Benchmarking Your Hardware

You can benchmark SOLIDWORKS software performance for your machine against the performance of other SOLIDWORKS customers. You can use the benchmark results to learn how your hardware performs relative to expected benchmarks.

Do not run applications during the benchmark test.

Expect to take 30 minutes to benchmark your computer. For more information about benchmarking, click www.solidworks.com/benchmarks.

To benchmark SOLIDWORKS software performance on your machine:

  1. Close all applications and reboot your computer.
  2. Before you open any applications, from the Windows Start menu, go to SOLIDWORKS Tools version > SOLIDWORKS Performance Test version.
  3. In the SOLIDWORKS Performance Test dialog box, read the instructions and click Start.
  4. Address any prompts that appear to complete the benchmarking.

Understanding Your Benchmark Results

While third party tools are available to test graphics, processors, and I/O, the SOLIDWORKS RX Benchmark tool tests your hardware as it functions against the SOLIDWORKS software.

Processor

This score measures how long your computer requires to complete CPU-based activities in the SOLIDWORKS software, like rebuilding features or creating drawing views. You can assume that a computer that completes this test in half the time will rebuild a part in half the time.

Since CPU is used in practically all operations, improving the CPU score with a faster processor can improve other scores as well.

Most operations in the SOLIDWORKS software use the processing power of one CPU, so the processor score will not improve much if your computer has multiple processors or cores.

Graphics

This score quantifies how smooth rotating, zooming, and panning a model would be in the SOLIDWORKS software. A fast time indicates that you would be able to zoom, pan, and rotate complex and large models with less visible lag.

Graphics manipulation depends in part on the CPU and video card. You can improve graphics performance with a faster video card and a faster CPU.

I/O

This score quantifies how long it takes to open and save files to your computer. The test measures the read and write speeds of your computer's hard drive.

This test does not account for network speeds or data management systems and is not a good indicator of open and save times for network environments.

RealView Graphics Performance

This score is only available if your computer has a video card that supports RealView graphics. A fast time indicates that, with RealView graphics enabled, you could zoom, pan, and rotate complex and large models with little or no visible lag.

RealView graphics performance depends in part on the CPU and the video card, but with greater dependency on video card than standard graphics. You can improve RealView graphics performance with a faster video card, and a faster CPU.

Simulation

The score is only available if your computer has SOLIDWORKS Simulation installed. It measures the time to run a static analysis design study.

SOLIDWORKS Simulation does use multiple processors, if they exist. More and faster CPU’s will improve the time to run a study. SOLIDWORKS Simulation requires frequent writes to disk.