What CPU is good for Matlab/Solidworks?

Z

zac

New Member
I want to build/buy a computer to run some engineering programs - Matlab, Ansys, and SolidWorks - but I don't really know what I need. I want to keep it low budget if possible, so I only want to get what these programs require. I know SolidWorks likes to have at least 6 gigs of ram, so my question is about processors and graphics cards.

Will these programs benefit from a quad-core processor, or will a dual-core be enough? I know Matlab supports hyperthreading, but I don't think it has native support for 4 cores. Don't know about the others. Also, should I bother with a dedicated graphics card, or is integrated graphics enough? I would like to use two monitors, but I don't know if there are motherboards with 2xHDMI/DVI out.

I don't intend to use the machine for gaming. I just want something that will perform well on the above 3 programs. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
 
Well I don't know about those programs, but I do know that there are plenty of graphics cards that have 2 ports to be able to have dual monitors. Although I'm not sure how expensive you will have to go for two ports, or there may be cheap ones that have it. I am working on a gaming and extreme pc, so I haven't looked at very many low level graphics cards yet.
 
You would probably want at least a quad core CPU. Take a look at i5 or i7 CPUs. Also for those programs you would want a workstation graphics card, such as the Nvidia Quadro or ATI FirePro or Fire GL cards.
 
What diduknowthat stated. Solidworks can be very demanding. At least a quad core, the cards he listed and the more RAM the better. SW recommends 6 gigs and up. Ansys states that at least 2 core processors and 8 gigs of RAM. All three latest versions can run on Windows 7 64.
 
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Thanks for the help! Those programs are more CPU intensive than I thought. I'll price some PC's tomorrow, and I'll be going for 8GB RAM.
 
Hold up there! First, I'm very familiar with MATLAB. It does have MINOR support for multi-threading. But almost exclusively for linear algebra. They have the new Parallel Computing Tool Box to allow for CUDA support but is also hit and miss in performance increase. Second, MATLAB CANNOT use more than 3072MB of ram at any one instance and if any one variable gets more than 1536 (I think with out opening it) you wont be able to compute. So more ram will be a complete waste. I have 12GB and run games while performing calculations just fine because it has such minor requirements. I'm typically doing PDEs / numerical analysis, so nothing light and all works fine. I don't use the other two but I do also run a fluid dynamics and physics tool box and they benefit more from a little more power but again not much.
 
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