Besides the SolidWorks Performance Benchmark I mentioned in my last post directly below this one, I wanted to make sure you are aware of another benchmark that is available and has been the sort of de facto standard in SolidWorks benchmarks. It is Anna Wood’s Punch Holder Benchmark. It is very simple to run and much less time consuming than the new SolidWorks Performance Benchmark. Practically speaking, it will show you about the same thing as the SolidWorks Performance Benchmark, or at least the most important part, which is CPU speed. You can download it and read more about it here at Anna’s blog:
http://www.solidmuse.com/benchmarks/solidworks-benchmark-punch-holder/
Below is a picture of it along with the results from our new workstation here at Accurate Die Design, Inc., the Sandy Bridge 2600K, air cooled and overclocked to 4.6 GHz +.
Computer benchmark, Computer performance
SolidWorks has come out with a very nice new tool for 2011 called the SolidWorks Performance Test and it is found right in your Program Files menu under SolidWorks 2011, SolidWorks Tools, Solidworks Performance Test. You can run this test to determine how fast your computer is (mainly your CPU – the most important part of a SolidWorks-based computer for most people) compared to other users running the same test. As of this writing in early March, 2011, a computer we built here at Accurate Die Design, Inc. named Logopress3 is currently the fastest machine in this list as you can see below. Note that there have been 950 users and computer manufacturers that have submitted their results to date. The Logopress3 computer built by us has a SolidWorks Performance Test CPU rating of 75.7 seconds as you can see in the chart pictured below. Note that the 25th fastest computer that is listed on the bottom of this first page has a rating of a little over 100 seconds.
You can visit the SolidWorks “Share Your Scores” page here:
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/shareyourscore.htm
For those of you that know me, you know that I’m very passionate about having good equipment. If you are going to buy the best software in the world and pay your designer many tens of thousands of dollars per year in wages and benefits, I believe that trying to save a couple thousand dollars on a computer that you are going to use for a few years is a mistake. Computer hardware is a huge part of the equation. To put it into perspective, for many companies, millions of dollars worth of tooling is designed on this one computer that costs a few thousand dollars.
(To zoom in on the picture, hold your Ctrl key down and roll your mouse button.)
Computer benchmark, Computer performance
This is a very simple test that you can run in just a few minutes to compare your computer speed with your peers. More information is in this PDF: SolidWorks CPU Benchmark.pdf
Download the SolidWorks CPU Benchmark
by clicking on the picture:
After running the benchmark, compare your
results to other users by clicking on the link below:
Click here to compare your computer’s speed to other designers.
Computer benchmark, Computer performance