yang686526

processors - does sw2008 have a preference?
hi, after looking at the sw website and sizing up a few workstations, i have a few options for new workstations. i can get the ram and video card i want. what i don't know is what to make of the intel processors. i've seen some conflicting recommendations on what to choose.
would a xeon be better than a quad with the same speed? the website for solidworks doesn't specify any preferences.
assuming that all other features of the workstation were the same, would i notice a difference at all?

steven fahey, cet
from what i've read, the quads do not improve performance of sw for general use.
however, if you will be doing any rendering, fea, or running other processes, the extra cores will help significantly.

running what kind of other processes? are you talking about excel running in the background, or something bigger?
still reading up on the terminology, so the differences between these processors isn't clear anyway. i probably could have posed my question better because now i discover some xeons are quads and some aren't. ???? don't try to explain it to me it's like talking to a wall.
i don't intend to use the pdm works, but maybe we will get cosmos in the future. the guy paying the bills won't cough up the extra thousand dollars if i can't make a plausible case for the performance.
cheers
steven fahey, cet
steven,
i bought a dual core because the speed for those cores was faster than for the quad cores, plus it was a better price. swx does not benefit directly from multiple processors since the necessary computations are too linear and cannot be parsed out over multiple cores. if you are an intensive user and have several other things going on besides swx then multi-cores can benefit. fea and photorendering are two of the more common apps that would be intensive enough to push consideration of multi-cores.
btw, i set (confined/dedicated) one core to swx and the other core is free to handle everything else. i also am using vist home premium 64-bit and have had no problems at all. this version is "approved" for swx plus the 64-bit automatically uses all available ram (no more hassle with the /3g switch in xp!). when i plug in my usb drive i am also asked if i want to use it as additional ram. nice!
- - -updraft