We are using Dell T5500 workstations with Quadro 4000 graphic cards at the office. We have supplied this stations within a few days having very high expectations. But the performance of the computers didn't satisfy none of us. We are using Solidworks 2012 x64 SP2 and Windows 7 x64 Professional Edition. I believe the real performance of the stations shouldn't be at this level. I have tried everything like updating graphic drivers, solidworks service pack updates, all of the performance settings in Solidworks options etc. Currently I'm using 8.17.12.7589 Nvidia Quadro 4000 Solidworks certified driver which I have downloaded from Solidworks' own site.
Before these computers we were using Solidworks at regular PCs with common gamer cards. Now the differences between the gamer cards and the Quadro's are very little. Performance increased (maybe) by 5%. How come? 1200$ card vs a 300$ card and no improvement. The only advantage so far is the Realview in SolidWORKS.
I am testing old and new computers with the same assembly files. Solidworks is still laggy on both of the computers. I can't rotate the assembly smoothly. Assembly files includes about 100 parts, but there should be a performance difference between a regular PC and Dell T5500 workstation.
I think the problem is about graphic card driver. I didn' test workstations at other programs but I know some aplications like Autocad 3dsMax have special performance drivers for quadro graphic cards. For these programs you install regular Quadro drivers and then you need to install plus the cad drivers and the performance enhancement drivers. I have searched so far but there is no Solidworks Performance Driver on the site. I think this is a big failure for Solidworks if there isn't exist a special driver.
I am waiting for your advices. Any help would be appreciated
Thank you very much in advance
Your new T5500 is not a good spec for SolidWorks. SolidWorks will only use one core for most things so you have 11 physical cores twiddling their thumbs while one does the work. SolidWorks needs raw processor speed - that goes for model rotation as well as modelling. Your new PC is almost a whole GHz slower than your old one and the CPU architectures are the same I think.
Put your new graphics card and some more RAM in the old PC for best results with what you have got.