My last experience with SW was with SW 2004 on an Athlon
XP3000 32 bit computer with 1.5 GB RAM. I now have a computer with
a Phenom running at 2.5 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, a hard drive with twice the
thruput, and an FX1700 graphics board. Foolishly, I had thought I
might get at least some level of performamce increase. Instead, SW
2008 is such a slow, bloated pig that I am tempted to draw my parts
by hand with an old, cracked wooden ruler. As you may guess, I am
EXTREMELY dissapointed with this pathetic offering.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
The information you heard is not true.
http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_9/
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.
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.
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))?
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.
Attachments
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
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.
E-mail me for the link. My e-mail address is on the spreadsheet.
Cheers,