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.

[tgregory3G7FA]

@vmcarbonneau That's not a bad idea.

Sixteen E5-1650 v4 CPUs sold on ebay in April for $100-$170

Seven E5-2640 v4 CPUs sold on ebay in April for $150-$180.

It's worth a shot. And could probably come out a few $$$ ahead in the end.

[Neil_Cross]

I vaguely remember someone in here reporting the issue of InvMark not working because of the language pack, so FYI InvMark v1.5 is out now and resolves that.

[Timothy.Ward2]

maybe I should have gone intel lol.

[troyD5S9A]

Hey guys, I have just built my first CAD rig after studying alot of @Neil_Cross videos, I think I have done pretty well choosing hardware for a medium budget. This is my home based workstation for my own business.

My inventor bench result seems pretty decent since I enabled XMP profile but I think my HDD speeds are bad.

My main concern is HDD1 does not detect my m.2 SSD which is my main drive with OS and inventor installed.

Any thoughts to why this is?

I have a lot of bloat on this drive as I have taken it directly from my old laptop without a fresh OS install. There is a lot of background programs running during the test.

[Anonymous]

Hi guys
I had some suspicions about the Inventor Benchmark app. But after this result my suspicions were only confirmed. It looks like a big fraud, a huge bull****.
Note this result and the configuration of this workstation. The system runs on an ssd nvme with 3500mbps read and even then the result was ridiculous. You can't believe an app like this. Must be a partner in some hardware company.

[Neil_Cross]

Your workstation is poor by todays standards.  There's a saying, when you're the only person in the room not laughing, maybe the comedian isn't the problem.

I would advise you on why your workstation is poor but you have a terrible attitude. 

[christian.neumayer4FM4C]

Good day to you, Mr Soares!

It seems to my that your suspicions are based on an incomplete understanding of the kind of hardware capabilities that the software named "Inventor" requires. It is well documented that the single most important part of a machine running Inventor is the CPU, specifically a single CPU thread. You can find many hardware comparisons for this one metric - I've added one here for your convenience [1].

The point I would like you to consider is this: Do your research. Find people with similar experiences and figure out what they did differently and how that helped. Examine your assumptions, treat people and their (voluntary) work with respect and think before you write.

Good day, and best of luck.

[1]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Xeon-E5-2640-v4-vs-Intel-i9-10900K/2752vs3730

[tgregory3G7FA]

@Anonymous sorry you're upset.  But the benchmark isn't the problem.  Your poor score is because you're using an ANCIENT CPU.  Your score is on par with similar ancient PC's.

Your CPU is only 2.5ghz.  Modern CPU's are running up to 4-5ghz.  HUGE difference.

Your CPU only supports DDR3 1333.  Modern CPU's are running DDR4 3200 and higher. HUGE difference.

Your CPU is PCIe 3.  Modern CPU's are PCIe 4

Your L1,L2,L3 cache is 5x less.

How's your CPU cooling? Have you replaced your CPU thermal paste in the past 5 years? I bet not.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I may have been rude.
But it is revolting to invest in equipment to improve your performance and after so many efforts get mediocre results.
I had another workstation inferior to this one and the result was the same. In my ignorance this doesn't seem to make any sense.
Thanks for the answer.

[cadman777]

I agree, CPU is #1 in building an Inventor machine.

Can you or anybody else tell me what the fastest Intel CPU is today, and what is the most stable OC that can be done to it? Also, what's the most stable motherboard that has OC'ing capabilities?

Thanx

[tgregory3G7FA]

@Anonymous when did you 'invest' in a 9yro E5-2640?

[leowarren34]

Hi @cadman777,

Currently, the Intel 11th Gen i9-11900K is the champion right now on the Invmark leaderboard but the 5800X from AMD is a close second.

https://invmark.cadac.com/#/ 

[Neil_Cross]

Thanks @leowarren34 

Yes I've made an entire leaderboard now which is growing daily, if you dive into the complete report we do try and capture the name of the motherboard if the vendor has populated the relevant fields with their model data.

Also, my entire YouTube channel for the last few years has been pretty much dedicated to this topic, along with the AU class I did which should have answered any questions that anyone has on this

That class is a couple of years old now but all the info is still 100% accurate.

[christian.neumayer4FM4C]

Let me add that there is also the issue of availability, cost efficiency (in terms of Inventor performance) and (enterprise-level) support. At the time of this post, it's hard to find pre-built workstations (with the accompanying support) that have CPUs with better performance than 10th-gen Intel (see also my post in the german forums on this: Link).

Your best (read: most cost effective) bet may be an i9-10900 (with or without "K"). Ryzen 5000 is mostly available in the consumer space (read: self-assembled), same with 11th-gen Intel.

If I am wrong with this statement (please, let me be wrong!), I would appreciate any pointers on where to source (in Central Europe) workstations with better performance and enterprise-level support.

Cheers!

[cadman777]

@leowarren34 / @Neil_Cross ,

Thanx for the quick replies!

OK, I'll check it all out.

I've seen your video, Neil, and it's very good.

My main interest is in knowing what people are currently using on a daily basis and how they find the reliability of it, esp. for OC'ing. I do my own OC'ing b/c I found it to be much better than the out-of-the-box OC'ing. I found Asus m/b's the best for OCing after getting burned by EVGA, but that was before the newer gen boards. So was just wondering what's the latest-and-greatest hardware.

[Neil_Cross]

I doubt anyone here has had sufficient exposure across all board vendors to be able to pass opinion on that, I would suggest checking out this guys channel https://youtu.be/X0_ZAk83R-I

[cadman777]

@christian.neumayer4FM4C 

I tried gaming systems ONCE (DigitalStorm), and am done with them. Their builder was very good, but once I began having problems with it, I was screwed, b/c I can't do what their builder does (his skills are way above my paygrade). But if it's that difficult, then there's an inherent problem w/the hardware combos (which I discovered after digging into the problems).

I've tried out-of-the-box workstations such as HP, Dell, etc., and am done with them.

Now I build my own, b/c of reliability, maintenance and OC'ing.

So far, I'm sold on Asus m/b's, Intel processors, G-Skill RAM, Samsung SSD's and Nvidia graphics (I use a GTX 8GB gaming card for 1/3 the price of a Quadro, and it works good enough), Corsair quiet dustproof cases and EVGA Gold power supplies. But things change so there's no telling what's the best bang for the buck today.

[cadman777]

Thanx Neil!

Yup, those are pretty much the lineup that I look at, but narrowed it down to MSI, Asus and EVGA.

However, MSI boards tend to be a bit pricey compared to Asus.

I really can't trust EVGA again. The problem I had w/them which ***I*** discovered was a bent pin on a brand new RMA warranty replacement m/b they sent me. How did that get past QC?! The dang thing kept running with weird problems, so after hours and days of troubleshooting (and lost time working that nobody paid for!) I decided to go back to square-1 and check the basics. After looking at the CPU socket under a 40x stereo microscope, a few BENT PINS showed up! So I sent it back (b/c I don't bend pins!). The next one they sent me had 2 bent pins (checked BEFORE installing the CPU)! How can I trust a board producer like that? Then they sent me a replacement upgrade, but it was used, so I sold it on fleaBay and moved over to Asus. Best decision I ever made. MSI was waaaay too pricey for my wallet.

[leowarren34]

@christian.neumayer4FM4C Part availability at the moment sucks.

Even for laptops, the whole chip shortage isn't helping what so ever and we're not even competing against scalpers and miners.

I'm currently waiting for the new precision series to go on sale, they were announced a month ago but haven't heard anything since.

[christian.neumayer4FM4C]

@cadman777 

I absolutely hear you. It has been 15 years since I built my first custom PC and I never looked back. However, this is feasible only for my private machine, as I can afford to sink time and effort there if I break something.

On the company's side it's much more important to have a level of support that is not possible (or affordable) for most individuals. I'm prepared to "sacrifice" some performance if it means I can get 1-day replacement machines in the office or send something in if it's "wonky" instead of tinkering with it myself.

The flip side of the matter is probably if you're in-between those worlds (self-employed, freelancing or other). I assume it's not easy to decide the best possible course there.