Hi,
Struggling with response times with running my model at the moment, and need to know what hardware I need to upgrade.
I have a Xeon processor E-2176 @ 2.7GHz, 32Gb RAM and have a runtime of nearly 19 minutes
A test on an 8th Gen i5-8350U @ 2.7GHz, 16Gb RAM gives a runtime of 11 minutes
A 10th Gen i5-10310U @ 2.2GHz, 16Gb RAM has a runtime of 26.5 minutes
An AMD Ryzen 7 3700X @ 3.59GHz, 32Gb RAM has a runtime of 8.5 minutes
To me it's clear I need a modern processor with a high clock speed, to my IT group, they aren't so sure. Memory does not seem to help, with the 8th Gen processor outperforming the 10th Gen and the Xeon despite having half the memory. The AMD processor seems to suggest the answer, but when the analysis runs, processor is not 100% on any of the test machines.
I am using advanced engine, my model has 3,200 nodes, 6,500 beam elements, 400 plate elements, 40 load cases and 170 load combinations. It is only likely to get larger. Due to the iterative nature of the process, I spent hours a day watching the analysis progress move slowly. Any other use of the laptop only delays the results. Calculating section forces and the design process are the areas that take the most time.
Any guidance out there as to what hardware works best. All test machines are well above minimum specs. All test runs are performed with the STD files located on the local C drive, an SSD in all machines.
Thanks
Thanks for the response. According to Buy STAAD.Pro: Structural Analysis & Design Software | Virtuosity (bentley.com) the minimum spec is a 2GHz processor, which I achieve, so trying to convince IT that a 3GHz processor is required is difficult. Even more difficult when the Xeon processor I am using is rated from 2.7GHz to 4.4GHz, so would meet the minimum anyway. As I said though, the analysis does not push the utilisation of the processor that hard, so the overclocking of the processor does not happen often.
I will try and get a processor that natively runs above 3GHz and see what happens.
Your machine's configurations are pretty good. STAAD does not take advantage of a multi-core processor, so you may not see significant CPU utilization on a multi-core CPU. STAAD analysis and design engine use a single core; only the design based on AISC code uses multi-core in certain situations.
Since STAAD performs a lot of disk I/O, running it on an SSD drive will increase the performance. Our experience shows that STAAD performs better on AMD-based machines than equivalent Intel-based machines.
In some instances, STAAD engine performance can be adversely affected by how the STAAD model is set up. If you will like to investigate further in the context of the input STAAD model. please create a Service Request and share the model with us.