Pro/ENGINEER Performance of High End x86 CPUs (Athlon vs P3)

The first and foremost authority on Pro/E performance is Pro/E: The Magazine.  The monthly publication reaches over 35,000 qualified users and, on an annual basis, Pro/E: The Benchmark is published.  According to them, “Pro/E: The Benchmark edition is the most frequently referenced and valued workstation Benchmark in the Pro/ENGINEER community.” 

Pro/E: The Benchmark compares Pro/E performance based on the results of a benchmark known as BENCH, with BENCH99 being the current edition of the benchmark.  BENCH99 consists of two parts: CPU/IO99 and GBENCH99.

CPU/IO99 has 9 tests which measure CPU and I/O performance.  GBENCH99 consists of 11 tests which measure graphics performance.   Both perform operations on a single part.  The part itself is not as complicated as the models that most Pro/E users use on a daily basis, but the graphics operations performed in the GBENCH include among other things, clipping and texturing.  According to Daniel Kroushl, one of the many Pro/E users out there “it would be a rare for the average user to use this functionality.” 

With respect to the average user, the overall results are overly weighted toward graphics performance.  Anyone with a Pro/E license can run this benchmark, but first you have to come up with $50 to get the test files.

For the purpose of comparing x86 CPU performance, specifically comparing the performance of the Athlon to the Pentium III under Pro/E, BENCH99 as a benchmark did not seem to offer the best method of comparison, although CPU/IO99 alone would admittedly have served our task to compare the CPUs.

The next benchmark is provided for by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), and the benchmark is known as SPECapc for Pro/E Revision 20.  

The SPECapc for Pro/E Revision 20 consists of 17 tests. The model used in the benchmark is a realistic rendering of a complete photocopy machine consisting of approximately 370,000 triangles.  This is a very complex model on which very complicated graphics tests are performed. 

In response to the complexity of the SPECapc benchmark, Kroushl, a Pro/E professional, states, “…but for 95% of Pro/E users, the SPECapc is overkill.  Most of us will never approach the combination of model size and graphics complexity that is demonstrated with this benchmark.”

This benchmark tends to reward the workstations with the most expensive graphics cards with the best results and is thus a poor candidate for a strictly CPU comparison. 

Anyone with a Pro/E license can run this benchmark.  The download is free, but, for optimal results, approximately 512MB of RAM is recommended.