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How much performance gain from more ram?

Question asked by Barna Madau on Jun 9, 2010
Latest reply on Jun 15, 2010 by Barna Madau

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I'm running Win7 64bit w/ 4 gigs of ram and have been working recently with some large assemblies. My ram usage ends up around 3.2gig or more used up depending on what other applications I have running at the time. SW starts to slow way down, doing a section view of the assembly takes several minutes, etc...

My computer is a Dell Precision M6300 with all the bells and whistles, Core 2 Extreme 2.8ghz, nvidia quadro fx 3600m...etc..etc...

And no, I don't suffer real bad crashing problems. Just runs slow in those cases. The rest of the time it is real quick and responsive.

Thanks,

Kelvin Lamport Jun 9, 2010 4:09 PM

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It's difficult to put actual numbers to it, but adding more RAM would keep the performance at the same level as "The rest of the time it is real quick and responsive" ... till the RAM begins to max out again.

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Kelvin Lamport Jun 9, 2010 4:09 PM
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It's difficult to put actual numbers to it, but adding more RAM would keep the performance at the same level as "The rest of the time it is real quick and responsive" ... till the RAM begins to max out again.
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Jerry Steiger Jun 9, 2010 5:13 PM
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Barna,

One thing you can do to get a vague idea of what is happening is to look at the column Page Faults Delta on your Windows Task Manager. (Look at the Processes Tab, select View at the top, and then Select Columns.) It shows how many times a process accesses your page memory. It should be sitting at 0 most of the time you are working, when you start to run out of memory it should start ramping up.

Your description sounds like a classic case of running out of memory.

Jerry Steiger
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- Barna Madau @ Jerry Steiger on Jun 9, 2010 5:31 PM
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  thanks for the help-
  
  I've got 8 gigs on the way... Might even be here tomorrow- gotta love newegg.
  
  BM
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  - Dougal Hiscock @ Barna Madau on Jun 9, 2010 6:44 PM
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    Hi Barna
    
    I'll be interested to hear your results, I'm currently using a M4300 which is stuck at 4 gig of ram. Knowing how much your ram upgrade helps will help me plan for a computer upgrade (or not, if it doesn't help much).
    
    P.S. Are you still at Progressive?
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    - Barna Madau @ Dougal Hiscock on Jun 9, 2010 7:16 PM
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      Wow- small e-world... It took me a sec to figure out how you knew where I used to work!
      
      Nope- that ship has sailed. Got laid off in the downsize, which doesn't matter because the severance was worth way more to me than keeping a job that I hated, and having to commute 90 miles each way to work (they also relocated when they downsized).
      
      I'm now working for my old boss from PSI though. After he got rights to his patents back from PSI, he licensed the CV/t technology to Fox (boost valve) and we contract to help them develop boost valve products. It's a fun enough job- we are getting our Roehrig EMA 4k next month, which should make things more interesting around here.
      
      BM
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    - Barna Madau @ Dougal Hiscock on Jun 15, 2010 4:26 PM
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      So I finally got the ram. That was the longest NewEgg ever took to get me anything, it looks like it came from the east coast...
      
      I stuck it in a few minutes ago - fired it up, got scolded by my bios for my amount of ram changing, but then booted right up. I fired up SW and opened that one big assembly that was giving me trouble before. Overally, it's considerably faster. The dynamic hilighting follows my mouse pointer around w/o any delays and the little pop-up menu pops up immediately after clicking on a part. Opening subassemblies of the main assembly that's already open is very fast, as is ctrl-tabbing through open documents. Section views still take a while to render, but the tool dialog pops up quickly. I think once you hit ok for the section view, it comes down the cpu cycles to make the rest happen and I don't think ram has any affect on that.
      
      So overall, it's a considerable performance improvement. Money well spent (by my boss :))...
      
      BM
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  - David Paulson @ Barna Madau on Jun 10, 2010 12:38 AM
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    My system is 8 GB and I don't experience the problems that you are having. Memory allocation has always been a weakness with Microsoft operating systems. Just because the task manager says that you are using 3.2 GB doesn't exactly mean that you are OK. It just means that you are using 80% of your installed DRAM. So, any requirement for additional memory will have to be with virtual memory which is much slower. And W7x32 will only allow 2 GB to any one application. You did the right thing by adding 4 GB of DRAM. SolidWorks should also do the right thing by recommending 8 GB of DRAM minimum and x64 bit operaqting system for reasonable performance.
    
    Please let us know if this resolves your probelm.
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    - Anna Wood @ David Paulson on Jun 10, 2010 1:13 AM
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      SolidWorks recommends 6 gigs or more if using Windows 7 x64....
      
      http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/SystemRequirements.html
      
      Cheers,
      
      Anna
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      - Dougal Hiscock @ Anna Wood on Jun 10, 2010 1:34 AM
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        So if you are currently hardware limited to 4 gig. Is it worth the jump to 64 bit over XP?
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        1-9EW5LD @ Dougal Hiscock on Jun 15, 2010 1:04 PM
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        Yes, I am running an older Dell Precision 690 and (2 to be truthful) 16gig on one and 24gig on the other, at the price of ram it’s just the thing to do. I noticed an improvement on my large assemblies “if you see any improvement then its worth it… as our time over a month is worth way more than the cost of the memory”. We to often get caught up in the is it worth it as if it was one of the projects we are working on… you know what I am saying its only a 8% increase in performance but it costs $400… really take 8% of your billable hours (not your pay) and then you tell me… Now there is some limits to my thinking, I wont ask for the new $3800 video card just because it looks nicer than my $500 card, nope it wont make my work go any faster so I don’t ask. But when there is a Dell i7 over 3.5 GHz I will ask for that. Just the thoughts from the dumb guy in the back of the class.
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How much performance gain from more ram?

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