Alibre tipped me over the edge for new pc...and what a big difference!

[skcncx]

After landing on Alibre Design I realized I was a bit on the older and lower end hardware but still functional for smaller models. Some things just weren't as snappy. Totally tolerable laggy'ness for my use case... but that did not stop me from getting a new pc, not like it was a hard sell/justification either... and what a difference it made!

In a side by side comparison using their sample shaver head model (I don't have anything near the complex yet) I really could tell a huge difference on new hardware. Especially load time, zooming and rotating the model.

My new pc is by no means high end. Most of it's laptop hardware in a mini pc/desktop form. But, I did go from an older embedded GPU to discrete GPU and just newer tech on drives etc..

FROM (Lenovo tiny tower, 7 years old)
Intel I7-7700 4 - core/ 8 threads / 3.6 GHz (Win 10 Pro)
Intel UHD 630 embedded graphics (far from ideal but it did work)
16GB DDR4 Ram
SSD drive /PCIe 3.0

TO (MinisForum HX99G)
AMD Ryzen 6900HX - 8 cores/ 16 threads / 3.3Ghz (Win 11 Pro)
Radeon RX 6600M (8GB GDDR6) - discrete GPU
64GB DDR5 Ram (32GB would have been plenty, just came with 64)
SSD drive / PCIe 4.0

I think it mainly comes down to it's just newer generation stuff with discrete GPU, and while the CPU GHz is lower on paper, it has double L2, L3 cache. Even my SSD hard drives old vs new are considerably different, newer being much faster for many file/zip operations). I didn't realize how slow my other pc was (in comparison to newer stuff). This new one is one of those budget based small form factor desktops.

Even all the Alibre dialogs perform better and just appear quicker, especially noticed when adding features like fillets on lots of faces, old pc lagged a bit when it had to redraw, new pc it's instant.

That's it!

 

[Stu3d]

Check you are are using the GPU card and not onboard graphics.
System Options > Display > General > Graphics Display.

 

[skcncx]

Check you are are using the GPU card and not onboard graphics.

Yep! Did that first thing. I actually disabled the embedded GPU in the device manager... And I forced Alibre to use the dedicated GPU.

Not sure why or when I'd ever care for the PC to fall back to the embedded GPU... but maybe there's a good reason for some apps.

 

[tyc]

The mini pc looks very appealing. Good specs. Enjoy your new machine.
Just for the people who might know about it, what is the most important, dedicated high tier GPU or a high frequency CPU(even with low core count)?

 

[kw856]

The mini pc looks very appealing. Good specs. Enjoy your new machine.
Just for the people who might know about it, what is the most important, dedicated high tier GPU or a high frequency CPU(even with low core count)?

Sometimes Alibre likes few cores, but i can confirm i5-13600kf (small OC 5.2Ghz) paid for itself in 6 months. Also with those new CPUs, with P and E cores i use small script to run alibre with high piority, that gives around 10% shorter times depending what you are clicking.

start "" /high "C:\Program Files\Alibre Design 28.0.1.28098\Program\Alibre Design.exe"

 

[skcncx]

i use small script to run alibre with high piority, that gives around 10% shorter times depending what you are clicking.

Wow, great tip!

Just for a one time experiment, you can right click on task manager and set the priority level of any process... I did that for Alibre and my Hole and fillet dialog window opens up quite a bit faster. Even on my new machine those were still a bit pokey but still better than my previous setup.

The script to start alibre in high priority method is better since you can create a shortcut since the task manager setting is not permanent, just for that one instance either way, I like it!

 

[kw856]

The script to start alibre in high priority method is better since you can create a shortcut since the task manager setting is not permanent, just for that one instance either way, I like it!

Yup, I have autostart with windows of alibre with that one liner *bat* and in case of crash all of my shortcuts of alibre are *bat*s.
I know for sure if you have weaker CPU, there is a chance it will create some micro lags of system.