CPU utilisation

Just a general question. I'm doing something in 3D CAD (Solidworks) and it's taking ages to do certain editing operations. Just locks up for minutes at a time before springing back to life.

I'd assumed the processor was working flat out - fans are loud. However, when I look at Task Manager, the whole time the processor's not going anywhere near 100%. Shouldn't it be?

Thanks

 

No, but particular cores could be maxed out

 

From the screenshot you posted, right click inside the CPU graph, choose Change graph to, and Logical processors. This will show your individual CPU cores and threads and will show you which ones are maxed out.

 

Thanks. Opening the assembly takes ages, and seems nothing is maxed out.....?

 

Thats Solidworks for you..
Expensive crap, have 3 guys working with it all day around me, they all complain, all have 6 core+ desktops with Quadro GPU's, I tried to nail it down, its just that SW is dumb slow opening step files and flat out chokes on anything with open surfaces.

Inventor kicks its ass all day, but someone decided to go with SW..
But both are crap, CATIA or Creo hands down...

 

That's not what I want to hear! I was hoping that it would run better on the new PC I've just ordered, but seems it's not even making use of my current PC's capabilities then!

Other than that performance issue I much prefer SW to Inventor. Haven't used Creo since it was Pro/ENGINEER about 20 years ago...

 

@jack574,

When the CPU and RAM are consistently between ~65% and ~70% or higher, this indicates the platform is maxed out to me. At least for that particular workflow/workload. 100% loads are not the indication of a platform past its prime.

Is there any pagefile usage during these workloads? If so; there is a bottleneck right there. Are there extraneous programs allowed to run in the background? Only run what you need for the task(s) at hand.

Yeah; there is also the issue of sloppily written programs... but we use what we do because it works best for us.

See:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-3840QM-vs-Intel-i7-9850H/900vs3478

The seven-year newer platform which you just ordered should be a noticeable improvement. (~34% faster single-core responsiveness and ~59% better multicore performance).

What O/S version are you running? Is every single program installed on this platform being used? When was the last time you did a clean install?

With 370 processes on a 7-year-old platform, I can believe it stutters and freezes on workstation-class workloads.

See:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=191047,70846

With the generational improvements the current processor platform offers, the speedup should be quite noticeable.

• 6C/12T vs. 4C/8T
• 800MHz faster turbo
• 12MB vs. 8MB cache
• 8GT/s vs. 5GT/s Bus Speed
• 128GB DDR4 vs. 32GB DDR3 RAM
• 41.8GB/s vs. 25.6GB/s Memory Bandwidth
• Intel TSX-NI
• Intel SSE4.1, SSE4.2, and AVX2 vs. Intel AVX

 

Thanks! See below

@jack574,

When the CPU and RAM are consistently between ~65% and ~70% or higher, this indicates the platform is maxed out to me. At least for that particular workflow/workload. 100% loads are not the indication of a platform past its prime. Interesting. I'd assumed that maxed out meant 100%. If it was only working at 70%, it had the capacity to increase to 100%.

Is there any pagefile usage during these workloads? I don't know what pagefile is... If so; there is a bottleneck right there. Are there extraneous programs allowed to run in the background? Loads of other programs running, yeah. Photoshop, Chrome, Excel etc. Only run what you need for the task(s) at hand. Needed to get on with other stuff during the 10 minutes it was taking solidworks to confirm my edits to a part.

Yeah; there is also the issue of sloppily written programs... but we use what we do because it works best for us.

See:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-3840QM-vs-Intel-i7-9850H/900vs3478

The seven-year newer platform which you just ordered should be a noticeable improvement. (~34% faster single-core responsiveness and ~59% better multicore performance). Excellent. I still love my M6700. Works flawlessly when I can get it to boot up. Will probably keep it rather than sell it for a pittance. 7 years old, 32GB RAM, Quadro K4000M graphics card.

What O/S version are you running? Win 10 with latest update. Is every single program installed on this platform being used? No When was the last time you did a clean install? About 18 months ago. Clean install of Win 10 to replace Win 7.

With 370 processes on a 7-year-old platform, I can believe it stutters and freezes on workstation-class workloads.

See:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=191047,70846

With the generational improvements the current processor platform offers, the speedup should be quite noticeable.

• 6C/12T vs. 4C/8T
• 800MHz faster turbo
• 12MB vs. 8MB cache
• 8GT/s vs. 5GT/s Bus Speed
• 128GB DDR4 vs. 32GB DDR3 RAM
• 41.8GB/s vs. 25.6GB/s Memory Bandwidth
• Intel TSX-NI
• Intel SSE4.1, SSE4.2, and AVX2 vs. Intel AVX

 

@jack574,

Maxed out doesn't need to be 100%. There is something else going on in your specific workflow... When something putts along, the whole system is suspect. Before ordering/unboxing/setting up your new system, see if some of the previous suggestions for a different program to get to where you want is all the change needed.

I was reminded (thanks @Papusan!) that IPC improvements in addition to all the other changes between your old and the new platform will make things much more snappy than the mere links I provided suggested. Depending on your software and the extensions it uses; AVX2 could make it twice as performant, by itself (just an example to show these things are not linear improvements).

As we begin to see your workflows/workloads more fully now; 128GB RAM seems like the minimum if you don't want to affect your main workload too (SolidWorks). More/extra RAM makes us multitask better and more efficiently too.

The pagefile is what Windows uses when physical RAM is exhausted. And, it is using the order of magnitude slower storage subsystem too to keep itself from crashing. Show us an image of Task Manager on the RAM tab when your workflow at ~80% RAM usage...

Similarly, what temp/scratch disk space (effectively program-specific 'pagefiles') are SolidWorks, Photoshop and any other program you have that uses those methods use during peak RAM (physical) performance?

18 months is a long time in Windows 10 land... I would be doing a clean install of 1909 to get the most productivity possible from the current state of the O/S and your older platform.

'When I can get it to boot up'. Time to donate/recycle/sell it for parts. I'm sure you've got full value from it after 7 years.

 

" IPC improvements in addition to all the other changes between your old and the new platform will make things much more snappy than the mere links I provided suggested. Depending on your software and the extensions it uses; AVX2 could make it twice as performant, by itself (just an example to show these things are not linear improvements)."

I don't know what any of that means but much more snappy sounds good!


" 'When I can get it to boot up'. Time to donate/recycle/sell it for parts. I'm sure you've got full value from it after 7 years." - Exactly - that's why I'm getting a new PC. Still love my M6700 though, but it's got major issues booting up. Works fine once it has booted though.

 

More works done for each clock cycle...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_cycle

 

Win10's scheduler spreads a single core load across all cores, so you won't see it show 100% unless all cores are busy with something.

Windows 7 was the one that used a single core at 100%, while the rest could be idle. There was a patch that made it behave more like Windows 8/10.

 

Do you have a link to the patch?

 

Is quadro truly necessary for those programs? Most everything I use is with gtx and quadro arguably makes no difference, or what am I missing?

 

If you have nothing else going on on your laptop using network bandwidth, your working set must be accessed over Wifi? That throughput on the Wifi network monitor is the key.

That's your bottleneck right there, and freezing up while a large Wifi transfer is in process is a good indicator of the problem.

Try getting that working set on your computer locally, or get a external drive hooked up through the fastest USB 3.1 enclosure / drive / RAID you can put together.

You may have a rare case of actually needing NVME PCIE 3/4 to get the throughput you need to keep the CPU / GPU busy.

 

No, the wifi usage is just coincidental. It was probably syncing dropbox or something. Solidworks is installed locally on my C drive and my files are all on an internal SSD.