bassam64i

Hi AerospaceDoctor, As an engineering professional who uses Finite Element Analysis extensively, along with CAD packages I can tell you the following from experience and research on relevant hardware for FEA/CFD purposes. (I am also in Australia by the way) With regards to the Random Access Memory RAM: Channels, channels, channels.... the more, the better. FEA and CFD applications can create a very large data set starting from a few Megabytes all the way to Terabytes. These are iterative calculations that need to run on matrices over and over and over again. This means that very large data sets need to be fetched from RAM and written back to RAM. It doesn't matter how fast your single core performance is, if it it is sitting waiting for a large data set to come through from a dual/quad channel motherboard system. The more channels the better, because if one channel is busy, then another RAM channel can be used, especially in the case of a large data set. By comparison, in gaming, a game binary executables are small and generate a small data set in comparison so that's why in gaming benchmarks you see the number of channels making no difference (3% at best). https://simutechgroup.com/maximizing-memory-performance-for-ansys-simulations/ If you look at CFD benchmark data, you will see that the fastest computers are the ones that use more memory channels, not the ones that have the fastest single core. The latest 7950X CPU still gets demolished by Threadripper 3rd Gen in CFD/FEA. See OPENFoam CFD results here https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/openfoam Error Correcting Memory ECC: Memory errors DO HAPPEN, if your CFD/FEA data is loaded in RAM for a long period of time, chances are your data WILL get corrupted at some time. This will result in CFD/FEA calculations being WRONG, or worse, generate a result that will make an engineering design FAIL. For a gaming computer, ECC doesn't matter, it's not critical, if the colour of one pixel was wrong for one gaming frame, who cares. But for FEA/CFD if just one bit in one one number becomes corrupt then it could kill someone due to a failed/wrong analysis result (extreme case here obviously). Veritasium created a fantastic video explaining how this corruption can happen. See video below. Be careful of DDR5 on-die ECC....IT IS NOT the proper SIDEBAND ECC. If you choose DDR5, make sure it is SIDEBAND ECC Buy a motherboard that supports >=256GB of RAM. At the moment, gaming motherboards max out at 128GB.... they suck. With regards to the CPU: With regards to the number of cores, CHECK the ANSYS license.... it will say in there the NUMBER of CPUs it supports. Your license might not allow you to use all 128 cores. In which case you would be wasting your money. Stick with a single socket motherboard, and buy the core count CPU you desire with a single socket. Dual socket motherboards have a disadvantage when it comes to CPU-to-CPU communication, IT IS SLOW. Higher clocks and more cache does help, but memory channel count is also critical, as above. Stick with air cooling solutions. They are MORE reliable compared to water pumps when running CFD analysis for hours on end. You can go and watch a movie knowing that your workstation didn't go up in flames with that expensive CPU in it. With regards to the GPU: If you are going to use the GPU to accelerate CFD, then you need a GPU that supports ECC VRAM. This means a QUADRO GPU card. and certainly NOT a gaming card. Hope this helps. Feel free to reach out

Further more, mathematical models fed into these FEA solvers often require huge amounts of RAM. It's typical that a model may take anything from 8 hours to several days to complete and obtain results. Hence why dual channel memory CPUs aren't good enough. historically, Xeons have always been kings in FEA ... Please see more below; http://www.ozeninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Understanding-Hardware-Selection-for-ANSYS-2019-Presentation-1.pdf

CAD packages benefit from single thread performance. FEA solvers (which are sometimes part of a CAD package) are almost always compiled with intel C++ compilers. and are a different kettle of fish. The issue of FEA solvers compiled using Intel C++ compilers and running slow on AMD processors is very well covered all over the internet. Please see the link below by Puget Systems on how they found a loop hole to enable AVX with these FEA solvers. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AMD-Ryzen-and-Threadripper-CPU-s-Effectively-for-Python-Numpy-And-Other-Applications-1637/ and more here on the ANSYS forums, ANSYS is largest provider of FEA solvers in the industry; https://forum.ansys.com/discussion/25678/amd-vs-intel-processors-for-non-hpc-computing-mkl-issues-still-relevant

I use CAD and finite element analysis FEA. Some of my simulations does make use of AVX2 and AVX512 on rare occasions. See the link below by Dr. Ian Cutress on Alder Lake and AVX512 This is one thing that's holding me back from Threadripper as many FEA simulation platforms were compiled using the Intel C++ library. Those libraries actively search for intel ONLY CPUs, Once they detect a non Intel CPU the it would flag to disable AVX and AVX2 instructions. So Simulations would take forever on AMD. I am also interested in ECC RAM, so that throws the 12900K out the window, as it's on-die ECC only, not Full ECC, I have to wait for the Xeon version of Alder Lake, the W-1400 series or Saphire Rapids Xeons. Then there's the story of PCIE lanes count... I don't want to throw away my P4000 Quadros, Current new Quadros are super expensive. I need Saphire Rapids ... now! https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/the-intel-12th-gen-core-i912900k-review-hybrid-performance-brings-hybrid-complexity/15

more here, although it's for Paralells; https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/86333 https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/213801

I'll also add that the hack above also enables the built in anti-aliasing function in solidworks. So the egdes look a lot smoother. again it works with large assemblies butter smooth.

I tested this procedure on my 1070, works and stable, no issues what so ever

Solidworks Full features can work with GTX cards, I do use GTX cards on large assemblies with the fix below, it works greeat ! here is how https://grabcad.com/questions/how-i-can-activate-real-view-graphics-in-my-solidworks-2015-x-64-bit-sp2-my-operating-system-is-windows-7-x-64-bit-sp1-and-my-graphics-card-is-amd-radeon-hd-7500m-7600m-series-i-have-already-tried-realhack-3-9-1-but-it-is-not-working Windows 7 64bit /w GeForce GT525M , activated Realview in SW2014, following steps Leucetius wrote, with the mentions Plecostomus Prime wrote. 1.) Open up the registry editor (Start Button -> Run... -> "regedit") 2.) Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS 2015\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Current" 3.) On the right side doubleclick on "Renderer" 4.) copy (Ctrl+C) the Value 5.) Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS 2015\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Gl2Shaders\NV40" 6.) On the left side (the treeview) rightclick on "NV40" and choose "New / Key" 7.) Rename the new key with the copied value (Ctrl+V) 8.) Click another Key and back to your newly created to make sure you are editing the right values. The right side should be empty but an entry (Default) whose data is "value not set" 9.) rightclick in the right side and create "New / DWORD (32-bit) Value" 10.) Rename the DWORD to "Workarounds" and, after that, doublecklick it 11.) Leave the "Base" to "Hexadecimal" and enter 30008 into the field "Value data" Opened SW and did nothing, Realview was on by itself.

you do gain an option to turn on edge antialiasing which makes the egdes look a lot sharper and not so jagged

Solidworks Full features can work with GTX cards, here is how https://grabcad.com/questions/how-i-can-activate-real-view-graphics-in-my-solidworks-2015-x-64-bit-sp2-my-operating-system-is-windows-7-x-64-bit-sp1-and-my-graphics-card-is-amd-radeon-hd-7500m-7600m-series-i-have-already-tried-realhack-3-9-1-but-it-is-not-working Windows 7 64bit /w GeForce GT525M , activated Realview in SW2014, following steps Leucetius wrote, with the mentions Plecostomus Prime wrote. 1.) Open up the registry editor (Start Button -> Run... -> "regedit") 2.) Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS 2015\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Current" 3.) On the right side doubleclick on "Renderer" 4.) copy (Ctrl+C) the Value 5.) Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS 2015\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Gl2Shaders\NV40" 6.) On the left side (the treeview) rightclick on "NV40" and choose "New / Key" 7.) Rename the new key with the copied value (Ctrl+V) 8.) Click another Key and back to your newly created to make sure you are editing the right values. The right side should be empty but an entry (Default) whose data is "value not set" 9.) rightclick in the right side and create "New / DWORD (32-bit) Value" 10.) Rename the DWORD to "Workarounds" and, after that, doublecklick it 11.) Leave the "Base" to "Hexadecimal" and enter 30008 into the field "Value data" Opened SW and did nothing, Realview was on by itself.

Linus, here is a nice challenge, perhaps find someone who already owns one of these.

Linus, please benchmark one of these for us https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-station/ https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/Data-Center/dgx-station/dgx-station-data-science-supercomputer-datasheet-10232017.pdf