topic Re: Disappointing results with PC Build. in Advance Steel Forum

Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 20:42:16 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Hope someone can help me out here, I have built a PC so it would be degradable, my previous Dell was not great (and not expensive), while working on a 5 story model my PC struggled so I decide I would upgrade. I spent about $2,500 on what I believed would be a great PC for my day to day use. (Specs Below)

Performance is at the moment very disappointing and frustrating, I'm hoping its something with my settings, so I have been advised that model sometimes works better with the hardware accelerator off. Off or On seems to be no different.

Model is totally choppy and can not be worked on.

SPECS BELOW:

HHHHHEEEEELLLLPPPPP Please.

Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor

CRYORIG - H5 Universal 65 CFM CPU Cooler

ASUS WS C246 Pro Workstation MB LGA1151

Samsung M393A2K40BB2-CTD 32GB DDR4-2666? LP ECC RE?G DIMM,
Samsung - 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

Samsung - 860 Pro 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive

PNY - Quadro P4000 8 GB Video Card

be quiet! - SILENT BASE 601 | WINDOW BLACK ATX Mid Tower Case,

SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Sebastian_Eiche — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 15:39:44 GMT

Hi Adrian,

The specs seems to be good. But sometimes the parts didn't work with each other because of that many use predefined stations. The companys which sold such workstation test the behaviour with the components.

The only thing I see is the processor... I don't want say it's not a good one (definitely it's better than mine :-), but this is a point which could be better, the rest of the parts is high-class.

The problem of the speed of Advance Steel is not Advance Steel...it's AutoCad, because AutoCAD is not multicore. It means the speed of the processor is very important and this is what you see on high class workstations a processor with the speed of 5ghz.

But I think your system should be fast too. So maybe some tips (which I think you already know, but maybe you control yourself):

Use the video card driver which is recommended from Autodesk
All other drivers should be up to date
Try to save your models on a local place, you need full admin rights for reading writing rules in this folder. Therefore the best place is: c:users/'yourusername'/documents...in this folder you have definitely full rights
Try to uninstall the SQL and reinstall the SQL drivers, sometimes this make it fast as hell (but I would try the next step before this one)
I know it's much work but try to uninstall AS, delete the complete Autodesk Advance steel folder in C:programdata folder. Now start the installation (so the files will be created in C: Autodesk) after this stop the installation. Go to the folder C:Autodesk and have a look for the setup.exe, make a right mouse button click in it and start the installation 'as admin'. Believe me this make it better in very much cases I have a look on customers pc.

Just a few ideas, hopefully it work on your side, but inform us, maybe we found a solution, because I think you pay a lot money and so we should get it work 😁

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 19:19:40 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

Thank you so much for lengthy and detailed reply, I would certainly hope to try these steps over the next couple of days, it had been suggested to me I may be need to overclock due to the single core nature of autocad, this board is upgradable to the Xeon chip. I really wanted to build my own to make it more upgradable but guess it hindsight I should have maybe gone with a pre-made workstation which would be optimized.

Very disappointing, hopefully some of your suggestions will help.

Happy Christmas to you and yours, hope you have a great holiday.

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Sebastian_Eiche — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 20:22:39 GMT

Happy Christmas to you and your family too

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

acbsdesign — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 15:19:06 GMT

Hi Adrian,

Processor is one of the best on the market, so no reason to believe that the processor slows the modeling.

I have the same processor, overclocked at 4.8Ghz, and it is a stable working processor.

This is a site where you can check for some issues:

https://www.userbenchmark.com/Software

If model freezes, gets slow-video card drivers, bad slot for memory, bad connection between VC/MB, or bad communication MB-VC, MB-SSD. I had also bad hard drive showing no issues when tested on a new workstation, replaced it and all was fine after that. If you have an extra SSD-boot it from there to make sure this is not a HD issue. Or just use your old drive to test. Also-Use the integrated graphics for a while just to verify this is not a VC issue. Or if memory allows-move in different slots, and or eliminate one if you have more than one slots full.

Happy Holidays.

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 16:11:02 GMT

Thanks so much for the reply Ilko, yea I will try all of these measures seems like proper problem solving, I have also been told that maybe the ECC Ram may not be compatible with the I7, so maybe I'll try the ram first. I do Have a couple of SSDs will try them also.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 16:25:23 GMT

I had go good result using this benchmark and also the Valley benchmark, just ran it again, seems the CPU and GPU performing below expectations, results attached. Pic and PDF

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Kirk_bailey — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 17:39:17 GMT

So, I don't know how many sticks of ram you purchased, assuming 2, 16 GB sticks(although you should have two RAM sticks in this case). but non-ECC isn't really that important & is slower on newer more modern hardware due to increased bandwidth speeds. Finally, your GPU is going to bottleneck your system about 25% because your CPU is too fast for the GPU to keep up.

A NVIDIA Quadro P6000 Or 1080 TI or (1070 Ti) would be better for this system.

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 22:03:59 GMT

Hi Kirk,

Yea at this point i will be sticking with the P4000, I have at the moment 2 x 16gb Samsung ECC memory, so I have confirmed that this ECC memory is compatible with my motherboard but not with the CPU so options were 1. to get regular non-ECC to match CPU or 2. get Xeon chip to match ECC mem, and I chose to do the latter.

Hopefully this will help speed it up. If nothing else I'm learning a lot a long the way.

What GPU you using? I am finding that with Advance Steel the GPU can be almost irrelevant.

My system will be used for Revit also going forward.

Happy New Year to you.

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Kirk_bailey — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 22:19:30 GMT

If you're going for speed, get Non-ECC. ECC is realistically only good in macs.

I don't believe Advance steel evens uses the GPU, only AutoCAD which prefers a good CPU anyway.

I use i7 7820HQ with a Quadro M620 with 16 GB of RAM for Cad, AS & Revit. Zero issues!

I use an EVGA GTX 1070 sc 8 GB with a Ryzen 7 2700x &32GB of RAM on my custom built.

side note, check out PCpartpicker for parts & system compatibility next time you're building or try a PC building sim and see what the specs will run first hand!

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 15:43:32 GMT

Interestingly I did use parts picker haha, did you work on any large models in advance steel kirk, I know larger models are generally done in Tekla anyway, just curious its probably a universal issue with Advance Steel and large medel, hopefully the Xeon i ordered will help.

Thank you for your input

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 17:44:00 GMT

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Kirk_bailey — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 16:00:58 GMT

I use Xref's for larger models. I should mention that what I consider a large job is like a religious temple or hospital though. The largest job I've ever done was 200-250 Ton. I phase out the model in separate DWG files & xref'd them to each other.

One thing I thought of, how is your ram installed in the motherboard? because you might be only running single channel when you have 4 DIMM slots which can support Dual channel memory. Install the ram stick in the first slot & the second stick in the 4th DIMM slot. Like: 1,x,x,2 where x represents an empty DIMM slot. This will help with throttling bandwidth issues.

otherwise, your computer thinks both sticks of ram are one item & runs as such, where the dual channel setup will jump from stick to stick allowing more power & faster flow of data!

Re: Disappointing results with PC Build.

Adrian.Mangan — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 18:14:39 GMT

Hi Kirk

Interesting thoughts on the RAM, it is installed in 2 and 4 from the cpu as suggested by the MB Manual, maybe I'll try 1 and 4 and see.