Wildfire 5.0 is slow and crashes

[DamianCastillo]

I am running the released version of WF5.0

I can crash it 100% of the time in Drawing mode and I get very sluggish performance in Modeling mode.

Has anyone been testing WF5.0 and experienced the same issues?

Our current workstations are more than capable of running WF4.0 with no issues at all, but WF5.0 is very slow. I am not sure if the crashing is caused by bugs in the software or because it has issues with the amount of resources it wants to run.

Any comments would be appreciated

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

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[ptc-169947]

Hi Damian,

Thanks for posting this. We're running WF2/3.3 and are going to make the big jump very soon. I'm pushing to go straight to WF5 because I think it's a pretty substantial release, and am curious as to what others think. We're in the process of getting the current license file installed. Then we'll start playing around with it too. Sounds like you're off to a rough start though.

Stefan

[DamianCastillo]

@Stefan,

I love many of the tweaks made to WF5.0 along with some new functionality, but my only issue is the amount of resources it takes to run.

It's much slower than WF4.0 and the Drawing mode is either buggy or does not work due to the resource issues. When in Drawing mode, I can crash WF5.0 within 60 seconds by simply clicking on the different tabs of the Ribbon Interface.

In modeling mode, the Dynamic Edit is great, but it's really slow and takes a lot more power to use it.

We are running Dual Core Pentium D 3.4GHz processors with 2GB of RAM, Nvidia Quadro FX1500 cards. These workstations are starting to get old, but they can run WF4.0 at top speed.

My biggest concern is the crashing of WF5.0 in Drawing mode. I don't think it's due to the resource issue because WF5 does not crash in modeling mode. It's very slow but does not crash. In Drawing mode, they system runs very slow as well but it crashes constantly.

Hope more people will give me their input on this.

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

[mreece]

Have you looked at the certified hardware for WF5? 99% of the hardware
we are currently using for WF3, is supported in WF4 but is not supported
in WF5.



OUCH!

[Radovan]

I am using notebook Dell PRECISION M6300 without any problems.

Radovan

[vmcdaniel]

So far, so Good. Using a Lenovo T-61p.

Here are some of my stats:

File Retrieval time
WF3 Cold Boot MASTER.asm(master rep)=4:05 (geometry rep)=1:52
WF5 Cold Boot MASTER.asm(master_rep)=3:05 (geometry rep)=1:10

Memory usage
WF3 Initial Idle=140,744k MASTER.asm(master rep)=2,022,076k geom_rep=994,372k
WF5 Initial Idle=123,656k MASTER.asm(master rep)=1,729,080k geom_rep=942,952k

[Greg_McMurray]

WF 5.0 F000 is definitely slower and requires more system resources than previous releases. In addition there are numerous bugs, some still from the pre-production. Crossing my fingers and hoping M010 in November has some fixes.

[DamianCastillo]

Thanks for all the great feedback.

My issue is not how fast things open, but how slow the system runs while you are actually working on the models.

The biggest loss in speed for modeling is when you turn on the realistic reflections and use dynamic edit. I can accept that this takes more power to run, but I was surprised at how much slower it is. Without upgrading our hardware, I could never use this new functionality and stay productive.

The real problem is Drawing mode and the Ribbon Interface. I don't need to do much in Drawing mode. I can simply start clicking on the tabs at a normal pace and it will lock up. I guess I should not say that it crashes because WF5 does stay up. It just becomes unresponsive and it's locked up. I have to use Task Manager to kill the process.

Here is a short video of just one example

http://screencast.com/t/Vi8dwdw6u

I hope this short video does a better job than I can with words.

I would like to add that PTC has already contacted me based on this forum post. That's what I call service. I have not contacted technical support on this issue because I consider this just a test at the moment and wanted to see if anyone else had similar issues.

It seems that hardware is a bigger factor for WF5 than any previous version I have seen. This could be what's causing all my issues. I am not sure why Drawing mode is worst than modeling mode.

The workstations we have are not the fastest in the market, but they are not too bad either. They run WF4 at top speed with no issues. I was surprised to see the performance level of WF5 when compared to WF4.

I understand that with new functions, you would eventually need to upgrade your hardware, but this normally is not such a big issue when going from the latest release to the next version of the software. If I was going from WF1 to WF4 or WF5, I would expect a hardware upgrade is needed. But going from WF4 to WF5 should not be such a huge difference in performance as I am experiencing.

Thanks again for all your input on this. I think PTC wants me to log a call so they can look deeper into the issue.

[Greg_McMurray]

Damian - I have the same processor & graphics card as you with 4gb RAM & the 3gb switch. I haven't seen your problem with drawings, and showing dimensions works fine for me. I have only seen one crash in 4 weeks of heavy use, so I'm coming to the conclusion that it is stable.

However, memory usage is a problem. I ran Olaf Cortens benchmark on WF 4.0 M050 & WF 5.0 F000. WF 5.0 took 10% longer. You have to take the results with a grain of salt because he doesn't have a test for 5.0 yet. I ran his 4.0 benchmark on both. The real difference was memory usage and page file usage. It was consistently 15% - 20% higher for 5.0. There's no doubt in my mind that memory requirements are greater.

The biggest problem for me is rendering. With the new mental ray engine, renderings that used to take 15 to 20 minutes now take 2 to 3 hours. They are much, much better but they require a significant system upgrade.

Is it possible that a more powerful processor like dual core or quad core will speed things up? If not, I believe that system requirements should be changed to minimum 64 bit and at least 6 gb RAM.

[Radovan]

In Reply to Damian Castillo:

Hi Damian,
When you used Enhanced Realistic icon, then Enhanced mapping is default enabled and reaction coul be slower.
Try to disable this (View>Display Settings>Model Display>Shade>Environment mapping)

Radovan

Thanks for all the great feedback.

My issue is not how fast things open, but how slow the system runs while you are actually working on the models.

The biggest loss in speed for modeling is when you turn on the realistic reflections and use dynamic edit. I can accept that this takes more power to run, but I was surprised at how much slower it is. Without upgrading our hardware, I could never use this new functionality and stay productive.

The real problem is Drawing mode and the Ribbon Interface. I don't need to do much in Drawing mode. I can simply start clicking on the tabs at a normal pace and it will lock up. I guess I should not say that it crashes because WF5 does stay up. It just becomes unresponsive and it's locked up. I have to use Task Manager to kill the process.

Here is a short video of just one example

http://screencast.com/t/Vi8dwdw6u

I hope this short video does a better job than I can with words.

I would like to add that PTC has already contacted me based on this forum post. That's what I call service. I have not contacted technical support on this issue because I consider this just a test at the moment and wanted to see if anyone else had similar issues.

It seems that hardware is a bigger factor for WF5 than any previous version I have seen. This could be what's causing all my issues. I am not sure why Drawing mode is worst than modeling mode.

The workstations we have are not the fastest in the market, but they are not too bad either. They run WF4 at top speed with no issues. I was surprised to see the performance level of WF5 when compared to WF4.

I understand that with new functions, you would eventually need to upgrade your hardware, but this normally is not such a big issue when going from the latest release to the next version of the software. If I was going from WF1 to WF4 or WF5, I would expect a hardware upgrade is needed. But going from WF4 to WF5 should not be such a huge difference in performance as I am experiencing.

Thanks again for all your input on this. I think PTC wants me to log a call so they can look deeper into the issue.

[magnus.salomons]

Hi Damian,

I had this problem already in PreProduction. If you have an NVIDIA adapter, try disabling the nView Desktop Manager under the Control Panel. This worked for me.

Cheers

Magnus

In Reply to Damian Castillo:

Thanks for all the great feedback.

My issue is not how fast things open, but how slow the system runs while you are actually working on the models.

The biggest loss in speed for modeling is when you turn on the realistic reflections and use dynamic edit. I can accept that this takes more power to run, but I was surprised at how much slower it is. Without upgrading our hardware, I could never use this new functionality and stay productive.

The real problem is Drawing mode and the Ribbon Interface. I don't need to do much in Drawing mode. I can simply start clicking on the tabs at a normal pace and it will lock up. I guess I should not say that it crashes because WF5 does stay up. It just becomes unresponsive and it's locked up. I have to use Task Manager to kill the process.

Here is a short video of just one example

http://screencast.com/t/Vi8dwdw6u

I hope this short video does a better job than I can with words.

I would like to add that PTC has already contacted me based on this forum post. That's what I call service. I have not contacted technical support on this issue because I consider this just a test at the moment and wanted to see if anyone else had similar issues.

It seems that hardware is a bigger factor for WF5 than any previous version I have seen. This could be what's causing all my issues. I am not sure why Drawing mode is worst than modeling mode.

The workstations we have are not the fastest in the market, but they are not too bad either. They run WF4 at top speed with no issues. I was surprised to see the performance level of WF5 when compared to WF4.

I understand that with new functions, you would eventually need to upgrade your hardware, but this normally is not such a big issue when going from the latest release to the next version of the software. If I was going from WF1 to WF4 or WF5, I would expect a hardware upgrade is needed. But going from WF4 to WF5 should not be such a huge difference in performance as I am experiencing.

Thanks again for all your input on this. I think PTC wants me to log a call so they can look deeper into the issue.

[CM10]

Well, here's something interesting:

I've been looking at buying a system to run Pro/E, and my good friend and all-around PC geek/guru told me the "supported vs unsupported hardware is PR nonsense" and he can build me a better, faster box than Dell for far cheaper. Dunno if I 100% believe him, but he also downloaded a copy of WF5 over last weekend and ran some of the online benchmarks on it and said Pro/E was a single-threading application and a quad (or even dual) core CPU buys you.........nothing. He said it maxed out one of his cores during the benchmark, but the other 3 were idling. I had another guy more PC savvy than I have tell me the same thing. Anyone have experience with this?

[dgschaefer]

True - to a point. The other 3 cores could be running Outlook, MS Word,
Adobe Illustrator, Saladworks. So While Pro|E doesn't use them, you
could.

Now, I have a nice hyperthreaded dual core machine and I did notice that
it runs Pro|E significantly slower than my old one. Why? Each of the 4
virtual processors in my new machine operates at 1.6 GHZ, the old single
core ran at 3.0+ GHZ.

I think that parts of Pro|E (the advanced rendering extension and
mechanica?) do use multiple processors, so if you use those you'll see a
benefit as well.

Doug Schaefer

[JoshuaHouser]

I've had the same experience with Doug. Aside from render, there are a
few other processes such as retrieval which I believe are
multi-threaded. I'm quite sure PTC would love to have everything
multi-threaded, but believe it's been a tough nut to crack when it comes
to the dependencies of parametric modeling.

One thing I'm finding these days is that it is more difficult just to
find systems that have bigger CPU's instead of more.



As far as building a system, Olaf's site (

[iturner]

I would certainly not believe the statement about supported and
unsupported, what 'unsupported' really means is untested. I have seen
pro/e running on unsupported graphics cards and it will crash for no
reason. I think there less issues with processors/ motherboards but
wrong graphics card is a disaster.

Olaf site is the best for seeing whether it is worth spending to buy the
next processor up etc.

In my experience faster clock speed has more benefit for pro/e than more
cores, Also faster memeory speed.

I have been wondering if the new solid state drives would be faster for
retreiving pro/e data. They are expensive but you could have all your
programs on a conventional disc and aall the pro data (intralink
workspace) on a SSD


You can get a program that makes applications run on different cores e.g
'processor affinity manager' so pro/e on core 1, word on core 2 etc



Ian Turner

CAD Manager

Cobham Mission Equipment

[CM10]

My PC geek/guru friend showed me his SSD running a batch file to open a bunch of commonly used programs........WOW! That thing rocks. I'm sold. I'm going to find a way to work one into my system.

In Reply to Ian Turner:

I would certainly not believe the statement about supported and
unsupported, what 'unsupported' really means is untested. I have seen
pro/e running on unsupported graphics cards and it will crash for no
reason. I think there less issues with processors/ motherboards but
wrong graphics card is a disaster.

Olaf site is the best for seeing whether it is worth spending to buy the
next processor up etc.

In my experience faster clock speed has more benefit for pro/e than more
cores, Also faster memeory speed.

I have been wondering if the new solid state drives would be faster for
retreiving pro/e data. They are expensive but you could have all your
programs on a conventional disc and aall the pro data (intralink
workspace) on a SSD


You can get a program that makes applications run on different cores e.g
'processor affinity manager' so pro/e on core 1, word on core 2 etc



Ian Turner