Solidworks - Fastest CPU as of 2025?

[Driestword]

Hello!

There isn't a whole lot of information out there on this subject so I am hoping the collective wisdom of everyone here can piece together what is currently the fastest CPU as of Feb 2025 for Solidworks.

For day to day tasks, Solidworks is lightly threaded so it favours CPU's with the fastest cores. Tasks such as opening files, saving files and rebuilds (due to its parametric nature_ all see an increase with IPC and frequency.

Currently the 14900KS tops the charts for general Solidworks usage outside of Simulation & Rendering, but I wonder how this compares to the new 285k? The 285k has had a troubled start but it is becoming an intriguing proposition, the platform is maturing with Intel fine tuning via BIOS and firmware updates, and we are now seeing some seriously fast DDR5 ram appear (including CUDIMM), all these incremental improvements are starting to make this platform a go-to for productivity in some category's. However, does this also apply to Solidworks? Has anybody done any Solidworks testing or are running Solidworks on this CPU and could offer some feedback?

Thanks!

 

[Tetras]

From what I'm aware, the 285K is still really hard to bench and draw consistent conclusions from, because even with Intel's latest updates their performance is all over the place.

On the AMD side, the 9700X is pretty good with single core, with Intel, I don't think you'd want to buy a 14900KS (alongside the potential for getting a busted one, the high power draw and heat output) just for that.

 

[jigger]

It’s really going to depend on what you’re doing.

Desktop
9800X3D
9700X
Intel C ultra

Workstation
Xeon W (x) (sapphire rapids)
Threadripper 7000
AM5 EPYC with/without v-cache