Why do I have Performance Problems?

[SFO-Admin]

We recently purchased several workstations to run Vectorworks 2020 and have run into underwhelming performance.

Moving from a low-end i7 processor with 16GB RAM, ATA drives and a cheap display card we expected a lot more with the following hardware:

• High-end Intel-9-9900x 10c/20t processor
• ASUS Prime x299 Deluxe II MB
• 64 GB of high speed RAM
• 2 Samsung 970  M.2 SSD
• Windows 10 1909
• 2 LG 4K 27" displays

 

I know I'm not explaining the problems but let's say that screen refreshes and scrolling aren't that much better that running on a  much less powerful setup.

 

FYI, the company that put the system together specialize in high-end gamming computers and I'm a Microsoft MCSE engineer so I don't see it as a configuration problem on the HW or SW side.

I've ran industry performance tests for CPU, Video and disk and the system rocks so what's going on?

Any ideas?

Or should I used the new AMD chips and or a different video card?

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

I don't see where you listed your graphics card in your specs. If you are trying to use the built in graphics rather than a GPU based graphics card I would expect your experience to be slow with 2 4K displays.

 

Or check and make sure you are using the graphics card  and not accidentally dropping back to the built in graphics.

[SFO-Admin]

Oh I thought I did.

NVidia Quatro RTX 4000 8GB 

[SFO-Admin]

The only video is RTX as the MB doesn't include one so its the only card.

[zoomer]

So your HW Specs are very good for VW.

 

Beside that you should notice a large speed increase in general Apps

and including VW, when starting Apps or loading files (NVMe SSD vs HDD),

a bit faster response times by faster single core performance (CPU)

and faster screen response and loading by faster GPU with faster VRAM,

VW has it bottlenecks and will not scale 1:1 with better hardware.

In comparison with other Apps, beside loading and closing the App or

IFC file im/exports, I think VW Performance is pretty ok.

 

As you have no additional onboard GPU, Windows should not choose

the wrong GPU for energy saving reasons, like on a labtop.

Maybe its is worth to look at Windows Energy and Performance

settings nevertheless.

 

Maybe more to earn is by examining and optimizing Projects and File Structure

in VW. Like making use of Symbols, avoid deep History in 3D Solid Opertations,

avoiding complex Meshes from Library Objects and all such things.

 

TL;DR;

Your Hardware Specs are pretty ok, nothing wrong and shouldn't be the culprit.

Edited January 6, 2020 by zoomer

[Art V]

On 1/6/2020 at 10:59 PM, SFO-Admin said:

Or should I used the new AMD chips and or a different video card?

A lot of VW things are still single CPU core, though graphics display things are more and more offloaded to the GPU, so a 10 core CPU is not going to be drastically faster than an e.g. i5 at the same clock speed, with exception of Renderworks which is a CPU renderer that can use multiple cores. There you should see substantial improvement.

 

E.g. panning a drawing is GPU based these days but the initial selection of objects is CPU based so for some things you will still be experiencing (relative) slowness and lag if you are dealing with lots of objects.

 

As @zoomer mentioned it might a good idea to check your performance settings in Windows, e.g. disable animation, set the power plan to high performance to make sure the system is not throttling the CPU by setting it to a lower speed etc.

 

Regarding the Quadro RTX 4000... Vectorworks does not have Quadro optimised drivers so it won't be taking advantage of the extras of a Quadro GPU card, a fast GeForce would do just as well or even better for the same amount. If you are comparing with software that does have Quadro drivers this will become more noticeable and VW may seem even slow(er) by comparison in that case.