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SW2008 Speed
If you are just here to "vent" don't expect much help. If you can offer some more specifics to your situation - you could expect some nice people to help with suggestions. Your slow bloated pig comments aren't going to get you far and are generally not the experience that most people with proper hardware have. In fact there are a few benchmarks where 2008 benchmarks faster than 2007 on identical data. The ball is in your court - if you can be specific, accurate, and courteous about your problem you will most likely get great help here. IF your comments are non specific and derogatory - don't expect much help.-
SW2008 Speed
Sorry I hurt your feelings. Where in my "vent" (and yes it was a vent) was I not courteous.
I stand by my previous "vent". When I open an assy in 2008 and it runs at half the speed of the same assy in 2004, then yes I will say the emporer is naked. As my "vent" states, I'm using a substantially more advanced AMD cpu than previous, over twice the RAM and a much higher rated Quadro graphics card than before. After comparing several dozen assemblies, the results are obvious, even to those who want to pretend otherwise. Compared to 2004 (as I said "my last experience"), 2008 IS bloated and IS slow.
Half the speed after adding more computing power = software not designed for people who don't want to spend half their day staring at an hour glass.
As to help - the only possible help for a performance reduction is to hope that someday, someone in SW managment thinks that speed is as important as fancy graphics and crinkly paper backgrounds.-
SW2008 Speed
you mention your hardware and that's great. But you make no mention of your OS. I'm assuming with new hardware your running vista and not xp. Is this correct? If this is the case then you can kiss whatever fancy shmancy graphics card acceleration goodbye, as vista doesn't support open gl cards. WAY TO GO MICROSOFT!!!!! Anyways, what this means is, Solidworks has to emulate through software, the graphical part\assembly display. This takes considerable more cpu and like I said.... kiss your FX-WHATEVER goodbye!
I have attached a pic of the system setting where SW controls this behavior. Although it is always checked in the case of a Vista installation.
My suggestion to you is to UPGRADE to xp pro and go from there. And if this isn't the case, and you already are running xp..... then those phenom chips are phenomally slower that I thought!
Don -
SW2008 Speed
I believe. I may not be right that the Athlon XP3000 is only a little better that intels Pentium 4. The P4 is pretty much out of date now. So if I am right and you just bought this computer you got riped off and are realy running an under powered computer. So you realy can not make a comparison and complain. you get what you paid for.-
SW2008 Speed
You are right - the XP3000 is an old chip. That's why I mentioned it.
Anybody here running the AMD XP6400? I did my hardware research before I bought. I found more than one site where the AMD 6400 OUTPERFORMED the Intel dual core chips on solidworks. I opted for the Phenom for one reason over the AMD 6400 -while it rated no higher than the 6400 for most tests, the quadcore rated to be faster for rendering Photoworks.
As for Vista, it will never be installed on any of our computers. My CAD computer runs on XP64.
As to being ripped off, my problem isn't hardware - it's software. As I said -
same SW assy
faster hardware
more (faster) memory - 1066 DDR2)
Quadro 1700 vs Quadro 560 on old system
SW2008 vs SW2004
old system ran XP home edition
Result: numbingly slower performance on new system with SW 2008 installed - with same SW settings as the SW2004 installation
Put in a real world context: I sell one of my existing customers a new waterjet cutting system to add to his original he bought three years ago. The new one cost 50% more and cuts 25% fewer parts in a day. When he complains, I say "ok, but check out the new colors this year". I'd get sued to take it back and I'd be soon out of business as my competitors laugh while they take away my customers.
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SW2008 Speed
J:
Here's the problem. I could go either way with the faster/slower thing. I did comparison about as simple as the one you did comparing SW07 and SW08, and 08 was marginally faster on the same machine. I can totally believe that other version comparisons wouldn't show the same thing.
Anyway, you give hardware specs, but that only means so much. I won't pass judgment on your hardware choice, because I'm not familiar with that processor. I've got 2 older AMD machines (FX64 and 4800), but know that trends have been leading away from AMD for a long time now.
By the way, what Don said about Vista and OGL was true a year ago, but is no longer true. I have a Vista/XP dual boot machine, and SW08 is marginally (~10%)faster on Vista than on XP. I was surprised by that.
There's more to the story, though. Your settings in SW are also very important. I know you're too smart to need help, but if you weren't, maybe you could post your SW settings (Copy Settings Wizard) so someone could have a look.
Of course there's the classic, "did you convert the assembly and all the parts and then save/reopen before timing the open?" question, but anyone who doesn't need help has checked that for sure. And of course your new machine doesn't have antivirus checking the files, and the network speed is comparable between the machines.
Even with all the conclusive information you've provided, there are a lot of possibilities that could turn this into a rational discussion where we could figure out what's really going on rather than just another pointless rant.
I'm not defending the software, lord knows I complain about it my fair share. I just think your evaluation seems kind of superficial.-
SW2008 Speed
Hey Matt,
Is this true??? When did vista have support for OGL? The Sp3.0 x64 Vista installation I just looked at still didn't have the ability for Direct x either last I heard.
Let me know what I'm missing here.
Don-
SW2008 Speed
Don,
Yeah, Vista and SW08 OGL work ok together. I won't say they are perfect, because I see a few graphics glitches, but Real View works, and the graphics are fast enough.
I don't know anything about 64 bit OS or drivers or software, I'm just talking about 32 bit. I've avoided 64 bit because I really don't need the extra memory at this point and I don't need to deal with all of the software/drivers that haven't caught up yet.
What you said used to be true, but it has been many months now since then.
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SW2008 Speed
Sorry about that I thought you were currently running the XP3000. Matt is right though if you want more performance Intel is leading the pack now. Amd is about one chip arcitecture behind right now. also like mat said there are several things that could be causeing problems right now. You might try to download anna woods punch hold processor benchmark. That might tell you if your computer is performing were it should be.
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SW2008 Speed
Haha - My feelings aren't hurt Junius - just trying to keep the conversation civil and helpful.
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SW2008 Speed
Turn off Desktop Search
Turn off Dissection
Turn off AV checking SW files
Turn off ego and attitude
Double check the VC driver is certified for your version of SW and OS.
https://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html
Was it installed properly? i.e. uninstall old driver, reboot, install new driver, reboot.
I may be wrong here, but I don't believe SW is a fully multi-threaded application. Running it on a quad-core might actually decrease its performance.
Try setting affinity of the SLDWORKS.exe process to just one or two cores.
Try the above suggestions one by one, to see which (if any) improves performance.-
SW2008 Speed
System settings already turned off.
The issue isn't ego but frustration with a product's performance. An quite frankly I feel I am entilted as a customer to have an attitude when I pay for a product who's performance is this bad when compared to an older version.
As I said, I'd sure hear it from my customers if I sold them something with similar results (and deservedly so).
I've been fighting this for over a week and trying every thing I can think of to increase performance - with very little success.
I don't know where you guys work but I don't have the time to waste by just sitting in front of a computer and staring at an hour glass while waiting on SW.
With the current performance level I guess I'm blowing over half a day a week waiting on SW2008 to finsih it's tasks.
These aren't complex parts - basically machine weldments with holes and attached motion components.
I remember going from SW2001 to SW2004 and seeing a slight performance hit. I wasn't thrilled but it was bearable.
The performance hit from this "upgrade" is a lot worse.
Again, I don't know where you guys work but at a small company like ours, $20,000 is a substantial investment.
For us it's a tool, no different than a printer or a forklift, and no different than the machines we build for our customers. In every case it's an investment that has to be justified.
Right now I don't feel our investment has been justified, based on my experience.
I don't claim to be an expert at SW (far from it), but I have been building computers and installing software since DOS 3.11. I did my research before I decided to stay with the AMD cpu for now instead of going to Intel, and am normally able to tweak the last bit of performance out of any given computer. Someone mentioned he didn't think that SW would take full advantage of the quadcore arch. of the Phenom. True. As I said, the research I did said the Phenom would perform no better that a dual core. However, Photoworks will use the extra cores. That's why I chose a quadcore cpu. Do your own hardware research on Google - the AMD6000 outperformed the Intel QX6700 by almost 10% when running SW and ProE.
Bottom line for all this:
To restate.
Using my assy. SW2008 IS (without a doubt) noticeably slower than 2004 - I'd say over 25%.
This is with much higher rated hardware than was used to run 2004.
So, am I having buyer's remorse? You bet I am.
I've got a lot of work to do and my $20,000 investment means it will now take even longer to do the same amount of work.
Instead of improving my work load, it just got worse.
My "vent" wasn't about the effort to relearn a new UI. That's expected and I couldn't care less. My vent is about investing dollars and then finding out that my investment means I'll be spending 30 hours to accomplish what used to take 20 hours. When you hate to turn on the software, that's a bad sign.
Kelvin Lamport wrote:
Turn off Desktop Search
Turn off Dissection
Turn off AV checking SW files
Turn off ego and attitude
Double check the VC driver is certified for your version of SW and OS.
https://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html
Was it installed properly? i.e. uninstall old driver, reboot, install new driver, reboot.
I may be wrong here, but I don't believe SW is a fully multi-threaded application. Running it on a quad-core might actually decrease its performance.
Try setting affinity of the SLDWORKS.exe process to just one or two cores.
Try the above suggestions one by one, to see which (if any) improves performance.-
SW2008 Speed
Something is up somewere on the settings on your PC or in solidworks. You have a compareable system to me and seem to be doing very similar parts to what we do. There are several things that could be wrong. First make sure you have certified drivers for you video card. Second if you had an anti virus program running when you were instaling you may want to turn it off and do a freash install. Third make sure all the parts are saved in 2008 format if not this can cause problems. Also I have heard of certain perifrials causeing performance problems for some reason like the space ball. Next there are several settings that you can adjust to help performance. also try running without real view this may cause problems if solidworks does not like your video card or its driver. Also you have 4 gigs of ram make sure the 3 gig switch is turned on so you can use most of it. After that browse the performace forem and see if that help because something is not right here. you should be running better-
SW2008 Speed
If Ryan W and Junius have similar systems, could you both bechmark Anna Wood's punch holder model? It would only take a few minutes and then we could have some metrics brought into the discussion instead of just generalities at this point.
http://spreadsheets.google.com...z7wTpIkC7LA28ybEyxyTPw
Just download the model, run a forced rebuild (control q) and then report the time to rebuild under the statistics.-
SW2008 Speed
Hi PeterPeter Yodis wrote:
http://spreadsheets.google.com...z7wTpIkC7LA28ybEyxyTPw
Just download the model, run a forced rebuild (control q) and then report the time to rebuild under the statistics.
where can I find the model (if I copy-past the link at the top of the page I get an error (404 not found))?-
SW2008 Speed
Hi Stef,
I am also getting the same error with that site right now. Maybe Anna Wood can settle that... In the meantime I have attached the model here.
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SW2008 Speed
Junius does your new Phenom processor exhibit the errata bug issue where they "fixed" it, but it affected the clock speed negatively (10-20%)? Could this be affecting you? I think you can undo the fix, as its extremely unlikely that it would affect an everyday user.-
SW2008 Speed
Update:
OK, after reviewing every hardware setting, driver versions, etc. and software settings, both within SW and XP64, I found the source of my angst.
Deselecting photoworks as an addon made a MASSIVE improvemnt in speed.
I can now return to what is really important - getting machine designs finished.
So, to all who put up with my venting and offered suggestions for improved performance, I offer my apologies and my thanks for your suggestions.
PS
1) Realview made zero difference (as far as I could tell)
2) SW2008 does have some level of multithreading - when I load a large assy I can see all 4 cores working (on task manager) while the assy is being loaded and displayed
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SW2008 Speed
Hey Junius, why didn't you tell me you had photoworks turned on. I could have told you it may have caused your performance issue! lol -
SW2008 Speed
Good news Junius. Happy designing to you. Would you mind running the punch holder benchmark when you get a spare minute and report the results to Anna Wood? It would be nice to see the numbers on a new Phenom processor in SolidWorks.
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SW2008 Speed
The punch holder link apparently no longer works.Peter Yodis wrote:
Good news Junius. Happy designing to you. Would you mind running the punch holder benchmark when you get a spare minute and report the results to Anna Wood? It would be nice to see the numbers on a new Phenom processor in SolidWorks.
Back to speed. I had originally left photoworks on in 2008 because in 2004 the speed hit wasn't so horrible. There are times when I need to run photoworks to render a machine assy. When I do, the assy takes at least 5 times to rebuild/update in 2008 vs 2004. I'm not kiddin 5 times. I switch to a small sub assy or part and back to the main assy and the choice of leaving for coffee or reading online newspapers for 5+ minutes for an assy that would update in less than one minute in 2004. I hate to say it but I am really longing for the BLINDING speed of 2004 vs 2008. -
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SW2008 Speed
The punch holder score came in at 152 seconds.
Phenom 9600 overclocked to 2.5 ghz.
Win XP 64
4 gb 1066 RAM
FX1700
Not bad, but not the results I was hoping for, relative to other results...-
SW2008 Speed
152 sec?
Thats... Erm... Bad.
I don't think that this is because of some settings in windows/SWX.
The K10 is nothing more than a K8 with 4 native cores and a new cache-design, which leads to: the K8 is nothing more than a K7 with an IMC.
So, lets say: the K10 is a slightly improved K8 which is an improved K7.
The K10-Architecture in general is nearly 9 years old!
Budget: Yes. Serious work? No. -
SW2008 Speed
Looks like I'll be dumping the Phenom and go to Intel. I'll put the Phenom on my business partner's computer - he'll never know. The only reason I went this way was after reading reports about how the AMD (while much slower on most tests) was faster than Intel on SW/Proe, etc. I don't care about the name on the box - I just want speed. At least i can still use the box, HD's and video board.
As mentioned, SW2008 only seemed really slow when Photoworks is on. Rendering speed is actuially not too bad. (when you finally set to go) However, I spent hours yesterday getting the parts "set up" on a machine assy before I could render the photo. The time delay was waiting for the main assy to rebuild after making each change to a part or sub assy. Excrutiating.
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SW2008 Speed
Just picking up on this thread. Are you guys saying that having PhotoWorks on leads to big slow downs? What about the other add ons for Office pro and premium? This makes no sense to me. Surely PhotoWorks should not affect general modelling, rebuild and display speed? If it does then there is a serious issue and makes me kind of glad I don't use it......as well as making me wonder why I would then bother to "upgrade" to Office Pro or Premium.-
SW2008 Speed
As it relates to performance issues in 2008 with PW added in, we are aware of some issues and working on them. Keep an eye on this space for a future update. -
SW2008 Speed
Kevin,
The PhotoWorks Add-In has received a lot of attention but for the record, if you want to run as fast as you can, you should be running as lean as you can.
We have a performance tip sheet that is given to all users during SW Training. Many of the things that have been talked about in this thread are on our sheet. However, in addition to all of this good information, we advise all users to run what they need and only what they need. This includes all SW Add-Ins and all programs in general.
We also identified a variety of issues with M$ Excel Add-Ins that were conflicting with SW Design Tables, so those are a concern also.
Lastly, if you are running SolidWorks, along with SmarTeam, Word, Excel, Outlook & Windows Explorer, then do so with all the other applications minimized. If in doubt, maximize all applications, then, using Task Manager, look at Memory Usage (sort column with the largest at the top). Next, start minimizing all of the applications until SolidWorks is the only application maximized. Finally, minimize SolidWorks. This quick review will show you where all your memory goes.
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SW2008 Speed
This is very interesting - What if your add-in is SmarTeam? You want Smarteam on all the time or you wont know when you have "unrigistered parts".
I have SW 2007 SP5 and SmarTeam R18 SP 4. I am seeing the exact behavior described here. Howver SW 2004 and SmarTeam R13 do not exibit this behavior.-
SW2008 Speed
Wow. I just ran mine again. I originally ran it last year when I was on 2007, SP4.0ev. I'm now on 2008, SP4.0ev. I used the exact same model download as before, on the exact same machine. The only real significant change to the computer was updating it to XP SP3.
Then= 114 sec.
Now= 104 sec.
On my system 2008 beats 2007.-
SW2008 Speed
My users have reported slowdowns in 2008 SP3.1 from 2006 as well. I am not a user, rather the IT Manager for the small business here. I plan to try the benchmark and then look at the add-ins, anti-virus, etc., make adjustments and then try to get some speed going. I saw reference to a Copy Settings utility. Will someone review ours if I can find this and get it to post?
Mike R.-
SW2008 Speed
Mike,
Maybe you can post some of your typical computer specs. I know SW "generally" runs faster for more people from 2006 to 2008, as long as you turn off realview. How you set up your auto-save and backup can make a huge difference, too.
I know a couple of the SW bloggers ran a benchmark when they switched from 2007 to 2008, and they all mentioned shorter rebuild times for parts (they had real numbers, I don't).-
SW2008 Speed
Specs:
Dell Precision 380, $1115, 2 GB RAM
Intel Pentium D 820, Smithfield, dual core, 2.8 GHz
Windows XP Pro, 32 bit, SP2
ATI FireGL 3100, 128MB, 1280x1024
Auto save recovery set to 10 minutes.
Punch Holder test results:
250 sec. (LPattern5 - 162 sec., #8-32 TappedHole1 - 39 sec.)
SW 2008, SP4
Tested second time and used Task Manager to observe CPU utilization which averaged about 70% during the rebuild.
I was reading on the forums obviously and I am curious if this test is more indicative of CPU capabilities or graphics capabilities. I also wanted to point out that when the engineer made a cross-section lengthwise of this part, it took about 90 seconds to complete. Then going into edit and zooming in and out gives a lot of slowness too.
I took the suggestions and turned off a few settings as follows:
- Transparency: High quality in Dynamic Mode
- Mate animation speed
- Transition animations
We found that the Trans HQDM being off made going into Edit mode take much longer. We turned it back on and experimented instead with:
- Assembly Transparency for Edit: Maintain, Force
When set to Maintain it greatly speeds up rotating, cross-sections, and editing. There was a discussion w/ the engineer in how he might have to make parts transparent individually to drill into the assembly but either way he was fine w/ how it worked because of the speed gains.-
SW2008 Speed
Mike
Messing with the options might make a few slight improvments with speed but with that processor your solidworks will never run that fast. The proccesor is over 3 years old and about 4 or 5 generations behind. I would recomend getting new computers with the latest generation of processors for them. The amount of time you engineers will save will more than make up for the cost of new computers.-
SW2008 Speed
I agree with RyanW. My Dell 390 has a Core 2 Duo X6800 (aka "Extreme"), but basically the same system as your 380 (2Gig ram, XP Pro). My times are less than half of the Pentium D Precision 380 numbers.
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SW2008 Speed
Thanks Eddie. Don't think I'll bother upgrading then
Get a better PC instead with more cores to run Hypershot at full
speed!-
SW2008 Speed
Kevin,
For the record, the issues I referred to previously are not specific to SW2008 but rather global in nature.
By no means was I suggesting that you do not upgrade based on my comments.
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SW2008 Speed
Punch Holder
Features 36, Solids 1, Surfaces 0
Total rebuild time in seconds: 259.95
wow. that is slow
Ram : 2gb
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SW2008 Speed
My Goodness......260 seconds on my M90. Wow why am I so slow?
Precision M90
Intel Core 2 duo T7400 - 2.16 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro FX 2500M
Windows Vista 64 Buisness
Solidworks 2008 sp3.1 64 bit
250GB HDD - SATA
Help...I don't have any vista bling on??
Mike
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SW2008 Speed
Attached the settins for my 2008 64 bit. This is a new install on a new Vista 64 Buisness install. I have been playing with numerous video drivers and the current one seems to work the best. Any help you guys can provide would be appreciated.
Mike
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SW2008 Speed
OK, I found that when I changes the CPU I did not enable the speed step (forgot what it is really called but the same function). This causes the processor to operate in it's lowest performance state. I am now running the punch holder test at 154 seconds. An identical M90 running XP Pro 32 is coming in at 144 sec. So we are not too far apart. But, looking at the spreadsheet there are lesser M90's running better. Where do I look for configuration changes to increase performance? I have turned off all Vista bling, turned off disk indexing (Vista and Solidworks), disabled unnecessary services.
Mike
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SW2008 Speed
Hello!
Here are my "benchmarks" with Punch Holder:
SW2007 sp3.1 131.28 sec
SW2008 Sp4.0 117.89 sec
Workstation: Intel core 2 6600 / 2,4 GHz - 3 Gb Ram (PEA) - Nvidia Quatro FX1500 - 500 Gb HD (RAID 5 = 3x250Gb) + XP Pro (32-bit) Sp3
Interesting results... -
SW2008 Speed
this are my times
Feature Statistics:
Punch Holder 9/12/2008 8:04:33 AM
Features 36, Solids 1, Surfaces 0
Total rebuild time in seconds: 323.14
Time % Time(s) Feature Order
68.04 219.88 LPattern5
13.80 44.59 #8-32 Tapped Hole1
5.14 16.59 LPattern4
4.36 14.09 5/16-18 Tapped Hole1
2.68 8.66 #10-32 Tapped Hole1
1.53 4.94 Hole4
1.50 4.84 3/32 (0.09375) Diameter Hole2
0.53 1.72 1/4 (0.25) Diameter Hole1
0.51 1.64 7/32 (0.21875) Diameter Hole1
0.50 1.63 11/32 (0.34375) Diameter Hole1
0.48 1.56 3/8 (0.375) Diameter Hole1
0.19 0.61 Chamfer2
0.16 0.53 Cut-Extrude5
0.11 0.36 Hole2
0.08 0.27 Sketch25
0.08 0.25 LPattern1
0.06 0.19 Chamfer1
0.05 0.16 LPattern2
0.04 0.14 Cut-Extrude6
0.02 0.08 Hole1
0.02 0.08 Cut-Extrude2
0.01 0.05 1/8 (0.125) Diameter Hole1
0.01 0.05 Cut-Extrude1
0.01 0.05 3/32 (0.09375) Diameter Hole1
0.01 0.05 Hole3
0.01 0.03 3/16 (0.1875) Diameter Hole1
0.01 0.03 Sketch14
0.00 0.02 Cut-Extrude4
0.00 0.02 Sketch26
0.00 0.02 Cut-Extrude3
0.00 0.02 5/32 (0.15625) Diameter Hole1
0.00 0.01 Sketch5
0.00 0.01 Extrude1
0.00 0.00 Sketch17
0.00 0.00 Sketch20
0.00 0.00 Sketch1
Athlon X2 6000+
4GB RAM
Quadro FX 570
WinVista Ultimate SP1.0
SolidWorks 2008 SP4.0
