What Hardware components affect Simulation Times

[Nev D]

All,

Can anyone give any guidance as to what components of your PC/ Laptop reduce simulation time?

I used to work on a computer with a pentium 4 Dual processor with 4GB RAM about 12 months ago.
At my latest company I have a computer with an i7 Quad core processor with 8GB ram.

There is very little difference in simulation time.

I have two questions;

1. Is there something I can do on my current PC to utilise more of the cores to increase performance (Apache only seems to run on one of the cores)

2. About to buy a laptop which I'll be running IES on. Should I bother with a quad core or is it more important to have a quick clock rate to reduce simulation times?


Thanks,

Nev

[PCully]

Currently apache simulations (and most simulations in <VE>) will only use a single processor, with a dual core this was ok as it meant the machine was still usable during simulation time for other tasks but now with multi core being so common this is becoming more of a priority in the dev team to support multi core processing.

I can't say when this will be available however.

For the time being you are looking at as much RAM and as fast a processor as possible really.

Minimum and recommended spec at http://www.iesve.com/Support/Knowledge- ... quirements.

Phil

[Nev D]

Thanks for the response Phil.

Just as a guide, would you say that a 2.53MHz or 2.66Mhz Dual core processor (i5) and 4GB RAM should be fairly capable for large buildings?

Kind regards,

Nev