Maximizing SolidWorks Performance (MSWP-12-#6)

Processor Clock Speed

Hardware is an essential aspect of a properly managed SolidWorks environment.  It is also very important to remember that a computer system is just that, a system, and it should be treated as such.  Upgrading a single aspect of your workstation is unlikely to help your performance if you have not considered the rest of the system to ensure that your one change is not exposing another, equally painful, bottleneck.

Processor speed can be one of the more difficult areas of performance to get your arms around.

When testing we found that the improvement that you may gain from improved processor speed can be easily lost if the system is short on RAM for the give task. So for this test we found that running from our baseline gave us inaccurate results so the results we show below are with an ample amount of RAM.

Processors can be expensive and choosing one speed over another usually means replacing one chip for another unless the vendor allows over-clocking. Most of your major manufactures do not allow for their systems to be over-clocked.  For our testing BOXX Technologies, lent us a machine. They over-clock their processors by default giving you the fastest processor possible for the money. BOXX systems are built to handle the heat created by over-clocking so you do not lose any life from your processor, like you would if you took an off the shelf system and over-clocked it.

If you remember from our first article; our test baseline had a runtime of 5:01:35 and we measured time for the areas of Opens, Rotations, Modeling, Rebuilds, Switching Sheets, Saves and Closes.

We saw an improvement of .6% going from 3.46 to 3.75, an additional improvement of 6.6% going from 3.75 to 4.02, and we gained another 8.5% going from 4.02 to 4.29.

Overall we saw a 12.1% improvement gain over-clocking from 3.46 to 4.29.

Please check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All of these articles will be stored in the category of Maximizing SolidWorks Performance and links to each with their release date are listed below:

• Maximize SolidWorks Performance White Paper (7/2/12)


• MSWP-12-#1 Introduction (7/9/12)


• MSWP-12-#2 Windows Visual and User Settings (7/12/12)


• MSWP-12-#3 SolidWorks Options Set to Optimal (7/17/12)


• MSWP-12-#4 Graphics Cards (7/19/12)


• MSWP-12-#5 Turn Off SolidWorks Add-Ins (7/24/12)


• MSWP-12-#6 Processor Clock Speed (7/26/12)


• MSWP-12-#7 Reducing SolidWorks Mates and Rigid Subassemblies (7/31/12)


• MSWP-12-#8 Number of Processor Cores (8/2/12)


• MSWP-12-#9 SolidWorks Graphic Settings (8/7/12)


• MSWP-12-#10 Network Storage and Anti-Virus (8/9/12)


• MSWP-12-#11 Level of Detail (8/14/12)


• MSWP-12-#12 RAM and SWAP File (8/16/12)


• MSWP-12-#13 Hard Drives (8/21/12)


• MSWP-12-#14 Lightweight and Large Assembly Mode (8/23/12)


• MSWP-12-#15 Optimal Configuration and Conclusion (8/28/12)

Thanks,

Josh Altergott, CATI Support Manager

Adrian Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director