PIV vs. PIII

[Active Manufacturing]

We're looking to get a new computer to run IV4. We've heard rumors that
IV4 is very unstable when running PIV's. Does anyone know if IV4 runs
on a PIV? If so, does anyone have a recommendation on a PIV or a PIII?
Would there be any reason to buy the faster ram (PC133 vs. PC600). Will
we see a significant performace increase if we go with the faster PIV
board? We mainly use Inventor for sheet metal design and small
assemblies. We'll be running Windows 2000 (small business - looking to
spend $1500-$200). I would actualy like to get a recommendation, from
current users, where we could buy such a PC at that price - and what
specs to put on it.
Although, any information concerning a new computer would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks in advance.,
Active Mfg.

[Peter]

"Active Manufacturing" <acti...@qwest.net> skrev i en meddelelse
news:3B2A6F11...@qwest.net...

CPU:
Consider the AMD Athlon; Significantly faster than PIV at same clock
frequency - and cheaper, too (at least in Denmark). As for the PIII: I've
seen people here in the NG claiming it to be way too slow, compared to PIV
and Athlon.

Graphics card:
I'd go for a "proff" OpenGL card instead of a "gaming card". Personally I'm
very satisfied with my (not too expensive) Oxygen VX1 from 3DLabs.

My suggestion:
AMD Athlon K7 (Thunderbird), speed > 1,0 GHz
512 Mb PC-133 RAM (less might do for small assemblies).
7.200 or 10.000 rpm disk
3DLabs Oxygen VX1 card, or a comparable card from ELSA.

Peter

[Burns Baxter]

I'm using a Dell 330 1.4GHz P4 512MB RAM with a Fire GL2 card. Other than a
few OS-related glitches (my company's IS Dept. insisted on NT over my
extremely strong objections). This is a very, very nice, quiet and powerful
machine. I periodically have assemblies open in IV4 and SolidWorks 2001 at
the same time, doing real- time comparisons. The machine never even
flinches. I am 99.9% impressed. The remaining .01% pertains strictly to
the NT operating system. I have Win 2000 on my machine at home, and have
had ZERO problems with it.

The machine described above cost my company somewhere around $5K. I
believe this to be a very impressive bargain, particularly in comparison
with what that amount would have purchased even 1 year ago. This is the
first Dell I have ever used, and I would highly recommend it for use with
IV4. This is just coming from an ordinary end user like most of the readers
here. I'm just glad to be able to pass on some really impressive results.
These are based on my personal work practices, however. There may be others
who use a machine in different ways, who may have uncovered some weaknesses
with IV4 on a P4 system. I am thankful to finally have a system that can
"keep up" when I really start to get creative. Before I spec'ed out this
machine, I posted a message here and on the SWX newsgroup. I did not get
any negative feedback at that time. I'm still curious whether anyone is
having P4-related problems while running IV4, too. Good luck!

Regards,

Burns Baxter
Mechanical Designer

[Larry Caldwell]

According to benchmarks on the web the PIII is as fast or faster than the
P4. You might want to read this article by a developer about P4s.
http://www.emulators.com/pentium4_6mo.htm. I just built a dual PIII 1G
system, 1G RAM, GloriaIII, dual X15 Cheetah U160 SCSIs. I also have an
Athlon 1.1G, 768, GloriaII, Dual IDE Raid0 I've had for about 5-6 months.
The Athlon is great, no complaints. Waiting on a replacement 19160 SCSI
controller for the PIII but testing it, it seems that it's fast but not as
fast as the Athlon. If Tyan wasn't so proud of it's new dual Athlon board
($560.) I would have gone that way. By the time the dual AMD boards are
common it will be time to switch the PIIIs to AMDs. Guess Intel gets a
"Market Perform" rating.
~Larry

"Active Manufacturing" <acti...@qwest.net> wrote in message
news:3B2A6F11...@qwest.net...

[John Walker]

> Would there be any reason to buy the faster ram (PC133 vs. PC600).

A good working ratio of Processor execution cycle time to RAM speed is
7:1. In real terms, this means that if you are using a processor above
933Mhz you need ram faster than 133Mhz (PC133).

If the RAM speed is too low (in relation to the processor speed), you will
need to increase the number of wait states (i.e idle time) added by the
processor (in the BIOS), in order to stop the machine falling over, which
it may do if the RAM fails to meet the processing demands. Clearly this
is counter productive as it either slows down the processor or adds to
machine instability.

All of this shows why RAM access times have had to improve and we are
seeing new technologies emerging in this area.

Hope this helps

John

Web: http://www.jwp.co.uk