Bi-Xeon configuration useful or not for SolidWorks?

Good morning,

As said in another post, I wanted to know if for SolidWorks the fact of switching to a Bi Xeon configuration changed anything for the modalization part?

I guess for the rendering or resistance calculation can play but to be confirmed.

Example configuration:

  • DELL T7910 – dual Xeon E5-2637 v3 - NVIDIA Quadro M6000 12GB - 64GB (8x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 RDIMM ECC - 1TB SSD
  • LENOVO P710 – dual Xeon E5-2650 v3 – NVIDIA Quadro M6000 or Geforce RTX 2070 – 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 RDIMM – 1TB SSD

namely that the Xeon E5-2637 v3 runs at 3.5GHz (good choice for SW) and the Xeon E5-2650 v3 at 2.3GHz (bad choice for SW normally)

 

Do you have any experience or comparison on this subject?

 

Kind regards

Hello @FUZ3D 

If I understood correctly, you have to talk about a dual xeon motherboard because the dual Xeon processor doesn't exist or I've become.

To answer your question I have a comparison between a Xeon and an I7. I took I7 because it's the standard processor of my ultra-standard HP machine.

https://versus.com/fr/intel-core-i7-7700-vs-intel-xeon-e5-2637

To answer your question for the modeling part it won't change anything because SW doesn't use either multi-core or multi-threading except for some programs like model loading. 95% of the time it only uses one core and I don't really know about the threads but it doesn't change anything.

For the simulation part, it doesn't always use multi-core, so when I look with the Windows tool, it's NS. In addition, there are ^several phases in the simulation and each phase has a specific program.
For rendering it depends on which version of photoview you have (MODO or other) and if you use Visualize which is something else because the program is not written at all in the same way as PV360.

What has an impact is the speed of the processor because even on a single core it is the timing that makes the difference. After that, you need to have the right amount of memory and above all a very fast HDD because for example for the simulation it does swaping at all times (in other words, it stores all the intermediate results in order to optimize the calculation and not saturate the RAM very quickly.

For the rest, it's a bit long to explain, for example, the progress made from 2019  has practically nothing to do with the processor, although the progress is spectacular, especially for the display of very, very large ASMs.

Regards   ;-)

 

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Thank you for your feedback@Zozo_mp ,

Complete answer as usual;)

Yes I was talking about a workstation with 2 xeon indeed.

Well that confirms what I've heard here and there^^.

Also see the graphics card side on the future RTX 3070 - 3080 if it's worth it even if not certified.

 

Kind regards

 

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 @FUZ3D

Be careful if you are not certified you take unnecessary risks AMHA because you have to reason on several versions of SW. For CAD you have to stay classic especially since it's minor as a real use.

On the other hand, if you want to do Gaming in addition to work, then it's something else ;-)

Kind regards

Hello

If it can help you, I made a comparison some time ago, the xeon goes better in calculation and the I7 goes better in file opening and drawing. So we had made calculation and drawing stations.

However, with time, given the cost of the xeon and the little technical difference, I think we will switch to I7 everywhere.

For the gaming card, I tested very bad choice for SW. Quadro work much better. After that, the games also run under quadro but not as well. You have to choose your main use;)

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Hello

I've been studying for more than 10 years and benchmarking different config for SW:

Rule N°1: Super quadro + Xeon and ECC Ram with certified drivers etc ... have a bad performance/price ratio.  Or even it's useless at all. (yes yes yes!)

Rule N°2: For the CAD modelling part, ASM parts, MEP... Favor an over-clocked CPU + max memory bandwidth + the most powerful SSD possible.

Rule N°3: The network, the shares, the PDM... are enemies of performance. Install SW on a computer without any network card. Above all, don't work on SMB shares, don't put the toolbox on a share...

 

So when I compare:

bi-xeon 2630v4 2.4Ghz + ECC RAM + Quadro P4000 + Sata SSD (5000€)

and

I5-9600KF overclocked a max to 5.1Ghz base frequency + RAM not ECC and very slightly boosted + Geforce RXT + M2 SSD (less than 1000€)

The configuration with the overclocked I5 is a thousand times better, much more pleasant to use.

Basically, a stupid gamer configuration works better than a pro workstation and it costs less. It crashes no more, or even less.

 

Of course for rendering and simu the observation is not the same.

On the other hand, I understand that for a software editor like SW we like the pros to have pro gear to be able to more easily maintain the software with the hard.

For the quadro, there are hacks that allow you to transform a Geforce into a Quadro, you reboot windows think it's a quadro, you can activate Realview etc and it works very well.

A+