Pro Engineer Wildfire 4.0 problems

I've encountered the same issues you've described with VMware Fusion 3.0. Verrrry slow performance, with an excessive amount of disc activity on a new MacPro with 8GB. In attempting to work through the issue with Fusion TechSupport (India!) I've spent hours on the line with them installing, cleaning Fusion registries, re-installing, testing, re-booting and innumerable e-mails.

The downside is that there appears to be a problem with the way fusion 3 implements OpenGL under Win7. Apparently this is not a problem under XP and the old Fusion 2.6. Unfortunately for me, I configured this machine specifically to handle Wildfire, with Win7 and all of the associated costs for system software, etc. I will either have to implement BootCamp, or pick up a dedicated Windows machine in an attempt to recover productivity. I do not want to have any more dealings with VMware.

This has been an expensive lesson, and recovery from VMware's issues will involve gambling on BootCamp and hard-drive partitioning and Win7 compatibility, or dropping heavy cash on a new PC. Unfortunately there are just too many variables involved in attempting to run Win7 on a Mac-
-D

I would definitely recommend trying bootcamp before investing in a dedicated pc to run wildfire. I have been using wildfire in this way without any flaw since switching from vmware fusion and that is with windows7 so you should have no difficulty (especially running 4gb more than I have). I hope that you find this solution to be far less costly than a new pc.

Jonathan-
Thanks for your encouragement. I'll go ahead and try it, . . . but first a few questions.

Rather than partitioning my primary drive, could I install another 1TB sata-drive and dedicate that one to Win7 and the other applications?

Is Nvidia's GEForce video display sufficient to drive Wildfire? Or should I look at their Quadro 4800? which is apparently optimized for 3D applications? . . . am I even asking the right questions?

Is Win7 stable in 64-bit mode, or should I down-shift to 32-bit for Wildfire4?
Thanks-
-Dale

And yet one more question-
My video card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, running in the dual quad-core MacPro. Do you have any insight into the display performance with this configuration?
Thanks-
-Dale

Dale,

I am not sure whether or not you can do this, because I merely partitioned my 320gb primary drive. However, I couldn't see running this through an external drive an issue if it gives you the capability to run the operating system from the external drive. This might be a restriction enforced by bootcamp, but again I am not quite sure.

As for Nvidia's GeForce graphics, I had upgraded to the dual graphics macbook pro and therefore have both the GeForce 9400M and the GeForce 9600M GT (Used for better performance). I consistently use the GeForce 9600M GT and have had no issues running wildfire. However, I am a student using the program and depending on the complexity of your designs it may be good to upgrade. My suggestion would be to compare and contrast the capabilities of your graphics card as opposed to the quadro 4800. What you could do is try it with your current graphics card, and then if you come across and rendering issues you could run the Quadro 4800 card.

Lastly, I am running snow leopard (Apple's "64-bit" operating system) as well as 64-bit Windows 7 that was originally bought for vmware's ability to run 64-bit. While running 64-bit Win7 in bootcamp it has, so far, proven to run quite well. I think it depends on the amount of memory that your system has. (Remember that anything above 4gb of ram will run 64-bit operating systems. Either way, you should have no problem with stability issues.

I truly hope that I was able to help answer your questions. While I do not know some of the more technical aspects, I will remind you that a mac is a small but very powerful, and capable machine so again, you should hopefully have no issues.

Good luck,

Jonathan

Dale,

I just quickly looked up the specs for 3 graphics cards. These cards are your current GeForce GT 120, ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5, and the GeForce Quadro FX 4800. I hope that these specs will help you with your decision, but it my honest opinion I would still first try using the GeForce GT 120 as apple states that it is capable of complex 3D rendering.

Here are the links to the specs:

GeForce GT 120 vs. ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5
http://www.apple.com/macpro/features/graphics.html

GeForce Quadro FX 4800
http://www.nvidia.com/object/productquadro_fx_4800_for_macus.html

Hope this helps,

Jonathan

Jonathan-
Thank you. I wish you were next door!
I've reviewed Apple's installation instructions on pdf and discovered that a second internal drive can be used rather than the partitioning scheme on a single drive. However, on installation, the primary drive needs to be disconnected so that the installation thinks that the 2nd drive is actually the primary, . . . probably sounds more complicated than it is, as I am always hesitant about these work-arounds, especially on an install.

The question of graphics cards lies in trial-by-fire. Yes, GT-120 will probably work, but I believe strongly in optimizing a machine to meet my expectations. The Quadro is another $1500 or so, along with a $149 dongle required to connect the Cinema display mini connector to the Quadro card, as the Quadro does not support the CinemaDisplay mini connector directly.

The Nvidia cards, and the Quadro are optimized for processing the bulk of complex 3D model image display. This will be evident in refresh rates and screen builds when working in more complex models which seems to be where I spend most of my time.

Then, there's the question of Quadro drivers in the Win7 system, . . .
I'm not sure that a complex solution is the real solution. But, I'll continue to research the issues.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience.
-Dale

Jonathan-
I've come to the same conclusion after a bit more research. In fact, i'm getting ready to mount a new Hitachi Enterprise 1Tbyte drive which I'll use as both a TimeMachine back-up and as back-up for Win7 and it's cad applications.

Am still trying to figure out how to completely clean my original drive of all things Fusion and Win7. Picked up DriveGenius-2 to consolidate my files for partitioning of my primary drive. I'd bought Win7 from Amazon back in December, and with a stand-alone copy I shouldn't have any issues with re-writing the same machine.
I'm on LinkedIn should you care to collaborate further-
-Dale Raymond