CPU

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

Upgrading to a new computer.

1. What is the best CPU to use for Inventor between the i7 and the a Dual Xeon System

2. Would 32GB of memory easily cover all modelling such as assemblies?

3. Any advantage of having 2 x SSD instaed of 1 x SSD

4. Looking at the Nvidia GTX690 graphics card....this should be a good card

Best Regards

Terry

[cmcconnell]

It greatly depends on what you are doing. To answer your questions:

1. We have both i&s and dual Xeons here. The dual Xeons are a couple years older, but the i7s really hold their own so far. We haven't run any benchmarks to generate any quantifiable results, but in general we find them to work very well. Our i&s are in iMacs. If you are doing any sort of FEA, the more cores the better with IV 2013.

2. We are working with assemblies up to 35000 components and have 32 Gbs in our desktops. The only time we come close to running out of memory is when we run multiple simulations on large datasets. For some reason, the Simulation tool seems to have an issue with holding onto memory.

3. All of our laptops have SSds - they start both Windows and Inventor much faster than the desktops do. If you were to run dual SSDs, you could run them in RAID 0 - theoretically doubling the speed  and capacity over a single SSD.

4. Most of our iMACs and MacBook Pros have consumer grade ATI cards, and we are not seeing any issues that I can directly attribute to the video card. Since Inventor switched over to Direct X, i have seen no compelling reason to use a Quadro card.

[Anonymous]

A good reply.Thanks for your help on this subject

[Anonymous]

Terry, either the i7 (1156 pin variants) or Xeon will get the job done. The Xeon's seem to have a little more computational power though which would be slightly better for simulation. Either the Nvidia or AMD (ATI) midrange and up cards will do the job. Dual cards are a waste unless you plan on doing some gaming?

Dual SSD's wont give the boost you would think they would, even in raid. The speed increase is minimal. I have read that using 4 x 60g SSD's in raid 5 or 10 provides better performance, but I have not confirmed that as yet.

If you are buying now, make sure the mainboard has plenty of SATA 3 ports and that any SSD's are SATA 3 also. My mainboard only has 2 SATA 3 ports and I long for more ... lol

On another note, if you can hold out a little longer, DDR 4 is supposedly ready for shipping. Supposed to be big performance gains but that could just be hype, but it will probably mean new mainboards and processors will be needed also.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Andy