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2008SP03.1 on Vista 64

Question asked by Joe Rochinski on Mar 12, 2008
Latest reply on Mar 26, 2008 by Michael Gera

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I've tested 3.0EV on my vista 64 machine at home and performance was inferior to my XP64 machine at work. In my mind, my home machine should be the faster of the two. I'll post specs below. I'm wondering if anybody has fired up the newly released 3.1 on vista 64 yet and could comment on its performance. I'll be dual-booting Vista 64 possibly as early as tomorrow here at work to test it out.

At home:
C2D E6420@2.4 GHz
4GB DDR2 @1066 RAM
2x Geforce 8800GT (SLi)
Vista Home Premium 64-bit

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Jeff Hamilton Mar 12, 2008 4:12 PM
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As I understand it SP3.1 was intended specifically for Vista 64.
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Kirk Jess Mar 12, 2008 4:16 PM
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The other difference right off the bat are your video cards. Your home system cards are not for CAD.
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- Joe Rochinski @ Kirk Jess on Mar 12, 2008 7:21 PM
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  Kirk Jess wrote:
  
  The other difference right off the bat are your video cards. Your home system cards are not for CAD.
  
  For the most part, Quadros have a physically identical GeForce counterpart. The only significant difference between the two of them is that the Quadro drivers are "certified" to not block pretty stuff like realview, while the GeForce drivers have that stuff intentionally turned off. Quadro drivers are "tuned" for multiple 3D windows while the Geforces are optimized for a single one, but this is in software, not hardware. Effectively, you pay 3-5x the price for a quadro sticker and the convenience of not having your driver intentionally crippled.
  
  That being said, I believe the Q FX4500 is the equivalent of a GeForce 7800, and the 8800GT SLi setup should absolutely smoke it. Instead, that's exactly where I see performance degradation: hiccups and pauses while moving and rotating the model. This may have to do with running an OGL app inside Vista's DirectX 9 3D window manager.
  
  I haven't done any quantitative measurements, but in general in Vista64 the Solidworks experience was noticably more jerky, fussy, and unhappy on a system which should be able to swing it without breaking a sweat.
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  - Jeff Hamilton @ Joe Rochinski on Mar 12, 2008 7:48 PM
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    I may be wrong, but I do not believe that is true anymore. A few years ago there was no difference physically between the GeForce and Quadro cards, only the drivers were different. I had an old Geforce that I converted with Rivatuner to convert it into a Quadro. Worked like a charm. But then came Real View, etc and Nvidia found they had a market for high end CAD cards. It is my understanding that was when the cards began to be physically different as well. But, again, I have not compared them myself so I can't say for sure.
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    - Joe Rochinski @ Jeff Hamilton on Mar 12, 2008 7:56 PM
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      They are few and far between but i've heard of people getting Realview going on their 8800 series cards.
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      - Jeff Hamilton @ Joe Rochinski on Mar 13, 2008 12:27 PM
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        I just got one for my games at home. Haven't had opportunity to try Solidworks on it yet. I'll check it out.
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  - Pete Yodis @ Joe Rochinski on Mar 13, 2008 1:51 PM
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    I should add that your Xeon 5160 is essentially the Core 2 Duo architecture. The Pentium 4 naming was abandoned, but the Xeon naming was retained when they put the Core 2 Duo's out.
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  - Jim Zink @ Joe Rochinski on Mar 13, 2008 6:34 PM
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    Instead, that's exactly where I see performance degradation: hiccups and pauses while moving and rotating the model.
    
    That is exactly where differences between the Quadro and GeForce cards will show up. On professional apps, low end Quadro cards will often outperform high-end GeForce cards, even though the GeForce hardware is theoretically faster.
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    - Samuel Daniels @ Jim Zink on Mar 15, 2008 2:28 PM
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      Not only have I tried it but it is awsome. Finally you can really do multiple tasks on a computer without being delayed by the processor. To give you an example I just had:
      
      Secondlife
      Word 2007
      Excel 2007
      Access 2007
      Internet Explorer Live Video Feed
      SW 2008 SP3.1
      
      All going at the same time editing the largest files I could find on my machine including a 145MB complex fan clutch assembly, and this machine never choked.
      Solid Works finally has a PC platform to run on. Good Job Programmers!
      
      My Equipment:
      
      Motherboard Abit Fatal1ity F-190HD Bios 18
      Case THERMALTAKE Tsunami Dream
      Power supply Thermaltake THERMALTAKE TOUGH 600W ATX 12V V2.2 / EPS W0103RU
      THERMALTAKE Silent 775D CPU Cooler CL-P0378
      2X Hard drive Raid 0 Seagate 250 GB SATA 2 16MB Cache ST3250410AS
      1X Hard Drive JOBD Segate 250 GB SATA I 4MB
      CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core 2.66 GHz QX6700 BX80562QX6700
      Memory Corsair 2 GByte matched pair of DDR2 SDRAM DIMM TWIN2X2048-6400 5-5-5-15-2T
      Vista Ultimate 64
      1394a PCI Firewire Siig 3-Port NN440012S8
      ATI Sapphire HD 3870 PCIe 512M GDDR4 188-01E62- 01ASA
      Lexmark X4550 3-In-1 Wireless Wi Fi Printer/Copy/Scan
      SW2008SP3.1
      
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      - Glenn Wilkins @ Samuel Daniels on Mar 19, 2008 12:58 PM
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        Samuel. Just curious, how much did it cost to build your system and where did you buy the components?
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        Samuel Daniels @ Glenn Wilkins on Mar 19, 2008 3:30 PM
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        I've built this over time because I could not afford it all at once. I buy most of my parts from the computer fair held monthly. The others come from MWAVE.com & AMAZON.com. I have about $2,200 into it right now. The processor itself was $975 last summer. The prices are falling like the stock market though. I wish I had waited 6 months.
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Pete Yodis Mar 12, 2008 4:29 PM
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How did you measure performance Joe? Also, your Xeon 5160 should be faster. Its clock speed is faster by 25% compared to your overclocked C2D. The Xeon at work also has a faster FSB by almost 30% - unless that is also overclocked on your C2D. The Xeon supports SSE4, which the C2D does not. I don't think SolidWorks uses SSE4, but you never know. Also, what kind of speed increase are you expecting with Vista x64 over XP 64. I wouldn't expect anything more than 10%. I would expect better stability though b/c of better memory management.
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Jim Zink Mar 13, 2008 6:32 PM
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Why would you expect your home system to be faster?

I'd expect to the Xeon 5160 to be about 20% faster than the C2D e6420. Plus, the FX4500 should be faster than the GeForce card.
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Larry Kutcher Mar 19, 2008 5:18 PM
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So to summarize.

Vista 64, -good, bad or ugly?

Are we /(SW) ready to jump in the Vista 64 pool and not worry about getting "bit"?
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- Samuel Daniels @ Larry Kutcher on Mar 21, 2008 12:44 PM
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  With Vista X64 SP1 released last Tuesday my system is running at its full potential. SP1 improved large file opening and transfers. I notice a big difference with larger files. I say go for it if you want a machine good for the next 3-5 years!
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Larry Kutcher Mar 21, 2008 12:51 PM
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Samuel says Yes.

Any others?

Good, bad and or otherwise -ugly...
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- Mike Puckett @ Larry Kutcher on Mar 21, 2008 1:05 PM
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  Larry Kutcher wrote:
  
  Samuel says Yes.
  
  Any others?
  
  Good, bad and or otherwise -ugly...
  
  I just implemented the first seat of Vista here at work last week on a new desktop I got for myself, and I will say things are going extremely well on it. The integration into MS Server 2003 was no different than connecting an XP machine. In my case its only 32-bit. My 64-bit experiance will come on my M90 when I get around to upgrading the software from 32 bit.
  
  In my opinion Vista's time has arrived, and the O/S is at a good state. SW running on my new desktop is very responsive, and runs very smoothe. It's time to leave XP in the dust.
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Larry Kutcher Mar 21, 2008 1:16 PM
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Mike makes 2...
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- Anna Wood @ Larry Kutcher on Mar 21, 2008 4:46 PM
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  Larry,
  
  I use 32bit Vista on my Thinkpad I have had since December. It has been a good experience.
  
  I have it upgraded to Vista SP1 on Tuesday and it is running well. SP1 definately addresses few of the nagging issues with file transfers which I noticed when moving files to and from my laptop.
  
  I agree with Mike, Vista is coming into its own as a solid operating system. I would not hesitate to implement.
  
  Going forward all the developers are going to be writing code optimized to Vista. It should only get even better moving forward.
  
  To help you get the most out of Vista be sure to download the Tweak Guide for it. There is a ton of very good info here to help you really understand Vista's inner workings.
  
  http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html
  
  Cheers,
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  - Joe Rochinski @ Anna Wood on Mar 24, 2008 2:23 PM
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    Vista 64 is stable and works great for me at home. I'd actually recommend vista 64 over XP 64 because 64-bit architecture was a guideline from vista's inception, while XP's 64-bit implementation was something they tacked on later.
    
    By the way, there was a night-and-day difference between SW SP3.0EV and SP3.1 on my system at home. Hiccups and pausing are gone.
    
    One word of caution though, make sure you release your SW activation before you upgrade to vista SP1. Apparently SW thinks its been copied to a new machine and refuses to start as a result.
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    - Michael Gera @ Joe Rochinski on Mar 26, 2008 11:41 PM
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      I'm having a major problem with SW 2008 SP3.1 (64) on Vista 64 at the moment. I cannot load an assembly of any size (over 200 parts) or it kicks me out to windows. The weird thing is the setup ran super for 2 days, on the beginning of the 3rd day all hell broke lose. I thought I was out of the woods too. Man...
      
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2008SP03.1 on Vista 64

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