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Inventor Workstation

14 REPLIES 14
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Message 1 of 15
rgarcia08
313 Views, 14 Replies

Inventor Workstation

We are looking at upgrading our existing workstations. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Our IT guy says he read somewhere that Autodesk products don't run well with multi processors. Is this true? I can't find that anywhere. Here is a description of the machines we are looking at. Autodesk i would love your opinion.

Dell Precision Workstation T7400 - 64bit
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333), Genuine Windows Vista® Business 64 Edition Downgrade, XP 64 Installed


Dell Precision Workstation T7400 - 64bit Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333) T6206

Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Business 64 Edition Downgrade, XP 64 Installed XP6VBDE

2nd Processor Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333) PR20QC

Memory 8GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (8 DIMMS) 8G8E6

Graphic Cards 768MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4600, Dual Monitor DVI Capable FX4600

Boot Hard Drive 160GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™ 160T16

Hard Drive Configuration C6 All SATA drives, RAID 0, 2 drive total configuration SR02

DVD and Read-Write Devices 16X DVD-ROM with Cyberlink Power DVD™ DVD16

2nd Hard Drive 160GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
14 REPLIES 14
Message 2 of 15
Josh_Petitt
in reply to: rgarcia08

Dell Precision Workstation T7400 - 64bit
YES

Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
no need for Quad core, save the money and get a faster dual core

Genuine Windows Vista® Business 64 Edition Downgrade, XP 64 Installed
I like XP64, but vista may be okay too

2nd Processor Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333) PR20QC
no need for dual quad cores, a waste of money IMHO, get faster dual cores (maybe times two)

Memory 8GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (8 DIMMS) 8G8E6
YES

Graphic Cards 768MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4600, Dual Monitor DVI Capable FX4600
YES

Boot Hard Drive 160GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™ 160T16
if you are on a network, no need for large HD, I use an 80GB and it is fine.



You haven't listed monitors, I'd ask for at least one 24" widescreen LCD, if not two 22" to 24" widescreens. After you get rid of the Quad cores you may be able to fit that in your budget. The computer you spec'ed is ~$7000-$8000 US I'd think.
Message 3 of 15
rgarcia08
in reply to: rgarcia08

I was thinking two 22" flat screen monitors.
Message 4 of 15
Anonymous
in reply to: rgarcia08

If you have the room on your desk, the more and bigger the monitors, the
better.

--
Dell 670 dual Xeon - 3.2
3gb memory, SCSI320-15k
XP-Pro, sp2
Quadro FX3400: Driver: 169.96 Direct3D
IV2009-Pro
SpacePilot Rel V: 3.6.6 Dvr V: 6.6.1 Firmware 3.12

wrote in message news:5965428@discussion.autodesk.com...
I was thinking two 22" flat screen monitors.
Message 5 of 15
rgarcia08
in reply to: rgarcia08

What about two hard drives running RAID 0? Is there a benefit to that? or will one hard drive be sufficient?
Message 6 of 15
Anonymous
in reply to: rgarcia08

Raid) will increase HD transfer performance by around +55% for Burst Read
and +100% for Average Read and +40% HDD Batch read. These are data transfer
figures, overal system performace will be less as much data is loaded in
memory.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/394

Myself I prefer SAS or straight SCSI

--
Dell 670 dual Xeon - 3.2
3gb memory, SCSI320-15k
XP-Pro, sp2
Quadro FX3400: Driver: 169.96 Direct3D
IV2009-Pro
SpacePilot Rel V: 3.6.6 Dvr V: 6.6.1 Firmware 3.12

wrote in message news:5965501@discussion.autodesk.com...
What about two hard drives running RAID 0? Is there a benefit to that? or
will one hard drive be sufficient?
Message 7 of 15
rgarcia08
in reply to: rgarcia08

So will RAID have any positive effect on system performance in Inventor. Are you saying that Inventor utilizes memory (RAM) over HD transfer.
Message 8 of 15
Anonymous
in reply to: rgarcia08

If you have sufficient memory for your application to load, this is always
your best performance. O/S's will use Virtural Memory (hard drive) when you
are maximizing your RAM. XP in standard mode only supports 3gb, the O/S will
use the first section leaving about 2.5Gb for your applications. 64 bit O/S
will allow you to exceed the 3Gb limit allowing a larger amount for your
applications.

--
Dell 670 dual Xeon - 3.2
3gb memory, SCSI320-15k
XP-Pro, sp2
Quadro FX3400: Driver: 169.96 Direct3D
IV2009-Pro
SpacePilot Rel V: 3.6.6 Dvr V: 6.6.1 Firmware 3.12

wrote in message news:5965508@discussion.autodesk.com...
So will RAID have any positive effect on system performance in Inventor.
Are you saying that Inventor utilizes memory (RAM) over HD transfer.
Message 9 of 15
Anonymous
in reply to: rgarcia08

I would not go with Quad Core, go with a faster Dual Core

"rgarcia08" wrote in message news:5965425@discussion.autodesk.com...
> We are looking at upgrading our existing workstations. Any suggestions
> would be appreciated. Our IT guy says he read somewhere that Autodesk
> products don't run well with multi processors. Is this true? I can't
> find that anywhere. Here is a description of the machines we are looking
> at. Autodesk i would love your opinion.
>
> Dell Precision Workstation T7400 - 64bit
> Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333), Genuine
> Windows Vista® Business 64 Edition Downgrade, XP 64 Installed
>
>
> Dell Precision Workstation T7400 - 64bit Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor
> E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M L2,1333) T6206
>
> Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Business 64 Edition Downgrade, XP
> 64 Installed XP6VBDE
>
> 2nd Processor Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5405 (2.00GHz,2X6M
> L2,1333) PR20QC
>
> Memory 8GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (8 DIMMS) 8G8E6
>
> Graphic Cards 768MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4600, Dual Monitor DVI
> Capable FX4600
>
> Boot Hard Drive 160GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
> 160T16
>
> Hard Drive Configuration C6 All SATA drives, RAID 0, 2 drive total
> configuration SR02
>
> DVD and Read-Write Devices 16X DVD-ROM with Cyberlink Power DVD™ DVD16
>
> 2nd Hard Drive 160GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
>
Message 10 of 15
smjanows
in reply to: rgarcia08

The only thing that a Quad core would be good for is rendering. That part of IV seems to be multithreaded. Otherwise like you said go with a faster dual core. I'm running an E8400. At some point when and if Inventor's modeling kernel supports multiple threads, I can swap out the chip for a Quad.

Similarily if you have the $$$ to spend for a quad core, don't. Get more RAM.
Message 11 of 15
enthdigry
in reply to: rgarcia08

If you can get a Quad core machine with a lot of RAM, I would do it. If you plan on using this machine for 4 years multiple thread capabilities may be integrated in the near future.

Other than cost, it doesn't hurt your performance.
Message 12 of 15
rgarcia08
in reply to: rgarcia08

What is multiple thread capabilities?
Message 13 of 15
smjanows
in reply to: rgarcia08

It's the ability for software to execute multiple codes simultaneously. It can take advantage of multicore and/or multiple processors.

In other words, multithreaded applications will scale well with more processing cores... aka be faster with dual, quad, etc, processors.

This may help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)
Message 14 of 15
hendey
in reply to: rgarcia08

I think Inventor ran smoother on Vista 64 versus XP 64, same machine. Ether way don't expect to load everything up and start running. Some of the software and or hardware you have now will not likely work. It took me 4 months to get our machine up to a production condition. Most of the problems was trying to figure out why I couldn't migrate. It is Inventor on both 32 bit and 64 bit. Good luck.

Matt
Message 15 of 15
smjanows
in reply to: rgarcia08

I agree with Vista64 being an improvement over XP64. Part of the improvements have to do with superfetch on Vista64. If you have enough RAM (and who shouldn't at today's rediculously cheap prices per gig), Vista actually uses it to cache things based on their usage.

So if you open the same files with Inventor at 8am every day, Vista will load those into RAM before you are ready to work. If you look at the task manager in Vista, a properly funtioning system should have near 0 free memory. XP64 will let it go to waste.

DirectX 10 is a Vista only API as well.

We benchmarked IV 2008 on XP64 and Vista64. At first XP seemed to have the edge, but once vendors released Vista64 versions of their apps (Symantec Endpoint Protection for example) and proper graphics drivers, and with XP in end of life status, the choice became clear.

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