CPU for Autodesk Inventor

[Denithor]

Building a system for a friend for Inventor. Price is somewhat an issue but I'm also concerned with the level of performance at the different price points (don't want to cheap out if spending a little more gets to a significantly higher level of performance). System will not be overclocked so keep that in mind.

Possible configurations:

i5 750 + 8GB DDR3
i7 860 + 8GB DDR3
i7 920 + 12GB DDR3

Few questions:

Is the $80 difference between 750 and 860 worth it (does HT help Inventor)?

There is a significant cost difference stepping up from 860 to 920. It does give access to 12GB RAM - is this a real advantage in Inventor? In other regards it's a bit of a step down as the Turbo mode of the 920 does not push as high as that of the 860 and the base speed is also lower - does this neutralize any advantage of the higher memory capacity?

 

[Arkaign]

Haven't used it in a few years myself, but from what I see here :

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13727144

It looks like more ram is indeed highly important. It would also greatly surprise me if it wasn't multithreaded pretty well, which would tend to negate the impact of 'turbo mode'.

Personally, considering the application itself is over $5,000, and you're not planning on overclocking, why not :

Core i7-960 (3.2ghz) w/12GB DDR3

Then when ram prices eventually tumble, you'll have the ability to upgrade to 24gb (X58 supports this, but also confirm that your board choice supports this as well), and the 6-core 12-thread Core i9 is slated for Socket 1366.

 

[Denithor]

Know of any benchmarks floating around showing effects of HT and higher RAM on performance?

 

[heyheybooboo]

Not sure ....

but i suspect the higher turbo would have a greater impact over the additional spawned threads of HT. This might well be a case where Inventor will shine with faster cores

And I also suspect depending upon the size of the assemblies there is a point of diminishing return in bumping up the RAMs. Performance will be limited by the 'weakest link' --- disk I/O (surely a SSD will make a big difference) and the application accelerators (or lack thereof) in the graphics drivers.

Is your buddy moving over a workstation card? That may also drive other hardware decisions.

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[Denithor]

Current innards (e6600/3GB/FX540/PSU) will migrate into an old Dell. We are considering either a 3870 or some variety of FireGL card (not entirely convinced how much improvement you would see for the huge difference in investment to step up to a "workstation" card). I may try him with the 3870 and if it isn't fast enough switch down the road to a FireGL/Quadro.

 

[Arkaign]

Denithor, I apologize. I hadn't touched AutoCad or Inventor for years (early '06 last time), and I assumed that by now multi-threading would have taken hold there, as it has with Photoshop, Premiere, Maya, and so on.

According to my research of the current version, it is still only using a single core! Apparently the structure of data building is the cause of this problem, as the work is sequential in nature, and the previous string needs to be completed before it can move on to the next calculation.

Bearing that in mind, it seems the very highest performance core you can get your hands on will help. Is this system only going to be used for Inventor, or will you use other apps on it? As it is, it would probably run just about the same or better on a cheapish 3.33ghz E8600 as it would on a QX9850. And the forthcoming hex-cores won't apparently make a difference until they totally start over with the codebase.

Some related info here : http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=6254613&#6254613

Again, sorry for the bad advice. Looks like the priorities are :

(*)- 64-bit OS
(*)- Lots of Ram
(*)- Fastest IPC-per-core processor you can find
(*)- Supported video card
(*)- Fast disk access (raid and/or SSD)

 

[heyheybooboo]

Here is the FireGL softmod wiki for Radeons. The folks over at Guru3d have the scripts and an outline of what you need to do if you are interested. Lookee here ---> http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18

Last time I cruised the threads they were posting guidelines and scripts for 64-bit OSes.

I modded an HD 2900 Pro a couple years ago and it's still chugging right along - in Win2k

I primarily do 2d line drawings (floorplans, building elevations and sections, site plans, etc) and it significantly improved my screen regeneration.

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