 | | From: | Art Woodbury | | Subject: | OT: new workstation performance | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:31:14 -0500 |
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 | I built a new SW workstation last week, and I'm disappointed with the benchmark
performance.
The hardware list:
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
CPU: Athlon 64 3500+
RAM: 1 Gb Corsair PC3200
Drives: Two WD 74 Gb 10000 RPM Raptors in a striped RAID array
Video: nVidia Quadro FX1100
OS: Win 2K, SP4
I have the very latest BIOS etc. And I've experimented with video drivers from the
certified 5.3.0.3 to the beta 7.1.2.4
SW 2005 SPECapc benchmark:
Score: 1.17
Graphics: .86
CPU: 1.58
I/O: 1.61
I'm quite happy with the CPU and I/O scores, but I think the Graphics score is low.
Mike Wilson's "ship-in-a-bottle": 31.5 sec for 50 iterations
(with doc props left exactly as Mike's file sets them)
I've Googled the NG archives for performance/benchmark comments, and I still think my
video performance could be better. Maybe I'm just a malcontent?
Any comments/insight much appreciated.
Art W.
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| | From: | P. | | Subject: | Re: OT: new workstation performance | | Date: | 20 Jan 2005 17:24:34 -0800 |
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| I just popped off a SIB today with all kinds of stuff running on
1600x1200 and got 28 s. So you should be getting better than that
although 31s is not too shabby. I have been down to 18s when I cheated
and tried to get the lowest possible score.
The SPEC benchmark is very graphics card biased. I have seen it give
good grades to a system with a really slow processor and have seen bad
grades for a system with a really good processor depending on the
graphics card installed.
I would consider unstripping the HDD. That doesn't seem to help much
and can be a source of unreliability. My single raptor is pretty darn
fast on its own.
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| | From: | Dale Dunn | | Subject: | Re: OT: new workstation performance | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:50:36 GMT |
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| Did you set your display resolution to 1280 x 1024? It's in the
instructions, but I forgot to do it. The benchmark seems to set the SW
window size to some fraction of the display size. So, if your resolution is
higher, you're rendering too large a window. Also, digging into the drivers
and setting the "custom OpenGL application setting" to Solidworks can buy a
few more percent.
The Ship-in-a-bottle is also very sensitive to the size of the SW window.
Looking at your score, I'm guessing you're running at 1600 x 1200.
Oh yeah, turning off themes in XP will buy a few more percent as well.
I got my QuadroFX1100 up to 1.28, from .98. on my Athlon64 3400+. Your CPU
and IO are comparable to mine (but a little better).
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