Which processor and operating system combo?

mitchell1987 · 8 Aug 2008 at 11:45

Hi, I’m an Industrial Design Student, going into my final year. A computer is key to our course, and it gets used pretty intensely, Large CAD packages, renders that take hours etc. I’m looking to do a bit of upgrading before returning to uni.

I’ve upgraded most things in my PC, got decent graphics card, ram, PSU, cooling. But its time to upgrade the processor (I’m going to do the MOBO at the same time). This poses the question what OS / CPU combo to give the best performance. Obviously quad core with a 64bit OS would be ideal. But it all hinges on software. All the design software I have is 32 bit, some of them have a 64 install too but not all.

Guess my key questions are;

Is there much point running XP32 pro, with a quad core?

Does XP even recognize that many cores, can it take advantage of the processor?

Would It be worth my while trying Vista64?

How much of an issue is installing 32 bit apps that on a 64 bit system?

Sorry for a long post. Any opinions, help, purchasing suggestions would be really great.

Andy

mp260767 · 8 Aug 2008 at 11:49

i'd go with xp, sounds like all the apps you're set to use are based around running on xp/32bit.

ovia · 8 Aug 2008 at 12:35

hi,

You should have no problems running quad cores on XP 32 at all.

Since all your applications are 32 bit apps anyway I would go for 32 bit XP unless you need a large amount of memory in which case you would need a 64bit OS.

Le Samourai · 8 Aug 2008 at 12:43

Don't forget about a decent backup solution for all that coursework!

You could consider RAID-5 with the new mobo as well as an external HDD and DVD archiving.

Does CAD rendering become CPU-intensive if you don't have a dedicated Open-GL card?

Greenlizard0 · 8 Aug 2008 at 13:11

Hmm....I'd get a proper backup system and not bother with a RAID setup.

mitchell1987 · 8 Aug 2008 at 13:59

Hi, Cheers for the advice.

Althought a lot of applications are 32 bit, im swaying towards Vista64.

firstly its future proof, and if I run it stripped down (all the visuall stuff off) should be better performance wise with a quad.

It can run 32 bit applications naitvely - althought still some doubts about compatability with "XP versions" of software.

as Ovia was said it will take more memory if needed.

Ovia, I was under the impression that XP would only recognise and make use of 2 cores?

Le Samourai, Ive got a NAS server with 2 drives in RAID format, it backs up every night, cheers for the concern

With regard to the rendering, Ive got an 8800GT and the software recognises that as a rending core, but the majority of work is done by my CPU, its on 100% the whole time during a render. The majority of rendering production isn't about the image, its about computing the light & refractions etc.

platinum87 · 8 Aug 2008 at 15:33

mitchell1987 said:
Ovia, I was under the impression that XP would only recognise and make use of 2 cores?

XP only really uses 2cores in the operating system, i.e. windows itself.. but it supports 4cores, so any software that is able to use 4 cores will be fine.

althought im not 100% on that its 3rd party info and ive never looked it up

Ethics · 8 Aug 2008 at 15:38

mitchell1987 said:
Hi, Cheers for the advice.

Althought a lot of applications are 32 bit, im swaying towards Vista64.

firstly its future proof, and if I run it stripped down (all the visuall stuff off) should be better performance wise with a quad.

Nothing is future proof and some big CAD applications still release on older OS' for stability (i'm an engineering designer, used a lot of CAD packages in the past, Inventor, Ideas, Solidworks, ACAD, Catia etc.)

And turning off the GUI settings will NOT guarantee better performance, infact the Vista system can increase performance over the old XP way of rendering frames etc.

mitchell1987 · 8 Aug 2008 at 16:09

Again thank you for the comments.

Its not a guarantee having all the GUI turned off; but it must be better than having it on . Future proof was possibly a naive comment, guess what I ment that more and more software will become 64bit and that support for new OS's will grow compared to the old one.

I'm using CATIA and ProE and both are very smooth on XP anyway. Its renders that kill everything. Doing full print quality, photographic renders can take 12 hours+ on my current setup, and using it for anything else during that time is out of the question. The render I use came with a 64bit install and I would quite like to make use of it, but don’t want to sacrifice usability of other programs just for that.

I just wanted to ensure I wasn't wasting precious pennies (student budgets: P) on a processor that the system couldn't make full use of.