Pro/E i7 vs higher clock rate C2d

[2ms1]

I'm about to get a new computer at work. I am somewhat
tempted to get one with an i7 processor because the i7s
absolutely kill Core2Duos in 3D rendering.

However, most of my work is just in Pro/E, and the i7s
(in computers my work will get me ie Dell, HP) are quad-
core with much lower clock rates than the C2Ds available.

So I have a dilema: Do I go for higher clock rate or do
I go for more cores and memory bandwidth.

Does Pro/E utilize additional cores much at all during
general modeling? I am concerned that if it doesn't,
then perhaps it would actually run faster on a
cheaper 3.06Ghz C2D than it would on a quad-core 2.26 GHz
i7.

Any advice on this would be very much appreciated. If a
quad 2.26-2.4 GHz i7 would be about the same speed as a
3.06 GHZ C2D, then I think it would still be worth
getting an i7 for the rendering performance. However, if
such an i7 might actually be slower then it would be a
waste of money.
Edited by: 2ms1

 

[dr_gallup]

To my knowledge, Pro/E is only multi-threaded in assembly retrieval.

 

[2ms1]

Does that mean regeneration of assemblies would be faster?
Or does that only mean that opening up assembly files would
be faster?

Is there anything that a lower clock-rate i7 might be
faster than a C2D at then?

 

[DL_allainmfg]

In Our Experience it's faster at everything, as long as you have the triple channel high clock ram to go with it.

We have two I7 systems...

 

[2ms1]

Thanks for the feedback. Then I think I'm gonna go with
one of the Xeon W3520 (2.66GHz) processors in maybe a
Lenovo S20 workstation. The Nehalems kill C2Ds in
Hypershot benchmarks (extreme memory bandwidth intensive
and multi-threaded). If they're also faster in Pro/E then
they're worth the money to me.

Now I just need to select the graphics hardware.

 

[Jeff701]

I'm running two dual-core Xeons with WF4, on WinXP Pro. I've only ever seen Pro/E max out at 25% - one core's worth of processing power.

 

[moriarty]

You also need to think how long you will be stuck with the
box. PTC have stated that ProE WILL get more multithreaded
with time - hopefully within our lifetime

If you use Mechanica there is some advantage - and there is
the opportunity to multi-task your work as well - do two
things at once - although this is apparently only possible
for women
Edited by: moriarty

 

[moriarty]

Have a look here a CPU benchmarks

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html