How fast is your Inventor PC really?

[Raider_71]

Hi guys,

We have had to do some testing on a bunch of Inventor PC's recently to determine which of the PC's needs to be replaced. Obviously we needed to find out which of the PC's are the worst eprformers as there was only budget to replace 50% of the design PC's. So we thought the Darwin theory will come in handy right... 🙂

Anyways I started searching on the net for toppics on how to benchmark an Inventor PC. Then I thought whats the point of using gaming benchmark tools because Inventor is not a game and there are more aspects than just graphics performance when it comes to percieved performance on an Inventor PC right.

So we decided to create our own Inventor benchmark tool which tests various aspects of an Inventor PC to give us an overview of our PC's performance. This then helped us make a decision as to whcih pc's to replace.

We have made the tool available free of charge to anyone interested in checking how their PC stacks up to their peers or friends. 🙂

Please download it here and post your results here as well if you want. Would be interesting to see what beast workstations are out there.

I would like to say thanks to Kirk #karthur1, for helping in testing the app.

Please feel free to send any suggestions our way. There is an email link in the app.

Download and Install

The application will work with Inventor 2014 to 2016 only.

IMPORTANT: After installation there will be an Inventor Bench icon on your desktop that looks like this: 

My resluts:

HP Elitebook 8560w with an SSD upgrade.

[adamsredlines]

Gents- have I missed a "scale" of whats good and bad for the IPI?

I am trying to resolve performance issues for a large assembly and my computer ran a 4.45.

While I see there are others who run 11 or possibly more...is this a linear scale or not exactly?

Thanks!

[Neil_Cross]

4.45 is pretty bad, you can build a PC for $600 with modern components and pull a 9 or 10 on this test.

But it's worth mentioning that this test in no way reflects large assembly capabilities, the entire test is based on a single part model.  But if your hardware is struggling that much on a single part then you know it'll have difficulties with large assemblies.

Can you post a screen shot of your score showing the full window?

[adamsredlines]

Here's a screen grab of the window.  Thanks for the help!

[Neil_Cross]

Unfortunately there's nothing you can do there.  I can see you've tried to upgrade as much as you can, new SSD, more RAM etc, but your CPU is a massive bottleneck.  It's a 7 year old CPU and that means the rest of your system is stuck in a time bubble from 7 years ago, and for some reason Hyper Threading is turned off which is going to make things even worse.  Some say that disabling HT is recommended for Inventor but its absolute BS, it doesn't make any tangible difference.

Being brutal, even if you didn't buy that 7 years ago, it's a 7 year old workstation with a CPU not fit for purpose.  Time to think about a new workstation.

[adamsredlines]

I appreciate the input.   You're not hurting my feelings at all...this is a company provided computer and I'm trying to talk them into getting at least one "good" computer to work with our master model.  It handles the small stuff fine but is killing us with the big assembly.

Thanks again!

[Neil_Cross]

Ah ok, sorry it's hard to tell on a forum! Some people test their own purchased PCs and can take it personally, like you're insulting their judgement somehow.

Another thing, you've got a very bizarre RAM combo there.  The bench test only shows 4 slots but you must have more than that? 16+16+4+4GB doesn't equal 44GB, so you must have more? Two sticks are at 1600MHz and the other two at 1333MHz, if the other two are slower than 1333MHz then your system has been running at a lower RAM frequency as the system will always run at the lowest installed frequency.  That can have quite a noticeable negative impact on performance, the difference between say DDR3 800MHz and 1600MHz could be significant.

I wouldn't get hung up on that at this point though, just be aware of it on future systems, try to avoid mixing RAM sticks to any great extent.

If you're considering a new system, there is no "best spec", you just need to understand which areas you need to invest in and spend wisely according to the budget you have.  I've got a number of videos on my channel whereby I've tested various workstations against large assembly workflows, comparing results, feel free to have a browse through them.  

[adamsredlines]

Thanks again, I've fed your responses up to the powers that be...and hope they get a good computer setup.

Last night it sounded like they are going to get one or two for us to run the big assembly on so your feedback is greatly appreciated.

[Mario-Villada]

Just sharing the results of my new build, a Kabilake I7 7700k overclocked to 4.6GHz with a 6GB GTX 1060 GPU, an NVME M.2 drive and 32 GB of RAM. I have to say not really impressed, it has a very similar performance as Skylake. and I could only overclock it by 9%, I was expecting a bit more overclocking capacity.

[Neil_Cross]

I think something might have maybe kicked up in the background whilst it was running the modelling test?  Your graphics & drawing times are consistent with other Kaby Lake & Skylake systems but those modelling times are almost double what they should be, that gimped your score.  Even at 4.6GHz you should be getting better modelling scores than that, my 4790K at 4.6GHz pulls a faster modelling time so something isn't right there.

Make sure Windows Update isn't running, if it's a fresh OS installation make sure Windows Search has been stopped, then run the 5 cycle extensive test and see what happens.

[Mario-Villada]

You were right @Neil_Cross, I followed your advice and got a bit better results. I couldn't disable windows updates though, but what I did is just disabled the network adapter. I also notice the test saves the parts in the documents folder so I thought If I set the default location of the documents folder to point to the m.2 drive it might get better results. Thanks.

I also noticed a message "Loading A360" whilst creating the first part of the test. not sure if there is a way to disable it even if it has any impact in the performance of inventor. I also logged off from vault.

[Bg45]

Thanks for sharing!.  I am looking at upgrading to and SSD and adding some RAM and I think i will do a test after each upgrade to see how it affects the results.

[Neil_Cross]

I've done a comprehensive HDD test with Inventor:

https://youtu.be/hq_26xbcnmA

Spoiler alert, it makes very little difference to almost everything except mass saving hundreds or thousands of files in one go.

[Bg45]

@Neil_Cross thank you for the link to that video.  I had actually just watched one of your other videos earlier today in which you analyzed the results that had been posted on this forum and found it very interesting.  The test you perform rare very useful and much appreciated.

I wonder if we could get them to make a separate Inventor Forum on here that was for the purpose of discussing hardware.  Since hardware is such an important (and ongoing) topic it would make sense to have a dedicated forum. We could share performance data with the Bench tool and evaluate new tech.  

The tests you perform are really valuable when deciding (or trying to convince management) to upgrade.

Just a thought

[pball]

@Raider_71 will there be a version supporting 2018 soon? Thanks

[Raider_71]

Hi,

Yes here it is: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=27102124B84C7E34!3357&authkey=!AFJrJN-BG_VOL5c&ithint=folder%2...

Cheers

[runningloriot]

Hello,

nice video. What cpu and graphics card would be the best choice for working with (large assemblies in) IV2018? The results of the benchmarks show less improvement in performance even in stress analysis with more than 4 cpu-cores. So the Intel XEON E3-1280 v6 is the best choice if you need ECC-RAM and do not need more than 64 GB of RAM?

Kind regards

[runningloriot]

This test with a 7700K and a E3-1280 v6 would be very helpful to compare.

Thank you so much for the videos!

[Bg45]

@Neil_Cross

I have been slowly working my way through your videos and i haven't come across much about Mother Boards. Do you have any advice on choosing a MoBo? Specifically regarding:

1. Chip set
2. Form Factor ( if size is not a problem should i automatically go with ATX or even WTX? or is there an advantage to a Micro or Mini other than space saving?)
3. I do not understand NVMe completely. Does it only apply to SSDs? is it the next evolution of PCIe? or just an expansion for the SSD interface?

I know "future-proofing" a computer is virtually impossible, but it seems like you could pick a MoBo that at least had the best chance to be able to handle an upgrade or two for a couple years?  If you have a video that covers this please point me to it!

[Charlie_Wright]

What do you think?

[runningloriot]

@ Bg45

First we have to know your kind of working. If you can use consumer hardware (no use 7/24) you should look for Intels Intel Core i7-7700K in combination with a board that supports:

-Socket 1151 😉

-at least one M.2 connector with PCIe 3.0 x4 for SSD (not for Inventor, but for a smooth system, also in future)

-at least one PCIe 3.0 x16 (mechanical an electrical) for graphics card

-depending on your parts and assemblies maybe the option to 64 GB RAM

-the chassis fan connectors in for your selected chassis

If you want to overclock the system and make no compromisses, the Z270 chipset is the best. The difference in price is not so big (esp. for the whole system).

The form factor depends on your chassis. I personally prefer standard-atx systems in a bigger chassis with good airflow and low noise. But in Neil's video, you can see the good looking and working mATX system. 🙂

NVME is a protocol for data transfer optimized for fast SSD at PCIe connectors. AHCI is the comparable standard for SATA-SSDs. Today, in my opinion, NVME is a must have in a Workstation. Maybe Inventor doesn't profit (now), but other software and maybe Inventor in the future.