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C3D hardware config

4 REPLIES 4
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Message 1 of 5
office30
219 Views, 4 Replies

C3D hardware config

Hello,
what about this config:

Mainboard S-775 ASUS P5Q,
1 x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
Intel P45/ICH10R, 4x DDR2 667/800/1066/1200Mhz
CPU FSB 800/1066/1333/1600MHz
UDMA133, 1x GBit LAN, 12x USB, Firewire
SATA intern
---------------------------------------------
Prozessor INTEL Core 2 Duo E8600, 2 x 3,33GHz, S-775
6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Dual Core
---------------------------------------------
2 X DDR2-RAM 2048 MB, PC2-667 MHz, CL5, CORSAIR ValueSelect QDGV6B
Latency: 5-5-5-15
Spannung: 1.8 Volt
---------------------------------------------
2 X Festplatte SATA II Western Digital VelociRaptor, 150 GB, 16MB Cach
10000upm (pagefile on the 2. hd)
---------------------------------------------
Grafikkarte PNY Quadro FX570, 256MB GDD2, 2xDVI

Thanks Edited by: office@alpinfra.com on Sep 30, 2008 6:49 AM
4 REPLIES 4
Message 2 of 5
Sinc
in reply to: office30

I would get faster RAM. Your MOBO will support it, your CPU will want it, and C3D will use it, and it's relatively cheap.

I prefer a single RAID0 to two logical drives because you get faster performance for more tasks, but what you plan is fine, too.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quux.biz
http://www.sincpac3d.com
Sinc
Message 3 of 5
jpostlewait
in reply to: office30

In addition to Sinc's comments, look into the newer GeForce Video Cards instead of the Quadro 570.
Message 4 of 5
office30
in reply to: office30

Hello,
thanks for yours replies
I have calling the assembler to change the RAM.
you mine that a RAID 0 will be faster or/and you preffer that is as a single swap drive. I'm not a hardware specialist and this is my first C3D config
(I built it just to run C3D 2009)

Regards
Message 5 of 5
Sinc
in reply to: office30

Having your swap file on a different drive from the system and application helps when your system needs to swap. This happens according to a rather complex algorithm, but the general gist of it is that swapping happens when you start running low on physical RAM. All memory addressed by a single application is part of that application's "virtual address space". The "virtual address space" contains all memory being used by the application, and the allocated parts of the "virtual address space" exist in either physical RAM or the pagefile or (usually) a combination of both.



You didn't mention if you are installing Windows XP or Vista, or whether you are installing 32-bit or 64-bit OS. But if you are installing 32-bit Windows XP, C3D can only address a maximum of 2GB of virtual address space at one time, or 3GB of virtual address space if you set the /3GB switch. Since you have 4GB of RAM total, swapping should not be a big concern. C3D cannot use all of your RAM at once, and even though other programs will also be using part of your RAM, swapping should be relatively limited. What's a bigger concern is the overall amount of time it takes to access files in general, including your DWG files, data shortcut or Vault references, the various temporary files C3D creates, the Civil-3D program executable files, etc. Those accesses happen constantly.



Having the swap file on a second drive, with everything else on the primary drive, separates swapping actions from other actions. This improves performance, but only when your system is swapping. If your system isn't doing a lot of swapping, you won't notice much benefit. For systems with less RAM, swapping happens a lot more, and you'll notice more benefit. But with a 4GB system, you generally get more bang more of the time by taking your two drives and combining them into a single logical hard drive (a RAID 0). This means both drives work together, with each file split between two drives. Since drive access is slow and your computer spends a lot of time sitting around waiting for the physical drive to do its seek/read/write operations, having two physical drives working at the same time speeds up all access to your hard drive. It doesn't make it twice as fast - in fact, the actual gain varies a lot depending on your actual task - but overall, it usually results in approx. a 20-30% increase in disk access speed, if you average all tasks. For a program like C3D that hits the disk drive a lot, this makes a significant difference in performance. The application loads faster, drawings load and save faster, installs go at blazing speeds, etc.



Some people don't like RAID 0 arrays because, with two physical drives, the chances of drive failure are higher. Since the data for every file is split between the two drives, you lose everything if one of the drives fails. But these days, disc drives are so reliable that I don't view that as much of a concern. And of course, if you are worried about drive failure, well that's what backups are for. All our CAD workstations for the last couple of years have been built with RAID 0 arrays, and it makes a big difference. I hate using one of the computers that doesn't have a RAID.



-- Sinc

http://www.ejsurveying.com

http://www.quux.biz

http://www.sincpac3d.com
Sinc

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