New Computer

[johni]

Our company is looking to purchase a new computer. We are currently running Wildfire v1.0. We are a smaller company an do not purchase computers very often for Pro-E. I was wondering if anyone could help me when it comes to the specifics of the computer. What is more 'important' when purchasing a new computer: Processor, Graphics Card, Etc? Any help would be appriciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dr_gallup]

What you need depends on what you are doing. For relatively simple parts (<100 prismatic features) & small assemblies (<50 parts), practically anything sold today has plenty of compute power. Truely complex parts or thousands of componet assemblies stress the fastest systems available. Get plenty of RAM in anycase, 1 GB minimum. Make sure you have a supported Open GL graphics card unless you want to deal with hacking drivers & other video problems.

The toughest decision today is probably whether to go with a 32 or 64 bit system. The OS & software for 64 bits Windoz systems is still a little immature but if you plan on using the system for 3 years or more it may be the way to go.

Oh, and get a REALLY BIG monitor. We just got a couple of the Dell 24" LCD's running at 1920x1200 resolution and they make running Pro/E so much nicer.
Edited by: dr_gallup

 

[mgnt8]

Take a look at PTC recommended system requirements:


http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/support.htm


If you have tech support, they sometimes default to the 'you're not on a certified system so its not our problem' excuse rather than help you. Pay especially close attention to the graphics cards. I've been through various ATI's & 3D Labs that were at one time or another on that list, but the best option was (in the words of PTC tech support guy after my 20th or so call for graphics problems)"get an NVIDIA".

 

[johni]

Thanks for the advice Dr_gallup and mgnt8. This will help!!

 

[paulcunningham3]

I totally agree with dr. gallup and mgnt8! Especially on the ram and graphic card issue although ati do make some good cards I have had no problems with the nvidia quadro fx series I currently run a fx1100 which is great however a little pricey there are cheaper cards in the range such as the fx500 which i friend of mine has been running on large assemblies and analysis projects with no problems. the critical thing is however the ram get as much as you can or youll regret it and all the money youve just spent on the system is effectively wasted in asense!


Hope I've been of some help please post any further queries


Paul Cunni

 

[slashct]

I totally believe that the best thing you can do is get a certified PTC system from an HP, Dell, IBM, etc. You can try and piece together something but you never know how everything works together. At one company I worked for they bought some gateway workstations and upgraded the graphics cards to a certified one. We saw nothing but headaches with them, memory modules would cause some crashing, some ran decent others not... Long story short we took an HP system that was half the processor speed and it ran 4 times faster on our benchmark.... That HP was certified.
For the 32 or 64 bit, there is a nice solution through HP, you can get the 32 bit version of the OS and convert to 64, not sure what the whole deal is sales guy gave me a price on it, but our IT won't support it. I know Once you do so you cannot go back.
Right now we are running all HP workstations w/o any issues and we have over 40 f them... And the price was very reasonable.

 

[ilmegor]

I just bought a dell Precision with fx1400, 1Gb ram and single Xeon CPU at a good price (ready for 64 bit).


I'm very happy with that. I run WF2 with small assy though ( <100 pcs).


The best thing I have done is to buy two 19"LCD, the price is very good now andit really makesmy work muchfaster . Two smaller LCD I think are better than a big one (and muchcheaper!)...but that's my opinion.


Stay with certified cards and RAM! they really make the difference!!!


Ciao!

 

[vgb_40]

first time reading forum with this view thanks to all of u and m cad i really need all of yr support to excplore more in pw2