Speed my slow PC for SU

[SchreiberBike]

What can I do - on a budget - to make SU run more smoothly on my PC. Using the "crowd test," (copy below) things start getting jumpy at level 6 and it's a major pain by level 8.

I'm running a Dell 3100 desktop with a Pentium 4 2.8 ghz and 2 gig of ram.
I'm using the on-board graphics (no graphics card).

I recently went from 512 meg of ram to 2 gig and that made a big difference in some programs, but had no effect in SU.

Questions:
Are there any settings I can change to take advantage of my new memory?
How much money would I have to spend on a graphics card to make a big difference?
Anything else I can do?

[Dave R]

Hi John, I expect the the problem you are experiencing is a bottleneck at the video card. You might try updating the drivers for the card but I imagine you need to increase the card's RAM. Think of it this way, your CPU can send data faster than your video card can regurgitate it to the screen. Your video card needs a bigger stomach and...well...you get the idea.

[Anssi]

I would say that even less than a hundred dollars should buy you a GeForce video card that will make a big difference. Almost anything will be better than onboard graphics. The computer I am using now is very similar, a luggable that when I first received it was missing the GeForce FX Go5700 video card, and I had to do with the onboard graphics for a while. At work I have a faster (3.3 GHz) computer with a Quadro card, but it does not feel noticeably faster with SU.

My display only has 64 Mb of memory and I have not noticed any difficulties with that, but to be modern, and if you like to have two displays, go for 256 Mb or more.

Anssi

[SchreiberBike]

What do I look for in a video card optimized for SU. Is there a difference in cards for vector vs. raster graphics? If I get into some rendering, will that make a difference?

[Anssi]

With SU, the division of work goes so that the CPU takes care of the vector stuff, and the video card of textures, shadows and the like. So in fact SU is very CPU-intensive. With other apps, it might be different. Video card performance generally only affects what you see on screen and how responsive your apps feel. Rendering to a file is typically done by the CPU only, the video is used to draw the user interface and preview windows etc. on the screen.

As SU, like most modeling and CAD applications, is still unable to profit from multiple CPU-s, buying a new computer with a dual-core or multicore CPU is not a great way of enhancing SU performance. Many rendering applications, however, can split their tasks between multiple processor cores.

Anssi