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What's your computer setup, ram, rom, processors, cores?

StevetS
1-Newbie

What's your computer setup, ram, rom, processors, cores?

Hey everyone, just started at a rather large company and have been having the crappiest time with Creo.. It's been running incredibly slow for all of us.. I just was upgraded to 48G of ram today in hopes that would speed it up but I'm hardly noticing a difference. For example, I have a pretty big drawing up and had to do a partial view for one of the isometric views I have on my first page. The outline for the view was instant like it should be but once I hit apply there was a 2-3 minute lag for Creo to complete the task. Just wondering what the ideal Creo setup is or what your computers are running at? Below is a pic of my System.

computerspecs.PNG

23 REPLIES 23
kdirth
20-Turquoise
(To:StevetS)

Sounds like your processor may be the issue.  CREO is basically running on one core at 1.923 GHz (an i7-7700K would run at 2.64).  I have 12GB and rarely use more than 4GB.  I have a Xeon X5677@ 3.47GHz (8 core).

The issue may also be the graphics card as CREO is graphics intensive.


There is always more to learn in Creo.
StevetS
1-Newbie
(To:kdirth)

This is what we were thinking too. Gonna have to fight for a while to get computers that are more directed towards Creo than overall performance machines. Thanks for your reply.

Hi,

just FYI.

Launch Task Manager, select xtop.exe process, press right mouse button and click Set Affinity... command.

Uncheck all processor cores, but one.

In Task Manager, watch graph of selected core. If it is running on the top of the area, then you know that mostly single-threaded Creo gets all processor power - this means that processor is bottleneck for current operation.

MH


Martin Hanák

Is this a bypass for having 8 processors? Can I use this option every time I run Creo? Thank you very much for the info!

Hi,

Info no.1:

You have to set affinity for xtop.exe process every time you launch Creo. When the setting is finished, operating system stops switching xtop.exe execution between processor cores. This means that xtop.exe is executing on single core and you can see if this core is 100% busy (i.e. fully loaded).

Creo is mostly single-threaded, this means its xtop.exe process is not able to use all processor cores simultaneously.

Info no.2:

In BIOS hyper-threading is set to ON, by default. I prefer to toggle it to OFF. Then you can see real number of processor cores in Task Manager. Hyper-threading is software trick that doubles number of cores.

Info no.3:

If someone is selecting processor for Creo, then frequency height is important. Unfortunately processor makers are not able to enhance frequency dramatically. I think that all Creo user are looking forward to 10GHz processor at least ...

Info no.4:

I do not understand your question "Is this a bypass for having 8 processors?"

MH


Martin Hanák

There are certain operations that really bog down Creo... and SW for that matter.

Typically huge patterns with a lot of intersecting faces will bring your computer to a crawl.

It is not just the single core issue.  I actually put SW to the same task and the results were no better.

What I did find as a huge performance shift is tapping into the PCI buss with PCIe SSD's.

There must be a lot of HD read/write functionality in the regeneration process that takes advantage of this 4X throughput improvement.

The test was SW only as I still have to move over Creo.

There is a config option regen_backup_using_disk that defaults to no that would be cause regen speed to be affected by the I/O speed. YMMV.

It should be possible to set affinity as part of the startup file.  See:

Change the Processor Affinity setting in Windows 7 to gain a performance edge - TechRepublic

task manager - What is Windows Priority and Affinity and what advatanges does it provide? - Super User

The CPU(s) in the affinity are by hexadecimal so 5 will use CPU 1 + CPU 3 = 2^(1-1) + 2^(3-1) . CPU 5 requires affinity 10.

Getting a program to use multiple processors is tricky. One must first ensure that overall operations are separable, then set up the individual processes, then dispatch them, then coordinate their completions, and then integrate the results. This can be difficult when relations, sketches, features, parts, assemblies, and external analyses can be inter-related. Being able to account for all possible inter-relations is a difficult task and it isn't clear that there are benefits as are seen in GPUs, where a scene can be loaded and then each processor gets the X,Y coordinates per pixel and returns the matching RGBA value, independent of all other pixels.

In the Bravo! software they used 'view cells' which were created by setting a separate task for a view, orientation, zoom, et al, and then creating a batch job. When it was done and the user notified, the user would open the drawing and import the view cell. If the model changed it was up to the user to re-submit the job. Since they were separate one could have put them on separate CPUs. Creating an individual view might not benefit from multiple CPUs, though updating a drawing with a lot of views might.

StephenW
23-Emerald II
(To:StevetS)

And large assembly drawings are notoriously slow. Our models sometimes get up to 16gig+ of ram used and perform reasonably well but the drawing are a real pain.

Adding more RAM only helps if you are running out of RAM.

When working with large drawing, it is helpful to set selection filter properly to tell Creo, what entity you want to select. Also it is useful to erase views which are not needed at the moment. To prevent repeated manual view erasing, drawing representation can be created, saved and opened.

MH


Martin Hanák
StephenW
23-Emerald II
(To:MartinHanak)

I definitely agree that using the selection filter is a must when working on large assembly drawings. It makes a huge difference in the selection time and if you have prehighlight turned on, it saves the delays in trying to highlight all the geometry and detail items as you mouse moves over them. I personally dislike erasing/resuming views but it is a valid technique and drawing reps are helpful along the way.

Thanks for all the tips in this thread!! Upon trying to recreate my problems on my coworkers computer we can't do it.. Is there a chance a dying or faulty graphics card could cause these issues..

I have the Firepro W7000 but I know I was running a Quadro 2000 at my last job and that ran Creo with zero problems.. After comparing my core to a friends core at my old job I'm running a better core all together.. (sorry if core is not the right term.)

graphics card.PNG

Hi,

in AMD FirePro 7100 discussion VEIKKO VIITANEN was solving similar problem. His solution is mentioned in last reply of this discussion:

Copy of Reply text:

Now I have solved problems with FirePro 7100. I was contacted with AMD and they helped lot, even give a beta driver which worked quite well but now new driver 14.502.1045-WHQL-FirePro has solved all my problems. Sketcher work very well, spinning wit OIT very well and so on.

MH


Martin Hanák

Thank you. I have sent an email to my Creo support team. They are under the impression as of right now that this is a normal thing for Creo. I've been working with Creo over 3 years so far and can say very definitively that this is extremely slow. Sounds like the graphics card driver could be the issue and I let him know that.

I had an odd experience that maybe someone can shed light on as well.  I was testing a new computer a few years back and wanted to see how each component added value.  I had ordered a basic computer but then also ordered a better CPU, RAM and Graphics card.

All went as expected for CPU and RAM but I ran into problems with the Graphics card.  After going from an NVidia 2000 to a NVidia 4000 my performance went into the toilet.  I was surprised by this change.  I could see that the card was showing up in the devices and working.  I upgraded the driver as I normally would but no matter what I did, I could not get my graphics performance to work.  I had worse performance with the 4000 than the 2000.

After a while I gave up.  I needed the computer so I did a complete rebuild by wiping the drive and then installing all over again.  I had the 4000 card in the computer during the rebuild.  When I was done, I thought that I would run the benchmark one more time and to my surprise I got wonderful performance.  The best I have ever seen.  I have had a few users who have added very expensive graphic cards but never saw any real increase in performance.

I have wondered if this is a Microsoft issue.  Even though the cards are installed and have the proper drivers, it seems that it is never really integrated.  I have not tested this theory on other computers but was wondering if anyone else has seen this.

I mention this since you are having issues and it may be related.

Ron, hopefully someone replies to you! That definitely sounds like Microsoft was just having a brain fart and it didn't pick it up.. I know when installing the ram the tech guy mentioned we might have to turn the computer off a couple times to get it to register the change.

StephenW
23-Emerald II
(To:RonGrabau)

Yes, I have seen this issue specifically. We were testing graphic cards. It was probably wildfire 4 at the time. We had quadro 2000, 4000, 5000. We did a OCUS benchmark on the 2000. Then did the 4000 and it was significantly worse than the 2000. Tried the 5000, it matched the 4000 +/-. IT re did the whole system. We re-ran and got the same results. A few days later, the IT guy figured it out. Turns out the chipset drivers (motherboard drivers maybe? definitely not graphic card drivers) didn't support the new cards properly. Once he updated the chipset drivers, we got much much better results with the newer cards.

thanks for the reply.  I will take a look at that next go around.

Thought I would give a quick update. As several members stated the graphics card could have been the issue. My IT guy said it's probably not the answer but he still put on the latest graphics card driver onto my computer. It helped slightly but Creo is still crawling at a snails pace. We're narrowing it down and it's starting to look like it's not a hardware issue. Several of the Creo guys here have found out that someone decided it was a good idea to scan every part going in and out with McAfee I believe.. This could be a main driving factor. Also a majority of our work is done out of the same online EPDM working directory. This could also play a factor, as many of you know working on a local working directory doesn't affect speed much but working with a large WD online can slow results. I will post more updates as I discover them so people searching in the future with similar problems can have possible answers!

Hi,

if I understand you well, you are going to copy data to your local disk, turn off McAfee and run a test. It's easy test, if your IT is not blocking it.

MH


Martin Hanák

That would be the ideal plan but like you mentioned IT will not let me turn off McAfee. There is someone here who has a little more persuasion power than I do so I think he will be able to get IT to disable the software for a bit for a trial run.

Just fyi,

I have found in the past that McAfee scanning all pro/e files and doing a system scan can slow down Pro/E severely.

I thought we in the past had the ability to prevent McAfee from scanning or limiting when a specific directory was scanned.

Understand that if you are dealing with outside data that's being created that could be an issue.

But in reality anything in the vault should have already been scanned for issues or should be continuously scanned for issues that are online.

Thanks,

Don

Don, thanks for the reply. We're in agreement that things should be scanned at other times instead of only at check in. I'm not sure if I have the ability to turn off McAfee from this directory, as it is my main directory. We don't use local Working Directories here either which can be a bummer especially if the network is down and I need to pull models or drawings. However that isn't usually an issue as Windchill seems to be leaps and bounds better than Team Center for reliability. I will update this overall thread but a lot of my issues seem to be cleared up with the graphics card driver update I had tech put on my computer. We'll see if that stands true when I try to upload a bigger model but as of now my drawings are saving as quick as they should. Even with smaller drawings before the update I had saves that were over an hour. Either the network was coincidentally fixed at the same time my driver was updated or that was actually the fix. I'm not sure I'll ever know as I was the only one having these performance issues.

rsobecki
12-Amethyst
(To:StevetS)

could you be so kind and also share your experiance about graphics cards?

I reccomend this thread with option to vote :https://www.ptcusercommunity.com/polls/1438#comment-29196

Thanks in advance!

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