Performance issues

[djohannesen]

We have 2 seats of Ironcad on different spec. computers. For a test, we dragged 2 blocks into the scene as seperate parts. We then Triballed them to copy 30 times at a distance of 100mm.

 

System 1 took ~6 sec., system 2 took ~28 seconds. We tried a few other things & the results were of a similar nature.

 

We were advised by our Var that hard disk access is very important. As seen below, really only the ram & processesor vary.

 

Any ideas on the reason behind the huge differences?

 

System 1: Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz; Asus P4S8X-X (8 x AGP) mother board; Asus V9180 Geoforce 4MX 440 (with 8 x AGP) graphic card; 512 MB DDR PC 2700 ram; 80GB 7200 RPM HDD.

 

System 2: Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz; Gigabyte GA-8IRX ATX (4 x AGP) mother board; Jaton 3DForce2 MX200 64MB (4 x AGP) graphic card; 512 MB DDR PC 2100 ram; IBM Deskstar 60GXP 7200 RPM HDD.

 

Both systems run XP PRO.

 

Regards,

David J

[Mike Twining]

Your VAR is incorrect in this case. The hard drive access will only become a factor when saving, or when working with large models. Typically when running IronCAD, everything you are workin on should be in RAM. If you either have a small ammount of RAM or an extremely large file, then you start working from the pagefile, which is just hard drive space allocated as fake memory (overflow really).

 

I would also say, that in this case, that not only the processor and memory differences are contributing to the slow-down, but also the video cards. IronCAD still needs to draw your parts when their locations are calculated, which falls mostly on the Video card. I noticed that you are running both "MX" versions of the Geforce "gamer" cards. The MX versions are stripped-down affordable cards with less horse-power than regular Geforce cards. My bet is that if you put a CAD card in your slower computer, you might be able to come close to the performance of the faster computer without changing anything else (close being a relative term... heheh).

 

So... basically it is just a hardware difference. You want to test the hard drives, do a "save time" test (and in actuallity this will still be dependent on memory and processor speeds).

 

Hope that helps. I will say, that I went from a ATI 9700 to a NVIDIA Quadro4 and there was a HUGE performance increase... same machine.

 

Hope that helps. Tell your boss to spend the big bucks on processor, memory, and MOST importantly, video card. I love watching big models rotate in real-time. It is like geek-porn!

 

Mike T

 

 

[Chris Lohman]

I wouldn't discount the processor in that comparison either. There's a big difference between a 1.6 and a 2.4 when calculations are high. When you ran your test your hardware was used as follows:

 

1) CPU calculates new geometry and positions

2) RAM holds on to everything while it's occuring (CPU BUS speed comes into play the most here)

3) Graphics Card renders the new facets.

 

You can take the graphics card out of the picture by doing the following to BOTH systems.

 

"Within IronCAD"

Pull down the Tools Menu

Goto Options

Goto Render {tab}

Uncheck Automatic

Check Software

Close Options

Close IronCAD

 

Right click on the display and choose properties

Goto Settings {tab}

Click on Advanced [button]

Goto Troubleshoot {tab}

Slide the hardware accelerator all the way down to "None"'

Close out of the Display Settings [ok]

 

Launch IronCAD and re-run your test.

 

If the test is the same; then it's cpu.

If the test is slower; then it's graphics card.

 

While running the test also insure that you have no other applications open and that your ram is avaialble. Furthermore insure that there is no ironcad.exe process running in the background.

 

 

It has been my experience that graphics card have the largest impact on rotating assemblies. Because of that; I would expect you to achieve the greatest imrovement in cpu speed and front side bus speed for your example. Once those 30 blocks are in the scene though; the graphics card will be a massive player once you rotate them. As mentioned previously; moving up to a Quadro card will make a huge improvement in that area.