Why doesn’t my computer haul a** with SW?

Ok, so I built this computer on a budget of $1100 and I thought I would have a very quick machine for 2007. It works pretty good, but still needs to slow down and think alot. What did I do wrong?

Intel Core 2 Duo 3ghz
4gb RAM (3.25 actual)
450GB hard drive
Win XP Home
Nvidia GeForce 8600GT w/ 512mb
p5K mother board
450W power supply

matt

I don't believe that your video card is one that is reccomended for solidworks


try looking on www.solidworks.com under graphics cards
Edited by: sargpep

sargpep said:

I don't believe that your video card is one that is reccomended for solidworks


try looking on www.solidworks.com under graphics cards

Click to expand...

The 8600GT isn't recommended only because it's newer than anything on the lists at the Solidworks.com site. I don't know where the 8600GT fits into the lineup (I think the 8800GTS is the current fastest, short of Quadros), but I doubt it's the problem.

The Solidworks.com site doesn't mention anything in the current 8000 series of nVidia cards; it needs to be updated.

Also depends on the size of assemblies you are working with and detail of the parts involved. SW is a system pig with big assemblies. We had to turn on the 3GB switch just to save a large assembly...

solidworks requiures XP professiional, not XP home

jimj47 said:

solidworks requiures XP professiional, not XP home

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will that really make a difference?

sure there is a reason for professional i'm not sure what, but i had to change a few years ago because i had problems it made a big difference

If you are going to run Solidworks and you are going to use an Nvidia graphics card..then stick to the QUADRO series. The rest are video game cards, more or less. Only the Quadro cards are designed with Solidworks in mind from the start, when you have one in your pc you get REALVIEW - the Quadro card does photorealistic shading in realtime as you draw, putting no load on the computer's cpu as it is all done on the graphics card's hardware. Once you have it, you won't want to work on a machine that doesn't have it. Presentation drawings and animations look supercool with Realview too.


I was in a training session on Solidworks 2008 a few days ago and while at our VAR's site I made a point of asking their tech support people about your system. Their # 1 piece of advice is: GET XP PRO on that machine. There are Windows components at the system level (file/memory handling routines and such) that are in XP Pro that are NOT in XP Home. These subroutines are aimed at networking and office applications not usually encountered in a home user environment. Solidworks makes HEAVY use of these however so if they are not there your system will slow down considerably.



Edited by: Angstboy

I don't believe all the hype about using Quadros and not Geforce graphics cards. I think the difference between the two is not detectable for your everyday average user. Fair enough, there are useful options on the Quadro but I personally wouldn't be going out and buying a 512Mb quadro as opposed to a 512Mb Geforce. I have heard of some software which emulates a Quadro from a Geforce. Apparently there is no differnence in GPU cores - just that some of the advanced anti-aliasing and z-buffer are disabled in the Geforce amongst other things. The software is called RivaTuner 2.0 and SoftQuadro 4. You get much more for your money with Geforce memory-wise. Your computer should fly at that spec. Do make sure you have the correct graphics driver installed and are not using the generic Windows drivers. I'm not sure whehter Solidworks uses sofware based graphics acceleration (OpenGL) but it is another thing to check.


I don't think XP Home Edition should perform any lesser than XP Pro, although I would always opt for the Pro edition given the chance.
Edited by: pjw

PJW is on to something here, especially about the graphic cards. From experience, I use a QUADRO FX 3500 (256K) on a Dell Precision 690, 6GB RAM and 1.86Ghz Dual Quad Processor. I had a small sheet metal box assembly with many fasteners (~100 part assembly) and had to create sections in the assembly for my drawings. I had so much trouble with my system hanging from the view managers section command. It would hang as much as 10 minutes before it unfroze! The PC itself kicks butt, but I believe the memory amount on the $800 graphics card is a limitation.

Less than a month ago, I bought a $2300 HP dt5000, 64-bit Vista with Duo Quad 2.66 processor, 8GB RAM with a 1GB GeForce 9800GT graphics card. And believe me, it KICKS BUTT! The card has NO PROBLEM running SolidWorks and the PhotoRenderer looks GREAT!

I too was skeptical about running a GeForce instead of the Quadro. Not anymore!

And one more thing...Vista actually has been great, despite what I've been hearing for the last 6 months.

Hope some of this helps!

pjw said:

I don't believe all the hype about using Quadros and not Geforce graphics cards. I think the difference between the two is not detectable for your everyday average user. Fair enough, there are useful options on the Quadro but I personally wouldn't be going out and buying a 512Mb quadro as opposed to a 512Mb Geforce. I have heard of some software which emulates a Quadro from a Geforce. Apparently there is no differnence in GPU cores - just that some of the advanced anti-aliasing and z-buffer are disabled in the Geforce amongst other things. The software is called RivaTuner 2.0 and SoftQuadro 4. You get much more for your money with Geforce memory-wise. Your computer should fly at that spec. Do make sure you have the correct graphics driver installed and are not using the generic Windows drivers. I'm not sure whehter Solidworks uses sofware based graphics acceleration (OpenGL) but it is another thing to check.


I don't think XP Home Edition should perform any lesser than XP Pro, although I would always opt for the Pro edition given the chance.

Click to expand...

Standard gaming cards render in a completely different way to CAD graphics cards and it makes a huge difference.


I wouldnt dream about using a cad package without using a proper CAD graphics card like a Quadro card.
I even have preferences about types of card i use depending on the size of assemblys.