New Civil 3D work station specs

[DRW_CAD]

I am specing new C3D work stations for next year. Trying to get the most bang for $. Specs below is a starting point. I will have to live with these for 3 years. I can upgrade if neccessary but they are leased so any money we put into them be lost after that lease cycle.

I need faster processors for 2010 but not sure where to cut costs elsewhere to make up the difference. If 2011 supports multcore... will I need a 3 GHz Processor? Would I be better off betting on 2011 multi core support & going with a quad core? I could go down to 4GB RAM & add later as needed to save some $. I could go with a slower hard drive too.I would like to increase bus speed but I keep going over budget.

Graphics? Nvidia vs. ATI?

Anyone care to share opinions?

Precision T3500 64 Bit Windows® 7 Pro
Processor Dual Core Intel® Xeon® W3503 2.40GHz, 4M L3, 4.8GT/s
Memory 6GB, 1066MHz, DDR3 SDRAM, ECC (3 DIMMS)
Graphics 512MB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 580
Hard Drive 80GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache

[Sinc]

Looks like you're buying from Dell? Is that a requirement?

You definitely will want the fastest processor you can afford. You may not need that Quadro graphics card - those were desirable for XP, but don't seem to be that necessary for most people with these newer systems. Things like the GeForce 9600GT/GTS seem to work well.

Fast hard drives are very desirable, so you probably don't want to cut there.

You can also probably do as you suggest, and drop to 4GB of RAM. If you are looking at that Xeon chip, then I don't *think* that supports the new QPI technology, so I don't think you can put tri-channel RAM in there. I think you're still limited to dual-channel, which means a good option is to get 4GB (2x2GB) of dual-channel RAM now, then add another 2GB (1x2GB) or 4GB (2x2GB) of dual-channel RAM later. (Do you know how many RAM slots the machine will have?) The ECC Registered RAM is more expensive, and doesn't seem to help any these days, but I don't think you have any other option with those Dell Xeon workstations.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com

[Anonymous]

"64 Bit Windows® 7 Pro" is the most important compent in this system. It
would have been a waste to purchase a new computer and put a 8 year old OS
on it. You nailed it. The OS is most important upgrade you can make to a
system - far more important than amount of RAM or video card or speed of the
hard disk.

Cheers,

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

[DRW_CAD]

I don't know that we are locked into Dell. We've been leasing from them & I know IT has looked at others.

The thing I'm having the hardest time with is the graphics card. There is a lot of conflicting opintions on the subject. Going with a lower tier card like GeForce would you still go with 512 card or more? Some people are going with 1.5 GB but it seems to be a O.S. issue

[DRW_CAD]

Yes our IT dept was apposed to Vista and I wanted 64 bit for the next round of work stations and XP seemed like investing in out of date technology so there really was no option. What about the other components? I know you would have to shoot me if you told but I have to think 2011 C3D is going to be true 64 & multi core friendly. will the 3G processor be less critical next year if we see changes in the applications ability to utilize the new systems?

[Anonymous]

The OS is most important upgrade you can make to a
system - far more important than specific CPU chip, amount of RAM,
video card or speed of the hard disk.

Cheers,

Peter Funk
Autodesk,
Inc.

[Sinc]

I would go for 1GB RAM or more on the video card.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com

[Mpendlebury]

I recently purchased a similar system below, and i have to say i'm pretty disappointed, im not sure weather i should be looking at Dell or Autodesk? I even gave my Autodesk retailer a call before i purchased it and they did not really have any useful recommendations apart form whats on the box for recommended specs.

Dell Precision T7500
Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) E5540 2.53GHz/8MB L3 Cache/5.86GT/s
(4x1GB) DDR3 SDRAM Memory, 1066MHz,ECC
1.5GB GDDR3 PCIe x 16 nVidia Quadro FX 4800
300GB SATA (10,000RPM) Hard Disk Drive
XP Professional SP2 64-Bit

I would love any advice one what i can do to bump up performance, because it hangs often, regenerating gradings and corridors is pretty sluggish. Even rotating or looking at smallish models is horribly lumpy and often not worth doing.Trying to lay out points on a grid on surface will leave you with grey hair. Seems even slower when i look at what other users seem to be able to get it to do on the net ...

I have pumped Google for answers but i haven't run into anything thats been really noticeable. i think it runs slower than the old work station because it can only use 1 core at a time. Now my new dell although its advertised as quad core it comes up in windows as 8 cores, and so i can max out civil 3d and have my CPU usage at 12%.

Only benefit is from having the dream machine is when civil 3d locks up i can do lots of other stuff and it seems to make no difference. (apart from the shadowing effect on windows when you move them)

List of some of the stuff, i have already looked at ...

http://discussion.autodesk.com/autodeskimages/adsk/files/autocad_civil_3d_technical_note_harnessingpowerofcivil3d.pdf

I hear some people say to turn off hardware acceleration ? some people say leave it on ? i left it on...
I put on the performance drivers for Acad2010 by try ripping out the drivers from the Nivida install as it doesn't seem to support civil 3d. throwing them into the civil 3d folder... seemed to help, but if it was supported why would they not just install ?

I use Data short cuts, i work on my C: drive and save the models to a network drive, and make the short cuts there maybe this causes sluggishness?

I stripped the background down to plain black, turned all desktop effects of so it looks like the old windows classic...

I read that turning my display down to 16bit as opposed to 32 bit can help so ill try that today... (highly skeptical)

Would changing to windows 7 make a world of difference??
Should have i purchased 2 Hard Drives and run a raid0 ?
Is it some dell competent thats got me all bottled necked up ?

Do i just waste time and mope till 2011 comes out hope that it supports 64 bit and multi threading ?

It would seem to me money spent on new system for civil 3d is waste... i would appear the best performance fastest core duo system you can get with 4GB ram, and 64 bit OS, and average graphics card, i also fail to see were all the extra money on FXcard went, throwing in decent Gforce gaming card seemed as well if not better in some aspects, thats before you consider it cost 1/3 of the price.

Sorry spelling and grammar are not strong points..

[Anonymous]

1. You got a new system and put an 8 year old OS on it. Vista and Windows 7
make much better use of RAM and typically have better / more up to date
drivers.
2. AutoCAD and Civil 3D are for the most part not multi-threaded so adding
multiple core (at reduced speed) won't help the processing time.

Regards,

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

[bdaly]

Other than installing Windows 7, what components should we focus our dwindling workstation budgets on? I don't want to go overboard with high-end parts if it won't make much difference with C3D performance.

Anything purchased at this point will come with Windows 7. What about the rest of the computer? For example, if Windows 7 is emphasizing DirectX performance over OpenGL, is there still much advantage to purchasing a "CAD" graphics card? While C3D is still 32-bit, would more than 4GB RAM make much of a difference?

CPU's aren't getting much faster (clock speed), just more cores on each chip. They are "scaling out" instead of "scaling up". Is Autodesk planning to develop Civil 3D to take advantage of this? Since almost every PC made in the last year (or two) has supported running a 64-bit O/S on multiple cores, and almost every vertical product based on AutoCAD (except C3D) runs as a native 64-bit application, I can't imagine C3D 2011 won't run native 64-bit. Assuming we get a 64-bit C3D 2011, can we expect it to take advantage of multiple cores?

Spec'ing out a workstation has gotten much more complicated in the past few years, and many companies haven't purchased new workstations in a while. There have been major changes in CPU architecture, video cards, RAM speed, and Windows 7, and it's hard to know where to focus our resources for good performance specifically with C3D. Standardized benchmarks don't seem to provide a reliable indication of C3D performance.

I realize that Autodesk can't test every combination of hardware, and I'm not looking for a specific configuration, but we could really use some guidance from Autodesk regarding what hardware you are optimizing your software for.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Great questions!

We've put together a paper
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autocad_civil_3d_technical_note_harnessingpowerofcivil3d.pdf
that talks about the different operating systems and how to get the most out
of your machine today. The paper doesn't talk about Windows 7 (it was
written before the offical launch) but Windows 7 has advantages of the Vista
memory management and an additional 4 years of development.

Here is my ranked list of what is important in shopping for a computer:
1. Windows 7 64 – any other operating system is a downgrade.
2. RAM – the more the better, but I wouldn’t pay a premium for it. The
reason I say that is that with 64 bit operating systems if you run out of
physical ram, the OS will start using the hard disk as virtual RAM so while
8 may give you better performance than 4 you may not need it right away.
3. Hard Disk – Get a fast one (especially if you think you’ll be using it
for virtual RAM swap space). Point cloud files are also disk based so you
want a fast drive to process those.
4. CPU – I would go with a really fast duo core. If you work mostly in Civil
3D then having more than 2 cores won’t help that much especially if you pay
for the additional cores with reduced speed in each one. We’ve look at
splitting Civil 3D across multiple cores and found that it really doesn’t
help (in some cases it is slower) because of the nature of the calculations
that we do and the nature of the problem we are trying to solve.
5. Graphics Card – unless you do a lot of rendering in Max, the graphics
card is really not where you need to invest. Any good certified card should
be good enough. If you’ve maxed out 1-4 and still have budget then go for a
great video card.

For an existing computer (purchased in the last few years) the best upgrade
would be to Windows 7 64. This $200 upgrade would extend the life of the
machine.

Cheers,

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

[bdaly]

After upgrading to C3D 2010 from C3D 2008, our users noticed a decrease in system performance. We generally expect new software to be more demanding of the hardware, so this was no big surprise. While they like the new features and interface in C3D 2010, they aren't satisfied with the performance. We are looking for ways to improve that performance in a cost effective manner, whether that requires upgrading the O/S, upgrading components, or buying new machines.

To get an idea of the kind of performance difference to expect between Windows XP Professional x64 and Windows 7 Enterprise x64, we ran the latest "Cadalyst Systems Benchmark 2008 v5.2" (http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test) dated August 2009 on the same 3-year old Dell Precision 390 (4GB RAM, Quadro FX 3450, 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo).

We formatted the hard drive and did a fresh installation of the O/S each time, downloaded all available Windows updates, installed the most recent AutoCAD certified/recommended driver versions based on http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7107053&linkID=9240618. For Windows 7 x64, we used the driver version recommended for Vista 64 since Windows 7 isn't listed. We also did a full disk defrag after everything was installed. We used C3D 2010, the 32-bit version that can be installed on a 64-bit O/S.

This is the exact same computer, reinstalled twice, with the only difference being the O/S. Except for the necessary system drivers (motherboard, NIC, etc.) and defrag software (Windows defrag isn't very good), there was no other software installed, not even antivirus. The screen saver and power management features were disabled, and both tests were run at 1680x1050, 32K colors. Device Manager showed no unidentified devices under either O/S.

The benchmark software ran 5 loops on each configuration to get a good average. While running, Task Manager showed around 60% utilization spread mostly evenly among both cores. RAM didn't seem to be an issue with 2GB or more still available during the test.

The tests results show slightly lower scores (< 2%) for Windows 7 in the tested areas (3D, 2D, Disk, CPU), except for the 3D graphics index, which was 17% faster in Windows 7, and disk, which was 10% slower in Windows 7. The test took 38 minutes in Windows 7 and 39 minutes in Windows XP.

Should Windows 7 make a bigger difference, or is this result typical?

We do almost exclusively 2D graphics, so based on these results, it would be difficult to justify the cost of upgrading to Windows 7 to improve the performance of C3D 2010 (although it might make more of a difference for other applications).

Should we be seeing different results? What would be the next area to try to optimize?

If I purchase brand new computers, the best I could do would be to get a 3.3GHz Dual Core CPU with faster RAM and maybe a faster video card. It doesn't seem like it would make as dramatic a difference to replace three year old workstations as I would have hoped.

Compared to other graphics applications, it seems like there are limited options for really improving C3D 2010 performance as long as it remains a 32-bit, single-threaded application.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Just yesterday for the first time I inserted two 328MB GeoTIFFs in Civil
3D 2010 SP2 with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit using MAPIINSERT. The loading
time was much faster than with Vistax64. I was able to pan and zoom
almost like the images were just regular line work. That never happened
before. This is the exact same machine as I was running before, just
that I wiped the drive and did a clean install of Windows 7.

Your decrease in performance in 2010 coming from 2008 is mostly due to
.NET. For some reason Autodesk is obsessed with the ribbon and .NET.
That's the main reason we had to put more RAM in everyone's computers.
It's also the reason that I'm the test bed for a 64-bit OS. I'm the
only one out of 300+ computers on our network that is 64-bit, including
servers. So far so good, though.

EB
-------------
Win7 Pro 64-bit
Civil 3D 2010 SP2
4GB RAM

On 11/10/2009 7:04 PM, bdaly wrote:
> After upgrading to C3D 2010 from C3D 2008, our users noticed a decrease in system performance. We generally expect new software to be more demanding of the hardware, so this was no big surprise. While they like the new features and interface in C3D 2010, they aren't satisfied with the performance. We are looking for ways to improve that performance in a cost effective manner, whether that requires upgrading the O/S, upgrading components, or buying new machines.
>
> To get an idea of the kind of performance difference to expect between Windows XP Professional x64 and Windows 7 Enterprise x64, we ran the latest "Cadalyst Systems Benchmark 2008 v5.2" (http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test) dated August 2009 on the same 3-year old Dell Precision 390 (4GB RAM, Quadro FX 3450, 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo).
>
> We formatted the hard drive and did a fresh installation of the O/S each time, downloaded all available Windows updates, installed the most recent AutoCAD certified/recommended driver versions based on http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7107053&linkID=9240618. For Windows 7 x64, we used the driver version recommended for Vista 64 since Windows 7 isn't listed. We also did a full disk defrag after everything was installed. We used C3D 2010, the 32-bit version that can be installed on a 64-bit O/S.
>
> This is the exact same computer, reinstalled twice, with the only difference being the O/S. Except for the necessary system drivers (motherboard, NIC, etc.) and defrag software (Windows defrag isn't very good), there was no other software installed, not even antivirus. The screen saver and power management features were disabled, and both tests were run at 1680x1050, 32K colors. Device Manager showed no unidentified devices under either O/S.
>
> The benchmark software ran 5 loops on each configuration to get a good average. While running, Task Manager showed around 60% utilization spread mostly evenly among both cores. RAM didn't seem to be an issue with 2GB or more still available during the test.
>
> The tests results show slightly lower scores (< 2%) for Windows 7 in the tested areas (3D, 2D, Disk, CPU), except for the 3D graphics index, which was 17% faster in Windows 7, and disk, which was 10% slower in Windows 7. The test took 38 minutes in Windows 7 and 39 minutes in Windows XP.
>
> Should Windows 7 make a bigger difference, or is this result typical?
>
> We do almost exclusively 2D graphics, so based on these results, it would be difficult to justify the cost of upgrading to Windows 7 to improve the performance of C3D 2010 (although it might make more of a difference for other applications).
>
> Should we be seeing different results? What would be the next area to try to optimize?
>
> If I purchase brand new computers, the best I could do would be to get a 3.3GHz Dual Core CPU with faster RAM and maybe a faster video card. It doesn't seem like it would make as dramatic a difference to replace three year old workstations as I would have hoped.
>
> Compared to other graphics applications, it seems like there are limited options for really improving C3D 2010 performance as long as it remains a 32-bit, single-threaded application.
>
> Do you have any suggestions?
>
> Thank you.

[Sinc]

> {quote:title=Guest wrote:}{quote}
> Your decrease in performance in 2010 coming from 2008 is mostly due to
> .NET. For some reason Autodesk is obsessed with the ribbon and .NET.


It sounds as though you may have a somewhat mistaken idea of what .NET is...

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com

[Anonymous]

.NET is what allows the WPF which is what is used to create the Ribbon.

Matthew Anderson, PE

dei-feif wrote:

{quote:title=Guest wrote:}{quote}

Your decrease in performance in 2010 coming from 2008 is mostly due to 

.NET.  For some reason Autodesk is obsessed with the ribbon and .NET. 

    

It sounds as though you may have a somewhat mistaken idea of what .NET is...



-- Sinc

http://www.ejsurveying.com

http://www.quuxsoft.com

  

[Sinc]

Sort of. The Ribbon evidently uses WPF. But it is probably best to think of WPF as a replacement for Windows Forms, whereas .NET is a method of interacting with the OS using Microsoft's new CLI.

WPF is fancier technology, designed to use themes and fancy effects and so forth, which is why it is slower than Forms. But that shouldn't be confused with .NET.

-- Sinc
http://www.ejsurveying.com
http://www.quuxsoft.com

[Anonymous]

Wow, that must have been a fun couple of days!

I'm not sure that the Catalyst systems benchmark is going to show that much
as it uses a bunch of drawings that just have simple AutoCAD entities in it
and the differences in the operating systems won't really be seen there.
What we found on our internal testing is there are a few main differences
between the operating systems when it comes to Civil 3D.

1. With the larger objects in Civil 3D we need larger chunks of RAM to work
with, and Vista and Windows 7 do a better job in using the RAM on the system
because they it isn't as fragmented as in XP.
2. The 64 bit OS provide more available RAM than a 32 bit system. Out of the
box a 32 bit OS can use 2 gigabytes per application. With the "3g" switch,
you can compress the operating system and get 3 gigabytes for each
application. In a 64 bit OS, each 32 bit application gets the full 4
gigabytes.

Check out the paper on Operating System at
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autocad_civil_3d_technical_note_harnessingpowerofcivil3d.pdf.
The paper doesn't list Windows 7, but we're finding that it is even better
than Vista for memory use and performance.

Bottom line: Windows 7 64 is the best OS for Civil 3D 2010 today and is the
OS that you want to have on your computer for the future.

Cheers,

Peter Funk
Civil 3D Product Manager
Autodesk, Inc.

[Anonymous]

WPF is possible because its is a part of .NET and is one of four
components of .NET.. You can't separate WPF from .NET.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation

Matthew Anderson, PE



dei-feif wrote:
> Sort of. The Ribbon evidently uses WPF. But it is probably best to think of WPF as a replacement for Windows Forms, whereas .NET is a method of interacting with the OS using Microsoft's new CLI.
>
> WPF is fancier technology, designed to use themes and fancy effects and so forth, which is why it is slower than Forms. But that shouldn't be confused with .NET.
>
> -- Sinc
> http://www.ejsurveying.com
> http://www.quuxsoft.com
>

[bdaly]

I really appreciate the attention you've given this with your responses.

Can you recommend any automated, objective benchmark that I could use to test C3D other than the Cadalyst benchmark?

I agree with you that Win7x64 should run C3D better than WinXP, and that Win7 is the way to go for future workstations we purchase. I just don't know if it's worth upgrading all of our old systems to Win7. I could install it on a few production systems and try it out, but I'm looking for a more objective comparison than "Joe the CAD tech said it seems a little faster on his project".

There are benchmark applications available that will run through various MS Office, graphics programs and games, but I doubt they'll give a good indication of C3D performance.

I was planning to migrate to Win7 as we purchase new systems, not via a mass upgrade. I would need some way to objectively justify the cost, as well as the time needed to reinstall each system (can't upgrade from WinXP 32-bit to Win7x64), and test all of our other applications for Win7 and 64-bit compatibility.

How does Autodesk make performance comparisons between systems?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

While we look at speed benchmark tests, what our senior software engineers
are looking at is how memory is utilized in the different operating systems,
using a battery of different tools. While in some cases there are speed
differences between the machines, these are really secondary to how much
memory is available to the applications and how well the system is able to
use that memory. What we are finding that Windows 7 64 has the most memory
available to 32 bit applications today, and uses that memory far better than
XP.

In addition, moving to Windows 7 64 should help extend the life of your
existing machines. I know that a reformat and reinstall of an OS is going to
be work and going to cost some money, but isn't it cheaper than buying a new
machine?

Windows 7 64 isn't going to run Civil 3D or AutoCAD faster than XP 32, it
will run better because it has more RAM to use. Even a full 64 bit version
many not run any faster than the 32 bit version will, but it won't run out
of RAM. Addressable memory is the issue:

XP 32 - 2 gigabytes
XP 32/3g - 3 gigabytes (with a compressed OS)
Vista 32 - 2 gigabytes with less fragmentation
Vista 32/3g - 3 gigabytes with less fragmentation (compressed OS)
Windows 7 64 - 4 gigabytes with less fragmentation (for 32 bit applications)

So moving from XP 32 to Windows 7 64 you double the amount of RAM that Civil
3D can work with today, going from a fragmented 2 to a clean 4 gigabytes of
memory.

Moving to Windows 7 64 will help you to day and set you up for the future.

Cheers,

Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

p.s. As a general question what can we do to help IT departments decide that
the time to migrate off an 8 year old OS is here?