We just bought a new computer for our interior designers.
The performance of Sketchup however is really disappointing on this system.
Do any of you guys have got any tips to improve the performance of this device?
A part of the problem will probably be the construction of the model (number of edges and planes), but nevertheless I would have expected the computer to outperform a 4 yo Macbook pro, but reality shows me otherwise.
Xeon processors aren’t the best for 3D work, all of the 3D softwares aren’t able to take advantage of more than one core and thread, Xeon processors lack of single core performance compared with a consumer’s processor, that’s why your Mac is faster than your workstation. It would’ve been better to build a pc with a processor with the highest score in single core if you needed more performance, an i5 13600k will outperform your Xeon on sketchup and almost any other app.
There’s not much you can do about it, probably overclock a bit the processor, but the performance gain will be barely noticeable and the temps could go a lot higher.
3D modelling is a single-threaded process, so single-thread performance is what matters. A Xeon is a server CPU designed to shuffle many file read/write operations around very fast but its single-thread processing power is somewhat limited. It is not very slow but on a par with other processor types (like a 12th generation i5 or a recent i3) that cost 10%…30% of the price. The performance should be adequate for decent-sized projects.
I strongly suspect that the modelling practices of your designers need revision, especially the things they download and use from the 3D Warehouse. There is no current computer hardware available that can run a model with millions of edges and faces without lagging. Post a model that causes you problems for more comments and suggestions. A recent poster complaining about the same things had managed to cram about 180 million edges into a model of a moderate-sized apartment. Even a supercomputer cannot run that smoothly.