System Requirements: CPU, RAM and Graphic Cards

Hi, I’m a PhD candidate at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and we are planning to buy a workstation to work with PLAXIS 3D available in the university. However, I have some concerns about the system requirements. The recommended processor is a Quad Core CPU. Nonetheless, I would like to know if there are other processors with more cores which improve the speed calculation? I have a similar doubt with regard to the graphic cards; the system requires discrete GPU with 1 GB of RAM, but I am wondering if better graphic Cards improves in some aspect the performance? Is it preferable invest only in RAM memory for larger projects than in CPU, Graphics Cards and RAM memory together?

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  • Dear Mauro,

    All our recommendations we provide are based on single desktop computers with a natively running Windows 64-bit environment (Windows 10/11) since this is what we design the software for and run all our tests on. The system requirements are mentioned here: https://communities.bentley.com/products/geotech-analysis/w/plaxis-soilvision-wiki/45417/system-requirements---plaxis

     To get quick operations in the program:

    • make sure the Windows TEMP is stored on a fast disk, e.g. an SSD. During the calculations, the calculation will need to read and write a lot of data so having a fast drive will help overall for the calculation; 
    • storing the final data on a normal hard drive does not influence the calculation time: only when you tell PLAXIS to save the data, the data from the Windows TEMP folder will be moved to the final save location; 
    • have enough RAM. For models up to 500,000 elements not doing dynamic calculations, 16 GB should work. For larger models, get at least 32 GB. Only when you have models with roughly more than 1 million elements 32 GB RAM would be required; 
    • For visualization, get a recent (gaming) graphics card that supports OpenGL 2 or higher with at least 1 GB of dedicated, not shared, RAM. Preferably from NVIDIA; Note that the Finite Element calculation does not use the graphics card to execute the calculations, this is still all done on the CPU;
    • From our benchmarking, we do not see a conclusive speed increase for all kinds of calculation types (Plastic, Consolidation, Dynamics, etc.) in the calculation when you have more than 8 cores; 
    • Note that we do not use hyper-threading, but PLAXIS will utilize all physically available cores. If the processor uses hyper-threading, this is not used. What hyper-threading does, is that it splits a core usage into two virtual cores. For a PLAXIS calculation, this means that it will try to use 1 at 100% and the other at about 20% (this is managed by Windows and the processor architecture). Then for the Plaxis calculation, the performance of the first one drops a bit too, since one processor cannot be used for 120% (so to run 120% of calculation operations per second). So, the total performance drops a bit too. In general, for a PLAXIS calculation, this runs slower than using the e.g. 4 physical cores to the max, compared to a setup with 4 hyper-threaded cores (8 logical cores). 
    • And of course, a faster CPU will mean faster calculations.  

     If you need to make a choice between more CPU cores or faster CPU cores, I would go for the faster cores if your main concern is the Plaxis calculation speed. We have seen once you have at least quad-core processors, you benefit more from a faster CPU than from more cores.

     PLAXIS does not enforce limits on the number of items in a 3D calculation, but of course, the more elements you have, the more memory the program needs, and then you can run into hardware limitations.

     Of course, this is the experience we have with the current program.

     See more details here:

Reply
  • Dear Mauro,

    All our recommendations we provide are based on single desktop computers with a natively running Windows 64-bit environment (Windows 10/11) since this is what we design the software for and run all our tests on. The system requirements are mentioned here: https://communities.bentley.com/products/geotech-analysis/w/plaxis-soilvision-wiki/45417/system-requirements---plaxis

     To get quick operations in the program:

    • make sure the Windows TEMP is stored on a fast disk, e.g. an SSD. During the calculations, the calculation will need to read and write a lot of data so having a fast drive will help overall for the calculation; 
    • storing the final data on a normal hard drive does not influence the calculation time: only when you tell PLAXIS to save the data, the data from the Windows TEMP folder will be moved to the final save location; 
    • have enough RAM. For models up to 500,000 elements not doing dynamic calculations, 16 GB should work. For larger models, get at least 32 GB. Only when you have models with roughly more than 1 million elements 32 GB RAM would be required; 
    • For visualization, get a recent (gaming) graphics card that supports OpenGL 2 or higher with at least 1 GB of dedicated, not shared, RAM. Preferably from NVIDIA; Note that the Finite Element calculation does not use the graphics card to execute the calculations, this is still all done on the CPU;
    • From our benchmarking, we do not see a conclusive speed increase for all kinds of calculation types (Plastic, Consolidation, Dynamics, etc.) in the calculation when you have more than 8 cores; 
    • Note that we do not use hyper-threading, but PLAXIS will utilize all physically available cores. If the processor uses hyper-threading, this is not used. What hyper-threading does, is that it splits a core usage into two virtual cores. For a PLAXIS calculation, this means that it will try to use 1 at 100% and the other at about 20% (this is managed by Windows and the processor architecture). Then for the Plaxis calculation, the performance of the first one drops a bit too, since one processor cannot be used for 120% (so to run 120% of calculation operations per second). So, the total performance drops a bit too. In general, for a PLAXIS calculation, this runs slower than using the e.g. 4 physical cores to the max, compared to a setup with 4 hyper-threaded cores (8 logical cores). 
    • And of course, a faster CPU will mean faster calculations.  

     If you need to make a choice between more CPU cores or faster CPU cores, I would go for the faster cores if your main concern is the Plaxis calculation speed. We have seen once you have at least quad-core processors, you benefit more from a faster CPU than from more cores.

     PLAXIS does not enforce limits on the number of items in a 3D calculation, but of course, the more elements you have, the more memory the program needs, and then you can run into hardware limitations.

     Of course, this is the experience we have with the current program.

     See more details here:

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