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New Workstation - Opinions?

Question asked by Luther Cifers on Jun 14, 2009
Latest reply on Jul 1, 2009 by Anna Wood

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After th things that Anna explained in my last post "Poor Workstation Performance" it's clear that to get the performance I'm looking for I need to get a new workstation with the latest components. I've read back through several posts and saw a lot of references to XI computers, so I went online and configured one. Does anyone see anything here that stands out as not sensible - either over-the-top on some components or not good enough on others?

Thanks.

- Luther

PART# DESCRIPTION PRICE

13 Xi® MTowertm PCIe Workstation (Base Configuration) $1,039.00
1536 Intel® Coretm i7 920 OverClocked @ 3.20GHz Silent Air Cooling w/CM V8 12cm Fan 8MB Shared L3 Cache 1x4.8GT/s QPI Quad-Core VT EM64T (req. MoBo & DDR3 1600 Upg.) $539.00
2176 8192MB DDR2 800MHz PC2-6400 4x2GB Dual Rank Interleave $199.00
4348 nVidia® Quadro FX 580 512MB DDR3 PCIe 2x DVI Dual Link $179.00
5015 No Monitor ($140.00)
3088 146GB 15000RPM Seagate SAS Serial Attached SCSI 16MB Cache <9ms (req. SAS MoBo/Ctrl) $199.00
17012 HD Ctrl. According To Motherboard and HD Type Selected Incl. w/ Base
6061 DVD+RW/DL/+R-R/CD-RW Double Media 4.7/8.5GB 18x w/Software & media $49.00
7011 1.44MB 3 1/2" Floppy Drive $9.00
9007 On-Board sound as per selected motherboard specifications Incl. w/ Base
12001 Network connection accordingly to motherboard selected Incl. w/ Base
13001 Logitech® Deluxe Black Windows Keyboard Incl. w/ Base
14010 Logitech® 2+ Wheel PS/2 Mouse Black Optical Incl. w/ Base
16046 Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional-64 CD-ROM w/manuals/act.reg. $69.00
22182 Nvidia® nForce 750i-FTW 2xPCIe 16x 2.0 3x PCI DDR2 800/1066 1x1Gb Ethernet-4xSATA3Gb-RAID 0/1-1394-7.1CH Digital Audio (No O.C.) Incl. w/ Base
44012 600W OCZtm StealthXStreamtm Quiet 12cm BB Fan PowerWhispertm UL Incl. w/ Base
18002 Total of 3 Years System HW Warranty w/Express Advance Parts Replacement, P&L. FOB Xi $119.00
27113 Xi® MTowertm 2x12cm Quiet Fans-Front Grid-2x Front USB+1394- Matrixtm VD2000BNS Tttm-4x 5 1/4" 6x 3 1/2" Incl. w/ Base

Sub Total:
$2,261.00

Less Discount [0%]:
$2,261.00

CA Sales Tax: $0.00

CA e-Waste Recycling Fee: $0.00

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$2,261.00

Quantity: 1

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$2,261.00

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Matt Lombard Jun 14, 2009 9:57 PM
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I would do something other than XP 64, even if you get it with no OS, and use Win7 RC1 temporarily. SW seems to work fine on W7.

It looks like the 920 cpu requires ddr3, which would be a better choice for this anyway. Memory for ddr3 is handled differently, in ranks of 3 rather than multiples of 2. so, they offer 6 GB or 12 GB.

The chipset has 2xPCIe, which seems unnecessary. Once the mobo changes, you might not have that choice. You spec'ed a Quadro 580, which is fine, but based on some of the things I've seen recently, I'd give the ATI FireGL 5600 a shot.

The box I spec'ed like this was about $120 more than yours, but you wind up installing your own OS.
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Luther Cifers @ Matt Lombard on Jun 15, 2009 1:19 AM
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Thanks for the response, Matt.

You mentioned using not using XP64 - is there a performance reason or some other reason? I already have an XP64 license, so maybe it would be a good bridge until W7 is released - at that time I could wipe the machine and start over. What do you think?

I wouldn't be opposed to using Vista64 except that the one machine I used with Vista and SW was very unstable and crashed regularly. That was a few months ago, and there could have been improvements since then, or it could have had something to do with that particular machine's software or configuration. Thoughts?

I've reconfigured the XI machine. Now I'm busting my $2000 budget, but I'd rather pay a few bucks more and have something pretty fast. I have one customer who works with extremely complex parts, and the speed will be well utilized.

PART# DESCRIPTION PRICE

13 Xi® MTowertm PCIe Workstation (Base Configuration) $1,039.00
1536 Intel® Coretm i7 920 OverClocked @ 3.20GHz Silent Air Cooling w/CM V8 12cm Fan 8MB Shared L3 Cache 1x4.8GT/s QPI Quad-Core VT EM64T (req. MoBo & DDR3 1600 Upg.) $539.00
2208 6144MB Corsairtm Dominator 8-8-8-8-24 DDR3 @1600MHz 3x2048 Triple Rank Interleave w/Heat Spread (Core i7 MoBo EVGA or Rampage only) $239.00
4276 ATI® FireGLtm V5600 512MB DDR4 PCIe 2xDVI 2xDual Link $349.00
5015 No Monitor ($140.00)
3107 150GB 10000RPM SATAII 300MB/s WD VelociRaptortm 16MB Cache RAFFtm <9ms $169.00
32081 Optional 150GB 10000RPM SATAII 300MB/s WD VelociRaptortm 16MB Cache RAFFtm <9ms $199.00
17012 HD Ctrl. According To Motherboard and HD Type Selected Incl. w/ Base
6057 DVD+RW/DL/+R-R LightScribetm Double Media 4.7/8.5GB 16x w/SW-Media $59.00
7011 1.44MB 3 1/2" Floppy Drive $9.00
9007 On-Board sound as per selected motherboard specifications Incl. w/ Base
12001 Network connection accordingly to motherboard selected Incl. w/ Base
13001 Logitech® Deluxe Black Windows Keyboard Incl. w/ Base
14010 Logitech® 2+ Wheel PS/2 Mouse Black Optical Incl. w/ Base
16066 No OS Pre-Installed or Linux-based Fedoratm, or Ubuntutm, or Open SuSEtm or CentOS (Please Specify) Incl. w/ Base
22190 Asus® P6T Deluxe-Intel® X58-3xPCIe 2.0-Triple Ch. DDR3 1333/1600(O.C.)-2x1Gb Ethernet-6xSATA3Gb RAID 0/1/10/5-1394-Digital Audio-8CH-S/PDIF 2xSLI&CrossFireXtm support $179.00
44012 600W OCZtm StealthXStreamtm Quiet 12cm BB Fan PowerWhispertm UL Incl. w/ Base
18001 Standard Xi Warranty w/Express Advance Parts Replacement, One Year on System, Mfg. on Monitor Incl. w/ Base
27137 Xi® MTowertm CM-Centuriontm 2x12cm (Up to 8 opt.) Quiet Fans -Front Grid-2x Front USB+1394+-9x 5 1/4" $39.00

Sub Total:
$2,680.00
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Anna Wood @ Luther Cifers on Jun 15, 2009 1:31 AM
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Luther,

Your second system looks good. It should be a very fast system.

Do they have an ATI FirePro V5700? The FirePro's are the most current video cards from ATI. The FireGL V5600 is a bit older technology platform.

That would be the only change I would make. Nvidia FX580 or FX1800 or ATI FirePro V5700 for video depending on your budget.

CHeers,
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Matt Lombard @ Luther Cifers on Jun 15, 2009 1:49 AM
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Yeah, like Anna says the 5700 is better than the 5600.

All accounts of XP64 are that it is slower and crashier than Vista64 on newer hardware. I would skip Vista64 because of its resource hog nature and just download the release candidate for W7 and use that until the official stuff is out.

Should be a nice box!
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Anna Wood @ Matt Lombard on Jun 15, 2009 1:59 AM
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Plus what Matt says, just get the Windows 7 RC 1 download, then wait for the official release in late October. Win 7 RC 1 will not time out until June 1, 2010.

http://www.microsoft.com/windo...ndows-7/download.aspx

Cheers,
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Luther Cifers @ Anna Wood on Jun 15, 2009 10:37 PM
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Thanks for all of the help Anna and Matt. Below is what I ended up purchasing. Changes from earlier are:

i7 950 instead of overclocked 920
1333MHz RAM. The guy at XI said to use 1333 if I thought I might add RAM later
QuadroFX 1800
850W power supply

Everything else is pretty much the same. Looks like I'll be able to play with it in about 12 days. Can't wait!

Thanks again for the help...

- Luther

PART# DESCRIPTION PRICE

13 Xi® MTowertm PCIe Workstation (Base Configuration) $1,039.00
1590 Intel® Coretm i7 950 3.06GHz 8MB Shared L3 Cache 1x4.8GT/s QPI Quad-Core VT EM64T (req. MoBo & DDR3 Upg.) $469.00
2197 6144MB Patriottm Viper 9-9-9-24 DDR3 @1333MHz 3x2048 Triple Rank Interleave w/Heat Spread (Core i7 MoBo only) $175.00
4347 nVidia® Quadro FX 1800 768MB DDR3 PCIe 2x DVI Dual Link $415.00
5015 No Monitor ($140.00)
3107 150GB 10000RPM SATAII 300MB/s WD VelociRaptortm 16MB Cache RAFFtm <9ms $169.00
32081 Optional 150GB 10000RPM SATAII 300MB/s WD VelociRaptortm 16MB Cache RAFFtm <9ms $199.00
17012 HD Ctrl. According To Motherboard and HD Type Selected Incl. w/ Base
24001 RAIDMode O Performance RAID (IDE or SCSI RAID Ctrl. Requires 2x identical HD) $39.00
6057 DVD+RW/DL/+R-R LightScribetm Double Media 4.7/8.5GB 16x w/SW-Media $59.00
9007 On-Board sound as per selected motherboard specifications Incl. w/ Base
12001 Network connection accordingly to motherboard selected Incl. w/ Base
13001 Logitech® Deluxe Black Windows Keyboard Incl. w/ Base
14010 Logitech® 2+ Wheel PS/2 Mouse Black Optical Incl. w/ Base
16066 No OS Pre-Installed or Linux-based Fedoratm, or Ubuntutm, or Open SuSEtm or CentOS (Please Specify) Incl. w/ Base
20090 Resource CD - contains Diagnostic links & Drivers Incl. w/ Base
20091 Quick Reference Guide and @Xi Computer Manual (PDF) Incl. w/ Base
22192 Asus® P6T Intel® X58-3xPCIe 2.0-Triple Ch.DDR3 1333/2000(O.C.)-1Gb Ethernet-6xSATA3Gb RAID 0/1/10/5-Digital Audio-8CH-S/PDIF 3xSLI&CrossFireXtm support $65.00
44015 850W Cooler Mastertm Quiet 12cm Ball Bearing Fan UL RS-850-EMBA $79.00
18002 Total of 3 Years System HW Warranty w/Express Advance Parts Replacement, P&L. FOB Xi $119.00
27137 Xi® MTowertm CM-Centuriontm 2x12cm (Up to 8 opt.) Quiet Fans -Front Grid-2x Front USB+1394+-9x 5 1/4" $39.00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal $2,726.00
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Anna Wood @ Luther Cifers on Jun 15, 2009 11:01 PM
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Luther,

Cool.... Looking forward to hearing how it works for you.

Cheers,
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wenyang wang @ Luther Cifers on Jun 16, 2009 7:59 AM
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your budget is almost 3000 bucks, but your hardware isn't more suitable for CAD. I feel videocard is more important than other things. so why you bid a FX3700 ON EBAY.
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Anna Wood @ wenyang wang on Jun 16, 2009 2:27 PM
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Wenyang,

The video card is not the most important piece of hardware for SW performance. SW is cpu bound, the better the cpu, the better SW performance is.

Check out some of the benchmarks on my blog. I have Google spreadsheets documenting SW performance. They show cpu is the driver for performance for these benchmarks.

www.solidmuse.com Page link in the right side bar.

Cheers,
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Luther Cifers @ wenyang wang on Jun 17, 2009 1:13 PM
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wenyang wang wrote:

your budget is almost 3000 bucks, but your hardware isn't more suitable for CAD. I feel videocard is more important than other things. so why you bid a FX3700 ON EBAY.

I'm not sure I understand your question(s) at all, but I'll try.

I did not bid on a FX3700 on eBay. I bought a used Dell workstation on eBay that turned out to have a few problems (was not as advertised). It had a QuadroFX 3400 card in it. Besides the errors made in the eBay listing, the performance was not very good.

After the information I found here I decided to get a new machine because I would not find the performance I was looking for in older technology.

I do not have the experience that Anna and some others do to say definitively what will bring the most performance gains, but I can tell you that with an assembly with thousands of parts in it the QuadroFX 3400 performed very well. I'm sure a better card would perform much better, but the 256MB video card did not cause any productivity problems. Now I will have a 768MB card, so hopefully it will be better. But to be honest the performance I am looking for is in CPU intensive operations (like the punchholder) and working in large assemblies. From the information I saw on Anna's website and others, the CPU seems to be the most important piece of hardware for this.

My budget started out with a $1250 used workstation on eBay and a couple of 28" Hanns G monitors. Then I was willing to spend $2000 if that's what it took to get the speed I was looking for. Once I started configuring the machine I saw that I could get some better components by spending a few more bucks. So, now it's close to $3K - a little more with the monitors. But I'm self employed and this is how I make my living. When your bottom line is directly tied to your performance, you do what it takes to get the performance

I disagree that the machine is not suitable for CAD. From everything I have seen, it should be a very good SW machine. I sure hope so

- Luther
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Sam Thomas @ Luther Cifers on Jun 17, 2009 2:07 PM
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I am a Network Admin and I have to look at new workstations for my users as well... Currently my users have HP xw6400's that include:
2 Intel Dual-Core Xeon 5130 / 2 GHz processor
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500
8 GB
WD Raptor 10000 rpm
RAID O CONFIGURATION-STRIPED

I have been going through the posts and looking at some of the different configurations to see what other people are using. One of biggest issues is that I have to buy from a manufacturer which limits my options. I am really not sure what direction to go with this but I can't have my end users waiting up to 10 min to open up assemblies...any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks
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Russ Johnston @ Sam Thomas on Jun 17, 2009 2:22 PM
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This setup actually seems pretty good....are you sure the long load times aren't related to your network?
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Anna Wood @ Sam Thomas on Jun 17, 2009 2:26 PM
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Sam,

Look at the HP Z Series of workstations (Z400, Z600 or Z800). That is the lastest and greatest cpu architecture from Intel.

Get a Xeon 3500 Series or Xeon 5500 Series processor, at a high clock speed.

Be sure to know what cpu you are buying and where it falls in Intels speed charts. You are going to need to spend some money here to get performance. You want a Bloomfield (3500 series) or Nehalem-EP/Gainestown (5500 Series) cpu. See the Wikipedia link below for info on the Xeon line of cpu's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Xeon

Then a Nvidia FX1800 or FX3800 or an ATI FirePro V3700 or better video cards. Check the SolidWorks website for approved video cards for the model of HP computer you spec. Be sure to look under the HP drop down.

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/videocardtesting.html

Buy DDR3 memory at the highest speed HP offers in groups of three for triple channel memory. 3, 6, 12 gigs.

Western Digital Velicoraptors for hard drives. Those will be the 10K rpm SATA hard drives that all the OEM's offer.

Cheers,
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Anna Wood @ Anna Wood on Jun 17, 2009 2:34 PM
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Sam,

Also like Russ says make sure it is not your network causing slow load times. There is the time SW spends bringing the files across the network and then the time SW spends opening all the files it has gathered into local memory.

You can see this when watching SW open an assembly with the progress bar down on the bottom left of the SW screen. Time those two different tasks to see where you lag is.

We updated our old server to a new NAS array and greatly increased the speed of our load times over the network. We have a good network for speed, but the slow, old server was bogging us down.

Check the rest of the network to see if it is up to snuff for SW. Having the entire company work off of one server through a slow pipe is not good for SolidWorks. SolidWorks files are not like opening a Word document and needs a bit more horsepower for happy users.

Also how is your virus protection set-up? Does it check everthing that moves bogging your users down?

Cheers,
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Sam Thomas @ Russ Johnston on Jun 17, 2009 2:35 PM
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I have not ruled that possibility out yet however I have gigabit switches and adapters throughout the building not sure what else to do to improve it. The users also complain about frequent crashes. Some of them are convinced that there is not enough processor power as it is only 2 GHz, 1333FSB. All my tools have indicated that the connection is fine. If you know of any different tests for Soild Works connection speeds I am open to suggestions.
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Sam Thomas @ Anna Wood on Jun 17, 2009 2:39 PM
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We do have a dedicated newer server for the Vault However I will look into the Virus suggestion.
Thank you very much for the recommendations!!!
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Anna Wood @ Sam Thomas on Jun 17, 2009 2:56 PM
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Sam,

2 ghz cpu's are very weak for SW. We do not spec anything less then 3.0 ghz of the latest and greatest Intel is selling at the time of purchase.

A 3 ghz cpu of an older cpu architecture will be slower then a 3 ghz cpu of the latest offering from Intel.

Check out my SW benchmarks on my blog. www.solidmuse.com The links are in the right sidebar. There are Google spreadsheets with results. Run the benchmarks to see where your systems fall within the grid.

Cheers,
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Russ Johnston @ Sam Thomas on Jun 17, 2009 2:58 PM
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try this test....

Find a single large SW file (~50 mb or larger). Open it in SW and check the time it takes to open it and fully resolve it (ie. when you can start modifying it).

Then transfer the file to local HD. Again, open it in SW and check the time it takes to open it and fully resolve it (ie. when you can start modifying it).

Working off your local HD will always be faster when opening/saving a file. This is why PDM systems are the best choice.
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Russ Johnston @ Anna Wood on Jun 17, 2009 3:14 PM
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Anna,

It's interesting that both HP and Dell don't offer the i7's yet for there workstations.
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Sam Thomas @ Russ Johnston on Jun 17, 2009 3:20 PM
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That is odd that niether HP or Dell offer the i7's I could not even get an HP CTO with one.
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Russ Johnston @ Sam Thomas on Jun 17, 2009 3:23 PM
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We are currently sourcing workstations as well. Check out XI. So far they have the best prices and they offer i7's.

www.xicomputer.com
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Oliver Raymond Jun 17, 2009 3:48 PM
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they use the new Xeons for their new work stations, which use the same architecture as the i7's.
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Anna Wood @ Russ Johnston on Jun 17, 2009 4:38 PM
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Russ,

None of the OEM's will offer Core i7's for the professional class workstations. Core i7's are being marketed to enthusiast market. Also Core i7 will not be offered in a dual socket configuration.

The Xeon 3500 and 5500 series are the same Nehalem core architecture as the Core i7. The 3500 series is for single socket systems and the 5500 series can be configured on dual socket systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Xeon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Nehalem

The Xeon systems at the same clock speed are a touch slower then a Core i7 from what I see from the few benchmark results I have recieved. Typical for a Xeon workstation which is set-up for reliablity at the expense of overall speed on an enthusiast system.

Cheers,
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Russ Johnston @ Anna Wood on Jun 17, 2009 4:46 PM
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Good to know! Thanks Anna.
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Luther Cifers @ Anna Wood on Jun 18, 2009 6:25 AM
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Anna Wood wrote:

A 3 ghz cpu of an older cpu architecture will be slower then a 3 ghz cpu of the latest offering from Intel.

Ditto that. i have an older architecture 3.73 GHz Xeon CPU and a customer has a 2.0 GHz newer architecture CPU and their computer ran the punchholder benchmark in 1/3 the time that mine did. One thing I have learned in the last few weeks os that clock speed is not clock speed when comparing newer vs older technologies.

I'm still waiting patiently to test out my new i7...
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