Unix vs. nt

[Bob Towe]

can anyone tell what is a good system to run SolidDesigner on in the NT platform and which would be better single or duel processor. How many people are running SolidDesigner on NT and what do they think of it.

[Daniel Toro]

1) I've run SD on a Single Pentium Pro200 with an Matrox Millenium 8mb Video card, 128 mb of ram, the performance was equivalent to a HP715-100mhz with 24bit Zcard. 2) Currently SD does'nt take advantage of a second processor. 3) My recomendation is the following - Single Pentium II 300mhz, 128mb Ram min, Matrox Millenium II with 16mb AGP Video Card, Ultra 6.4Gb ATA Hard drive min, 19" Monitor Min (SD NT prefers 1280x1024 Resolution). You can buy a Dell XPSD300 with this configuration for about $3,300.00

[Gene Nevill]

Sorry,I sent direct without regard to anyone else wanting info. SD on an NT box with large scale models only appears to run well on the NEW Kayak from HP. SInce SD doesn't take advantage of parallel processing, dual processors don't help. HP get around the slowness created by the single intel processor(even at 300Mhz) by moving the intensive processes to other boards!! Note down side $11-15K. Rumor has told me that SD on the full blown Kayak is somewhat better than a C160, but I haven't seen the system yet. We may try to bring one in to our facility as a trial unit. We won't migrate from unix on our work stations until we can confirm this big hearsay.

[Claus Brod]

Bob, you will see improved performance on dual-processor systems in the following situations: - You are using ME10, WorkManager or our Dynamic Viewer product along with SolidDesigner. - You are running big STL post-processing jobs in the background. - You don't have 3D hardware acceleration in your PC. In this case, the second processor will handle most of the software rendering tasks. If the above does not apply, get a single-processor machine. We have seen very good performance on Pentium II 266 MHz systems, such as the current HP Kayak XW line. 300 MHz systems are faster, but oftentimes also a lot more expensive, so that I'd rather use the money for buying more RAM. If you need high-end performance in graphics, definitely consider HP's Visualize fx4 board. It is expensive, but it is the fastest board I have ever seen on a PC (when used with SolidDesigner).

[Claus Brod]

Bob,<p> I've just noticed there were previous replies. Please note that the Millenium boards are not officially supported by CoCreate. We are testing the Millenium II, however, and so far the results look OK.<p> About the performance level: Our internal results indicate a 266 MHz Pentium II system is very close to the C160. Also, we are working on PC-specific performance improvements which will show up in subsequent releases.<p> Claus

[John Hagey]

I would like to know if CoCreate has approved the use of the Matrox Millenium II graphics board for Solid Designer. I am hoping to run Solid Designer on a Dell computer (300 MHz, 128Meg, 6 Gig and Matrox Millenium II - 8 Meg) has anybody tried this and how fast is it?

[Claus Brod]

Hi,<p> just to keep you up to date: We are now officially supporting the Matrox Millenium II in its 8 and 16 MB configurations.<p> Claus

[Donnie Drake]

I am running SD 5.1 on a Micron Powerdigm XKU NT based with dual 300 processors, 256 meg ram (it can go up to a gig), a Fire GL 3000 video card with 8 meg of vram and 32 meg of dram on the board, and a 4 gig hard drive. I ran bench marks on the system with a single 300 then again with the dual 300's and noticed only slight differences in the time it took to preform the same tasks. The differance between a p200 box with 128 meg or ram compared to the p300 (single) with 128 meg of ram was just under half the time on nearly all the applications preformed. But the way the system sits as I said above I can get SD running in 55 seconds, much faster than the 2:30 seconds it took on the p200. We are into the system around $5k without a monitor of course. I have the benchmark in an excell file if anyone wants a look-see you can e-mail me. Donnie

[Dan White]

We have SolidDesigner running on dozens of PC's and Unix workstations(equally split). We have C160's and B180's on the unix side and Dell dual 300's and dual 400's on the NT side. All have between 256 and 512mb RAM and all have the best graphic cards avail. On the NT side we use Elso Gloria,Fire GL and Intergraph intense 3D Pro 3410T. I have both a dual 300mhz Dell w/Elso Gloria and a C160 w/visualize 8 graphics on my desk. Although the Dell actually outperforms the HP box (slightly), there is no contest when it comes to robustness, Unix Rules. This is the general consensus within the building. NT crashes are an order of magnitude worse than on UNIX. The only NT users that are satisfied are the ones that have never used SD on a UNIX box and or have experience with other software packages like UG,PRO-E,Intergraph SDRC etc. Where crashes are more common that with SolidDesigner. There is no question that the new pentium processors offer much more value than UNIX and their bright future is clear, but for SOLID reliabilty and high end performance UNIX is still it (unfortunately). I think CoCreate needs to get serious about NT and rewrite SD for NT.