Performance Enhancement - File Opening Time for MicroStation CONNECT Edition Update 13 Vs V8i SS4

I know that this has been briefly discussed in another post but @KarishmaAnthony please can you carry out the same comparison tests on a win7, i7 pc (3-4 years old), with 24GB RAM and a standard HDD, using a 1mb file. The origianl tsts are al your blog at https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/b/microstation_blog/posts/performance-enhancement---file-opening-time-for-microstation-connect-edition-update-13-vs-v8i-ss4

I would suggest that this is a more realistic test. Look forward to your revised tests.

Parents
  • Are we going to get a response to this 

    And not even a reply to say that Bentley are working on this, with a progress update. If nothing else it's just disrespectful!! 

    When are we going to get the new test results for more realistic pc spec and file sizes?

  • Stuart (and all), we are still working on additional tests, but what we have experienced so far is that v8i is on average 3 seconds faster in cold starts, regardless of the file size. We tested a 20mb dataset made up by 30 references, all smaller than 1mb.

    Now, with larger datasets, these 3 seconds are more than compensated by CE faster 64btis data handling, so that with datasets larger than approximately 200mb CONNECT Edition is faster.

    The above is for cold starts, in warm starts the differences we are seeing are either negligible or CONNECT Edition is faster.

    We have asked several times, including in this thread, if any of you, who are being affected by these performance issues, could privately share his/her datasets for expanding our test plans and investigate additional cases that could be affected by slower performance that we can't currently reproduce. We got no responses to our call for more data, even though thus would be completely private, used solely for our internal testing and covered by NDA.

    We have tested a machine with lower specs (i7, 16GB of RAM, HDD) than the one used for the original post but the differences are not significant for small files and datasets. The number of cores or amount of RAM doesn't show significant differences when opening small datasets, the differences between v8i and CONNECT Edition, that we can measure with our test cases, seem to be as I described above. Also using an HDD or an SDD won’t make much of a difference when testing performance differences between the two versions as both do benefit by the much faster SSDs when available, in case of a spinning drive they would both be slower and the 3 seconds difference in cold starts would be marginally longer.

    As I said, all of the above is part of ongoing efforts to both improve our tests and MicroStation CONNECT Edition's general performance so it is not final. We will write a new post or update the existing one when we have completed and - again - please, help us by sending some of the data you are using as the basis of your complaints.

  • Hi Marco,

    Thanks for the efforts.

    Are you all testing with remotely located configurations? I know networks can vary greatly by location but I think that most users would be using a configuration stored on a server with different levels of CFG and DGNlibs being read.

    One of the things that I have noticed is that MicroStation now seems to read all cfg (organization, workspace, workset) files when it is first opened. This maybe be some of the delays. I believe this to be the case based on if I have MSTN open and have WorkSpace 1 / WorkSet 1A active. I then make edits to WorkSpace 2 WorkSet 2A or WorkSet 1B and set 2,2A or 1,1B active I am required to restart MSTN to have any of the changes take effect. We are also using MSTN with a Civil configuration which adds the additional WorkSpace component of Civil Org.

    Bentley has our configuration for testing. I can send you a link if you would like.

    Also are you testing the files local or on the network? I know that network speeds vary from location to location and I am sure Bentley has a super fast network. I know that our users are opening files from a server via a mapped drive. Is this variable in your testing?

    ~HTH

    John.

    yep

  • with datasets larger than approximately 200mb CONNECT Edition is faster

    That surely contradicts the performance blog by ?

     
    Regards, Jon Summers
    LA Solutions

Reply Children
  • Hi Jon, sorry I haven't been clear in wording the post. What I meant is that with larger datasets, the difference I mentioned is counterbalanced by the 64bits benefits, until CONNEC Edition becomes faster. You are right, on Karisma's blog CONNECT Edition "overtakes" V8i with larger datasets but we have been trying different datasets, configurations and hardware and in some cases  CONNECT Editions becomes faster with smaller datasets.

    As I mentioned, we haven't finished yet so please take my response as an update on a work in progress effort.