Slow PC
-
@thanksaj said:
I'm finding more and more people will load up a system with RAM but not get an equivalent processor. Having 16GB of RAM and a GPU with 2GB of RAM (assuming DDR5 but not sure what that card has) is important, but if you have an i3 or low-to-mid-range i5, that will be your bottleneck. Chances are your disk won't be your bottleneck, but there is always that as a possibility too.
I don't think that you'll find any functioning CAD shop running anything less than an i7. It is normal to run Xeons.
-
@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Not likely for CAD. Requires a lot of bandwidth and CAD doesn't actually render all that much
Not for CAD per se, we render for our sales brochures and technical manuals. So the graphics guys will take the drawings from the design department and, well, sexy them up I guess. This can take several hours of processing. I don't generally get involved, so I'm not really sure exactly what we do. I'm pretty sure what we do is overkill, but that's just another bugbear of mine!
Oh ok, that makes way more sense. Maybe, but it normally takes longer than that to get into a cloud processing queue. So if the goal is to not deal with the hardware, maybe. If the goal is speed, not likely.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
I'm finding more and more people will load up a system with RAM but not get an equivalent processor. Having 16GB of RAM and a GPU with 2GB of RAM (assuming DDR5 but not sure what that card has) is important, but if you have an i3 or low-to-mid-range i5, that will be your bottleneck. Chances are your disk won't be your bottleneck, but there is always that as a possibility too.
I don't think that you'll find any functioning CAD shop running anything less than an i7. It is normal to run Xeons.
We have ~8 CAD machines. I was rooting for Xeons but got shot down due to price (it wasn't that much more but a $3000 machine is already a bit much). i7s did fit the bill though. We did try some i5s but I got nothing but complaints from the two users we had one them about the speed of renderings and of their program.
-
@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
I'm finding more and more people will load up a system with RAM but not get an equivalent processor. Having 16GB of RAM and a GPU with 2GB of RAM (assuming DDR5 but not sure what that card has) is important, but if you have an i3 or low-to-mid-range i5, that will be your bottleneck. Chances are your disk won't be your bottleneck, but there is always that as a possibility too.
I don't think that you'll find any functioning CAD shop running anything less than an i7. It is normal to run Xeons.
We have ~8 CAD machines. I was rooting for Xeons but got shot down due to price (it wasn't that much more but a $3000 machine is already a bit much). i7s did fit the bill though. We did try some i5s but I got nothing but complaints from the two users we had one them about the speed of renderings and of their program.
The performance difference between the i5 and i7 is much more remarkable than most people realize.
-
@coliver said:
We have ~8 CAD machines. I was rooting for Xeons but got shot down due to price (it wasn't that much more but a $3000 machine is already a bit much). i7s did fit the bill though. We did try some i5s but I got nothing but complaints from the two users we had one them about the speed of renderings and of their program.
I've worked relatively recently on CAD-like machines (doing CUDA work rather than graphical) and our standard was dual Xeons. They were pretty nice
-
@thanksaj said:
The performance difference between the i5 and i7 is much more remarkable than most people realize.
Generation also matters a lot. Biggest hard difference between them is that the i7 always has more cache. If you are hitting the cache, that is huge. If your workload does not, it's negligable. Outside of that, i7 and i5 share the same cores. Check the clock speed, core count and HT options and likely if they match, they will roughly match outside of the cache difference.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
We have ~8 CAD machines. I was rooting for Xeons but got shot down due to price (it wasn't that much more but a $3000 machine is already a bit much). i7s did fit the bill though. We did try some i5s but I got nothing but complaints from the two users we had one them about the speed of renderings and of their program.
I've worked relatively recently on CAD-like machines (doing CUDA work rather than graphical) and our standard was dual Xeons. They were pretty nice
One of my engineers would have loved to work on a dual Xeon box (who wouldn't). He is constantly running into a bottleneck when it comes to doing some of his bigger projects. Thankfully he is really the only one that has that many parts on a single project as no one else is seeing the same slowdowns. He is also running on a 2nd gen i7 which may be part of the issue.
-
Generation is really a big factor.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
The performance difference between the i5 and i7 is much more remarkable than most people realize.
Generation also matters a lot. Biggest hard difference between them is that the i7 always has more cache. If you are hitting the cache, that is huge. If your workload does not, it's negligable. Outside of that, i7 and i5 share the same cores. Check the clock speed, core count and HT options and likely if they match, they will roughly match outside of the cache difference.
Yup, I agree.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
-
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
-
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
You'd probably need a new motherboard too, no?
-
@thanksaj said:
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
You'd probably need a new motherboard too, no?
Probably would need to build anew. Hence the not enough money part. I do have dual 6950s (with the 6970 firmware unlocked) so I could probably still use those.
-
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
You'd probably need a new motherboard too, no?
Probably would need to build anew. Hence the not enough money part. I do have dual 6950s (with the 6970 firmware unlocked) so I could probably still use those.
I would imagine.
-
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
Gen 1 i7 on my wife's graphic design PC...triple channel memory....lasted 6 years before the mobo died. I wept a little...lol!
-
@technobabble said:
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
Gen 1 i7 on my wife's graphic design PC...triple channel memory....lasted 6 years before the mobo died. I wept a little...lol!
The original i series had a lot of overheating issues. The second gen was much more stable, and they've gotten better and better with each new gen.
-
@thanksaj now that's interesting. Occasionally the PC would reboot usually overnight and be sitting on the Asus boot screen claiming to have gotten hot or something like that. I never wrote it down because my wife would just start the PC and start working.
-
@technobabble said:
@coliver said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Generation is really a big factor.
Fourth gens have been performing well from what I hear. My i7 in my laptop is 3rd gen.
I've still got a first Gen i7 in my primary gaming desktop. Wish I had the money to update.
Gen 1 i7 on my wife's graphic design PC...triple channel memory....lasted 6 years before the mobo died. I wept a little...lol!
My mobo died last year, couldn't afford to rebuild so bought a new mobo...
-
@coliver I have explained this to the wife, but she wants a NOS motherboard. And I bow to the queen's wishes!
-
@technobabble said:
@coliver I have explained this to the wife, but she wants a NOS motherboard. And I bow to the queen's wishes!
NOS? Is that a brand?