Ship in a Bottle Benchmark on a Gaming Machine

I just built a new machine for home and was interested how it could
handle SolidWorks. I ran the ship in a bottle benchmark and received
decent results (36 seconds for 50 rebuilds). I also checked the
performance on our usual assembly (130 MB, 914 parts-134 unique, lots
of ext refs) and it seems to do quite well also. Here's the specs on
the new machine ($1000).

Asus P4C800E Deluxe MB
P4 2.8 Ghz (overclocked to 3.08)
1 GB DDR 3200 400 Mhz ECC (System bus overclocked from 200 to 220)
Gainward GForce FX 5900 (128 MB, core clock OCd from 400 to 425, mem
OCd from 850 to 900)
Serial ATA 120 GB HDD (Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache, not
running any raid)
SW 2004 SP0.0

I haven't noticed any clipping or any other graphical problems in SW.
I'm running the nVidia 5.3.0.3 driver. Card seems to stack up fairly
well and only costs $230, and can handle the latest games as well
(3DMark03 scores around 6000).

Thanks,

Nick

 

Athlon64.... you'll like it Mike!

Just don't be surprised when you can't get all three ddr400 modules to work,
or if the mobo clocks them down to do it. Memory is still the downside to
AMD. unless you're talking Athlon64-FX (or Opteron)... but they have their
sensitivities too.

With Athlon64 3200/3400+, you're better off running three ddr333 modules or
two ddr400 modules. I've been around the block with this, testing MSI and
Gigabyte mobos and you can email me for details. But in a nutshell, there's
a banking limitation and with larger modules, like 512Mb, you'll hit the
limit with two ddr400. The MSI would never pass the tests with all 3
ddr400, even when clocked way down, and even with an experimental bios
update they emailed me. The Gigabyte could only post with three ddr400 if
the bios was set to auto and allowed to clock them waaaay down (not good).
Have fun and let's compare! I posted my Athlon64 results the first week of
Jan. They kick butt!

- Eddy

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If SolidWorks keeps it up, we'll have to start calling it SolidWaste or
SolidWait

Mike, what kind of video card are you going to get? Anyone try a fx5900 or
fx9950 with a softquadro patch? Wondering if it works?

I am planning on upgrading to a Athon64, but am thinking on putting it off
for a bit. Sounds like the socket 940 motherboards are the way of future
and everything else is going to be obsolete pretty fast. Been reading
www.overclockers.com So I might wait a bit till the prices come down on the
940's and the memory issues settle down.

Jay

 

Here's a memory article on the 64
http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040112/index.html

Jay

 

I know what they *say* but they all seem to be having a problem exceeding
the bank limitation. Some of them are more sneaky about it and underclock
the ram without telling you. Fare enough if you know who they are. A good
vote for Asus is that they did really well overall in the compatibility
tests done by tomshardware. I didn't try Asus as I was tired of spending
money at that point, and I rarely believe tomshardware anymore anyway. I
cut my losses and figured Asus must also be doing some trickery to get it to
work - if in fact it does work. Remember, I haven't seen any website yet
test for over 2gb of ram, or more than two 512mb modules at a time. I got
very frustrated there for awhile looking.

Remember that to AMD ddr400 is a very touchy topic. Stability at ddr333 is
solid but the faster the ram the more sensitive things get to brand, part
number, matching, etc.

And you won't find reasonably priced single sided ddr400 512mb modules;
apparently they don't exist. DDR400 1Gb modules are available and should
work two at a time but... exceedingly expensive!!

I bought 2gb of ddr333 registered ram (1gb each) for our new Opteron server
and they cost way less than plain ecc ddr400 1gb modules. Apparently this
stuff gets defined largely by the gaming market, which currently is happy
buying 512mb modules, one or two at a time.

So, my point... either three ddr333 modules (up to 2gb) -or- two ddr400
(certainly 1gb and maybe up to 2gb) would work great. I'm sure the
difference to the *pig* (SW) is negligible anyway. I chose to go 1gb ddr400
and the payoff was huge. Next year I figure we'll be doing new systems
again or all the sensitivity stuff will have been figured out through bios
updates. If not, 1gb ddr400 modules might be affordable by then



- Eddy

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And I could swear that in all my research I saw that Asus could pack in 3gb
but only ddr333? Am I remembering correctly?

- Eddy

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