Need help Picking Processor

[xeledon20005]

Currently charged with picking out a machine for autocad machines at my work.

I am limited to Dell, all I need help with is picking out the processor:

my options are:

Single processor- intel Xeon E5-2620 (six core 2.0 GHZ 15m, 7.2gt/s,Turbo)


Dual Processors - two intel xeon E5-2603 (Four Core 1.8GHz, 10m 6.4gts)

Those are my options I will be running the Radeon Graphics card firepro v5900

Also could anyone enlighten me on the specfic difference pro/cons of having 1 or 2 processors these computers will be doing Autocad for the most intensive program.

Thank you

 

[inf64]

Support for multi-core processors

You are using a computer with a multi-core processor, and you have noticed that the Inventor.exe process does not use 100% of your available CPU resources. You want to know if Autodesk® Inventor™ supports multi-core processors.


Autodesk Inventor 2009 and later versions support multi-core technology in some very specific areas of the product, including:

• Animations and renderings in Studio
• ASM (Autodesk Shape Manager) kernel
• Task Scheduler

In release 2012 we added multi-core processing capability for

• Ray tracing
• Hidden line calculation in drawings (when the Enable background updates checkbox in the Application Options > Drawing tab is checked. It is on by default)

In release 2013 we added multi-core processing capability for

• Stress Analysis (no special options or settings are required)
  

In order to fully benefit from multi-core processors, you need to use multi-threaded software. Unfortunately, Inventor is currently a single-threaded application.
On a dual-core computer, a CPU-intensive operation that uses 100% of the resources of a single-core processor will only use a maximum of 50% of the CPU for that same operation on a dual-core computer, and only 6% of each CPU on a 16-core computer. This is shown in the following image:

Due to the lack of multi-threading, Inventor is not capable of using more than 50% of the CPU on a dual-core computer, so there is no significant performance gain over a single CPU computer.
The only way to take advantage of a dual-core processor when using Inventor is to run multiple Inventor sessions on your computer.
Starting in Inventor 2009, you can, however, use multiple processes in Task Scheduler by clicking Settings menu > Multiple Processes.

The number of processes you can use is not limited to the number of processors available. If desired, you can increase the number of processes until 100% CPU activity is achieved on all of the processors.
Situation for drawings (idw and Inventor dwg files)
Since 2012, Inventor uses multiple CPU cores to calculate precise drawing views. Here are some of the rules that are in effect:

1. Every view gets 1 InventorViewCompute.exe
2. A maximum of 4 active InventorViewCompute.exe processes can be assigned per CPU core.
   Example:
   1. If you have a machine with 8 cores, there can be a maximum of 32 InventorViewCompute.exe running in the background
   2. If you have a drawing with more than 32 views, InventorViewCompute.exe processes for all views will be created but only 32 processes will be actively computing.
      All other InventorViewCompute.exe processes will stay idle (even though they show up in Task Manager).
   3. Once a slot opens up (i.e. some other view finishes the precise calculation), one of the idle processes will become active and starts computing.
3. Deleting a view that is being computed, will automatically stop the InventorViewCompute.exe associated to that view.
4. Closing a document while views are computing will stop ALL InventorViewCompute.exe processes for that document.
5. On a next open, new InventorViewCompute.exe processes will be created to resume the precise view calculation.

Taken from here.
So I'd say you are better of with E5-2620 (six core 2.0 GHZ 15m, 7.2gt/s,Turbo), especially since it has higher clock(with Turbo more noticeable) and 50% more cache, all factors that contribute to its much better single thread performance (of which AutoCad depends the most).

 

[xeledon20005]

Taken from here.
So I'd say you are better of with E5-2620 (six core 2.0 GHZ 15m, 7.2gt/s,Turbo), especially since it has higher clock(with Turbo more noticeable) and 50% more cache, all factors that contribute to its much better single thread performance (of which AutoCad depends the most).

Wow thanks! I almost went with the 2 processors combination, there is no price difference so the 6 core is still the best choice?

 

[NTMBK]

Yeah, the 6 core is the best of those two choices. But are you not able to choose a single quad-core with a higher clock speed? My current workstation has a pair of E5-2643- they're quad cores at 3.3GHz, which gives pretty good single threaded performance.

 

[xeledon20005]

Yeah, the 6 core is the best of those two choices. But are you not able to choose a single quad-core with a higher clock speed? My current workstation has a pair of E5-2643- they're quad cores at 3.3GHz, which gives pretty good single threaded performance.

I was only able to pick one of those 2 processors listed due to price constraints. In the future I will remember a higher clocked quad. Thanks for your input .