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Thread: Computer Help - CAD Workstation

  1. #21
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Wowsers Solidworks still relying on single core performance. Its 2020 ffs... not 2005 - utter garbage as usual from software manufacturers .
    Ok they say some on the applications can use multicore but ffs guys we aint living in the stone age anymore - we now have 64 core cpus with utterly ridicules power... Reminds me of photoshop, many parts of it are still single threaded... cos ... money from intel ????

    Video card wise a gaming card from either nvidia or amd could prob be used even though they moan about it.

  2. #22
    Guest Asht_200's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drifter View Post
    Okay so my old brick (survived a drop from pickup truck in Nigeria lol) is...

    Intel i7 3720qm 2.6ghz
    16gb ram
    Nvidia Quadro k5000m
    165Gb primary drive
    400Gb data drive

    All of our data is stored on Solidworks PDM server so space is not an issue.

    It even survived the upgrade to Win 10!

    Desktop is almost the same, faster cpu and twice the ram.


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    That’s exactly what I would have specced. If it is primarily for CAD the NVidia Quadro Cards are more suited to the GeForce brand.

    The GPUs are identical but the Quadro is supposed to have better floating point and ECC memory

    However if you aren’t doing highly complex CAD work, perhaps a GeForce brand would be more suitable as I expect lower cost.

    The Quadro is supposed to outperform a comparable GeForce for gaming though

    I would up the RAM to 32 GB though and you would have a nice laptop.

    Perhaps get one with a bigger screen?

    My old Brick was a “developer class” Lenovo with that SPEC minus the SSD,was as fast as my current HP Desktop.

    Get a NAS for Data storage


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  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by sideways14a View Post
    I dont know much about the software you are discussing but i do know an awful lot about computer hardware.

    CPU - today and for the next couple of years at least its AMD - for rendering or anything that might be heavy on the processor then get one with more cores. The current 3900x is a 12 core 24 thread part, the 3700x is an 8 core 16 thread part and the 3950x is a 16 core 32 thread part. If your software "likes" more cores then obviously get a computer with a lot more of them. If the software is not strong on multithreading (ie tends to use only 1 or 2 cores) then get something with a high single thread speed - Intels top stuff is good at single or limited thread software because they have a higher clock speed* thus can usually be faster than a larger more powerful cpu with more cores but a lower clockspeed.

    Memory - absolutely 100% minimum 16gb of ram nowadays, i would aim for 32 at least depending on budget and software requirements. I am not going to go into memory speeds and tuning because thats out of scope of this thread but if you want i can go into it.

    Storage - No arguments here with anything, its SSD all the way now - unless you have some extremely big files to store but this is an outlier. Always always always back your machine up to the cloud or something else. I get several terabytes of MS cloud storage via onedrive which i jighly recomend for off site/ device backups as i work in education i get it free with O365 so try and get a cloud storage platform with large amounts of space, if you buy ms office 365 you get onedrive with it but its bloody expensive for businesses. For the SSD i would look at a minimum of a 1tb NVME m.2 drive.

    Video card - i have no idea if your software supports gpu rendering or acceleration. Some do and thus you would need to check with the software requirements before we could make a decent suggestion.

    Not much else bar flippancy like the case, dvd rom drive if you must have it... (dont bother unless you need it) and psu which should be of a good make, high enough wattage to support future requirements - i would say at least 650 watts.

    Ohh and you need a copy of windows 10 - if your building yourself you will need to buy a license, if your purchasing from a pc supplier then it usually comes with that. I would factor in some additional software like malwarebytes ~15 a year iirc for extra malware help or one of the other many virus checkers.

    Is this a standalone machine? or going on a lan, is it to be part of a large active directory network or just a home box?



    *Within turbo duration (tao) - a turbo boost one a 5.2ghz intel 10900k is only supposed to last something like 45 seconds or so... then clock speed falls and so does performance..
    Let’s agree to disagree!

    Most CAD software has supported GPU rendering for decades, so a decent GPU is more important than CPU

    Higher clock speed does not always mean faster threads. You have to also factor in the architecture. CPU cores can handle multiple threads per core but it is also how the CPU can talk to the rest of the architecture, how fast it can get the data out)

    ARM is now performing better than INTEL and AMD in thread processing but software doesn’t support it yet

    SSD is a must (you don’t need a 2nd one as they are fast enough today - you can get a SANdisk 250 GB for 32 quid these days)

    Get a NAS and you can also back them up to. Cloud Storage - leave the temp files on the SSD if you can and make sure you clean them up afterwards

    Believe it or not, Norton AV is better than Malwarebytes (MWB is good for quick scans but for online protection NAV is better and doesn’t slow the machine down as much

    And as much RAM as you can afford


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  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drifter View Post
    You can search through the certified options here, not that it tells you sod all without looking up the specs on the manufacturers website.


    https://www.solidworks.com/support/h...-certification

    This from Javelin might help

    https://www.javelin-tech.com/blog/20...commendations/

    Which suggests single core for normal models.

    To be honest I’ve never looked into the hardware too much as I’ve always bought from the reseller.

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    Like we said. You don’t need a 1000 core AMD / Intel extreme edition, as most CAD doesn’t use multi core (2 maybe) a decent GPU as rendering is offloaded to the GPU

    If you need more you can purchase NVidia GPGPU that will work even faster alongside their GPUs

    Years ago I was working with a guy doing CAD and we specced him a “Graphics Workstation” we specced 128GB RAM and when he complained it was fast enough specced S1075 Tesla GPGPU compute module and the performance was blistering... that was 2007

    That was using AutoCAD

    Don’t believe me? Look at how Pixar’s Renderfarm is setup. Multiple Multiple GPUs


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  5. #25
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Decent cad software should support GPU rendering, in solidworks case yes it does.
    But you dont need to buy the "pro" versions of the gaming gpu's because... most of the time the gaming gpu can do the biz as well.

    I would always look at cores/ghz as a trade off - thats why i have had a 6 core in my daily since they became available, but its also running high (ish) clocks for it as well (4.5ghz out of a 5820k is not too shabby) and thus i have the best of both worlds.

    And i doubt very very much that Arm will ever come close to x64 under real workloads us pc owners use them for. Might be fine for some crap apple low end stuff and heck there are even servers with lots of arm cores but i dont see the end of x86 / x64 for a very long time. Can Arm scale upwards, we know you can pack hundreds of there cores on a chip but as intel and AMD have found parallelisation aint the easiest of things to get the market to do.

    But then folk have been saying the same about linux since the dawn of time and windows still wheezes along while linux is still a mammoth pita to work with sometimes.

  6. #26
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    Firstly gaming GPUs are at a premium because people are using them for crypto coin mining, so are at premium prices. The Quadro is actually cheaper than an equivalent GPU spec

    I believe ARM will overtake Intel and AMD because their CPU design is more efficient. Look at the server farms using ARM it won’t be long before they are used in desktops. Remember ARM don’t make the CPU, Apple, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Samsung etc make them. Just look at what ARM did at the beginning of the 64bit embedded systems and mainframe. StrongARM. DEC Alpha combined with ARM.

    You like AMD. AMD made their 64bit name with AMD 64, which was only because Hypertransport memory architecture... which came from DEC Alpha

    The worlds first 4K games console wasn’t a PS4 or XBox, it was an NVidia Shield TV running a Tegra chip. ARM cores and GeForce GPU

    PCs aren’t driving to processor market anymore, Smartphones are AMD the server market has woken up. Apple are switching to their own ARM based chips. How long before Microsoft do?


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  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by sideways14a View Post
    Decent cad software should support GPU rendering, in solidworks case yes it does.
    But you dont need to buy the "pro" versions of the gaming gpu's because... most of the time the gaming gpu can do the biz as well.

    I would always look at cores/ghz as a trade off - thats why i have had a 6 core in my daily since they became available, but its also running high (ish) clocks for it as well (4.5ghz out of a 5820k is not too shabby) and thus i have the best of both worlds.

    And i doubt very very much that Arm will ever come close to x64 under real workloads us pc owners use them for. Might be fine for some crap apple low end stuff and heck there are even servers with lots of arm cores but i dont see the end of x86 / x64 for a very long time. Can Arm scale upwards, we know you can pack hundreds of there cores on a chip but as intel and AMD have found parallelisation aint the easiest of things to get the market to do.

    But then folk have been saying the same about linux since the dawn of time and windows still wheezes along while linux is still a mammoth pita to work with sometimes.
    Linux runs most of the financial institution mainframes now... well not the legacy ones


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  8. #28
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  11. #31
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    Can someone point me to somewhere where I can buy a CAD laptop that will do what Drifter mentioned and not cost the earth?


  12. #32
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    Translate US prices into UK prices, but I would probably go by this guide


    https://www.reinisfischer.com/top-12...-graphics-card


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  13. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by piman2k View Post
    Carol Vorderman would have been a better picture



    Has she had ‘implants’ cough?


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  14. #34
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    Cor she's a bit of alright still isn't she.

  15. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by piman2k View Post
    Cor she's a bit of alright still isn't she.
    She is someone I could discuss Einstein’s theory of relativity with....

    While she is getting her kit off


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  16. #36
    Guest Drifter's Avatar
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    I did leave the brick importing a 200mb step file yesterday, 10 hrs later I gave up lol. The desktop completed it in a bout 30mins.

  17. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Asht_200 View Post
    She is someone I could discuss Einstein’s theory of relativity with....

    While she is getting her kit off


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    I like her even more. Apparently her norks are due to HRT and feeling very horny


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  18. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drifter View Post
    I did leave the brick importing a 200mb step file yesterday, 10 hrs later I gave up lol. The desktop completed it in a bout 30mins.
    It’s RAM. Files are compressed CAD even more so because they are vector graphics!

    Now stop talking we are now discussing Carol Vorderman’s norks because they are “3D rendered “ and quite impressive even though I do not believe it is HRT and feeling horny


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  19. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by piman2k View Post
    Cor she's a bit of alright still isn't she.
    She’s a little bit older than me


    https://youtu.be/xkzkmyOln6I


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  20. #40
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Vorderman? F that i will take her successor please. Even if she is a bit nuts.

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