4900 (1GB)> 2X WD 320GB > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit [Passmark system rating = 1458, CPU = 3642 / 2D= 433 / 3D=1346 / Mem= 853 / Disk=582]

 

[joshhussey]

Bambiboom,

thank you very much, I greatly appreciate the help.

My first thing will be to check with settings,
then I will download the partnered programs you suggested (which I didn't know existed)

I will definitely look at investing in K4200, hopefully my workterm in January will allow me to purchase one.

With all the spare parts I have I might even be able to sell enough to buy one...

(6x Diamond Radeon 7770, 1x FX4100 Black Edition, 1x Thermaltake Smart M 550W, 1x GA-990FXA-UD3, 32gb [4x8gb] Kingston 1500MHz HyperX RAM, 1x Antec Case)

 

[bambiboom]

Bambiboom,

thank you very much, I greatly appreciate the help.

My first thing will be to check with settings,
then I will download the partnered programs you suggested (which I didn't know existed)

I will definitely look at investing in K4200, hopefully my workterm in January will allow me to purchase one.

With all the spare parts I have I might even be able to sell enough to buy one...

(6x Diamond Radeon 7770, 1x FX4100 Black Edition, 1x Thermaltake Smart M 550W, 1x GA-990FXA-UD3, 32gb [4x8gb] Kingston 1500MHz HyperX RAM, 1x Antec Case)

joshhusssey,

You might be interested in this X-bit review / test of the new Quadros, the following being the Maya and Solidworks page:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/nvidia-quadro-k5200-k4200-k2200_8.html

- and showing test results that demonstrate a bit of the idea of the affinity of Quadros to Solidworks. In these results, the $450 K2200 held it's own with the $3,200 Firepro 9100. Firepros are however quite a lot better at computing and double precision.

I think it's a very good tactic to consolidate hardware into less but newer and higher performance stuff. Having recently purchased the K2200 and a couple of days ago I bought a pair of monitors and an enterprise 480GB SSD, I hope to fund by selling my pile of the past including both the modern- digital- and quite a lot of the analog- NOS vacuum tubes.

Best of luck and let us know how you progress.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[joshhussey]

BambiBoom,

although this is somewhat unrelated, I decided to download the Passmark bench that you were using.
Originally I was getting around 3025.3.

So I started a journey to up my score.
After setting up a Raid 0 and playing with the Page file min/max I managed to get it up..

OH and I also OC'd from 4.0 to 4.7, stock cooler, 1.400V and running 68deg temp MAX... Didn't think I'd be able to go that high without an aftermarket cooler...

Bottom line, I got my score up to 3686!

I'm trying to find the cash to buy a K4200...
But I believe when my ram gets here on Thursday, I get my Crosshair V Formula Z and a liquid cooler, I should be able to get my CPU over 5 GHz and stable... I'm excited to get a score then!

 

[bambiboom]

joshhusssey,

There are a several good benchmark programs, but I like Passmark especially because it separates each component- CPU, motherboard, GPU, memory, drive, disk so that it's possible in many cases to have an idea in advance how well a proposed system might perform: you only need do an advanced search listing a particular CPU with a particular drive, and etc. to see how well it might score.

When upgrading, each change can demonstrate the relative effect. My brother gave me a couple of old systems, a Dell Precision 390 and Dimension E520 from 2006, and I made a game of trying to make them perform as well as I good for as little money as possible:

1. Dell Precision 390 (2006) Original: Core2 Duo 6300 @ 1.86GHz, 2GB DDR2 ECC 667 > Quadro FX550, XP Pro 32-bit [Passmark system rating = 397, CPU = 587 / 2D= 248 / 3D=75 / Mem=585 / Disk = 552 ]

Dell Precision 390 Revised: Xeon x3230 quad core @ 2.67GHz > 6 GB DDR2 ECC 667 > Firepro V4900 (1GB)> 2X WD 320GB > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit [Passmark system rating = 1458, CPU = 3642 / 2D= 433 / 3D=1346 / Mem= 853 / Disk=582 ]

2. Dell Dimension E520 (2006)Orig: [Pentium D 830 @ 3.0GHz, GeForce 7300LE 128MB, 2GB [ Passmark system rating = 384, CPU = 613 / 2D= 248 / 3D=72 / Mem=562 / Disk = 522 ]

Dell Dimension E520 Revised: Core2 Duo E6700 dual core @2.66GHz > 4GB DDR2 667 > GeForce GT440 (1GB GDDR5) > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit [Passmark system rating = 1219, CPU = 2024 / 2D= 457 / 3D=978 / Mem= 828 / Disk=576 ]

The Precision 390 was a big surprise . I had the Firepro lying about and the other parts totaled about $125, giving me a good backup system for $125. I'm changing the Samsung 840 250GB SSD to an Intel 730 480GB next week and expect the transplanted Samsung will give the 390 yet another boost, with Passmark confirming the benefit at each step.

Seeing your system rating rising from 3025 to 3686 is a good sign and you might find this is a bit addictive! The highest rating currently on Passmark for an FX 8350 / W5000 system is 4017 using an ASUS Sabertooth, Kingston HperX 240GB, and the FX 8350 at 5.02GHz so your system is doing quite well. You may however, find that very high overclocking is a bit chancy in the world of workstation applications as these are so compute heavy and renderings drive them full bore on all the core. Xeons have locked multipliers to maintain stability for that reason. Rendering runs the GPU's hard too- the Quadro 4000 once touched 105C,..

I'd read previously that RAID 0 was not as big a benefit on SSD's, but looking in Passmark- which I think weights the disk quite heavily- that RAID 0 is a noticeable advantage. When I shopping for the SSD, I saw that the Intel 730 rate went from 550 to 893MB/s when in RAID 0.

I think the Quadro K4200 should be an excellent, long-term investment. I'm so far quite pleased with the Quadro 4000 to K2200 improvement (from 2044 to 3553 on Passmark), but, I'm thinking for the long haul I perhaps should have gotten a K4200 as well. This evening I tried a complex site contour in AutoCad 2013 and it was not an ideally smooth navigation. On this round, investment was in the SSD and especially the monitors- later today I'm changing an HP 2711X (with 16,500 hours on it) and Dell 24" to a pair of Dell Ultrasharp U2715H's. Oh well, one thing at a time.

Let us know how you progress. I expect if you're in St .John's, the Winter provides a good incentive to stay in and do computer projects! Years ago, a friend of mine lived for several years on Prince Edward's and caught up on his reading,...

Cheers,

BambiBoom