Autocad 2015 Multicore Processor Performance Poor

[aabufl]

I previously posted that that I am expereince very slow laggy perfomrance when working with a design that have almost 200k objects. Read more about it here: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015/large-file-size-amp-slow-performance-with-array...

My question is how do I get Auotcad 2015 to utilize all 8 cores of my processor to improve performance? I am doing a very simple task right now in Autocad, however, its taking a long time to complete. I look at my processor utliziation, and see that Autocad is only using 20% of my CPU, and all the 8 cores are not being utlized. The task that I am doing is "Exploding" an array of Blocks. The block is a polygon which is a circle defined by 50 sides. I have over an array of blocks, summing up to almost 80k, and Autocad is exploding them one by one, thus taking a very very long time.

What can I do so that Autocad can parallelize the task so it has maximum perfomrance?

[max]

Per the following Autodesk statement, AutoCAD is predominantly a single core & SINGLE THREADED application. REPEAT 'SINGLE THREADED':

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Suppor...

From what I bothered to read in these posts, people are advising CPU’s with x4 cores + x8 threads. This causes a bottle neck.

AutoCAD.exe will only use x1 thread - which means AutoCAD will only utilize max. 12.5% (1/8th) of the total CPU with x4 cores + x8 threads!!!!

See diagram attached.

Image the ‘core’ as the ‘mouth’ and the ‘thread’ as the hand that feeds the mouth.

With x4 cores + x8 threads you basically have ‘x2 threads’ (x2 hands) feeding ‘x1 core’(x1 mouth), however, AutoCAD.exe will only use one of the two available hands to half feed the one mouth!

You are best to go with a CPU with matching cores & threads ie; one hand, fully feeding one mouth! with the highest turbo GHz.

In my opinion, this is what I reckon is the best bang for your buck as of November 2017:

MB: Asus TUF-370 Pro

CPU: i5-8600K 6-cores / 6-threads 4.3GHz (overclock to 5GHz see demo):
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Support-...

CPU COOLING: Liquid Cooling: Corsair CWCH60-SE

RAM: DDR4 16GB 2666 MHZ (2x8GB sticks). Can double this if you want.

GPU: GTX 1070. PS: You could buy all this for the price of x1 decent ‘QUADRO’ card!

Hope this helps..

[max]

In response to my own post - I correct myself 😉 I had an idea to disable the HYPERTHREADING in the BIOS to force x1 thread per x1 core, did some tests & here are the results for the following CPU i7-3770K (x4 cores / x8 threads):

When HYPERTHREADING is enabled ie; uses x8 threads, AutoCAD.exe maxes out at 12.5%

When HYPERTHREADING is disabled ie; uses x4 threads, AutoCAD.exe maxes out at 25%

Per attached screenshot, it ‘looks’ like the HYPERTHREADING is a bottle neck, but I have come to the conclusion that 12.5% of x8 (virtual cores) is the equivalent of 25% of x4 (physical cores).

However I ran x2 loading tests as follows:

Test #1 took 70 seconds with hyperthreading & 60 seconds without hyperthreading (14.2% improvement).

Test #2 took 48 seconds with hyperthreading & 44 seconds without hyperthreading (8.3% improvement).

To save face, I found that disabling the hyperthreading has on average a 11.25% performance gain from x2 tests.

But you would obviously lose general computing performance for other applications with hyperthreading switched off.

So in my opinion, these two CPU’s would be worth looking into:

Intel® Core™ i5-8600K Processor 4.3 GHz (x6 cores / x6 threads) NO HYPERTHREADING

https://ark.intel.com/products/126685/Intel-Core-i5-8600K-Processor-9M-Cache-up-to-4_30-GHz

Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Processor 4.7 GHz (x6 cores / x12 threads) WITH HYPERTHREADING

https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_70-GHz

Comparison between the two:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=3100&cmp[]=3098