Autodesk Inventor® Hardware Web Site

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Last Updated
04/25/2008

Entry level Workstations

Information on low end systems certified with Autodesk Inventor Professional 11

Introduction

These are minimum system configurations. They are examples of low cost systems that have been certified for Autodesk Inventor Series and Professional products. Additional memory is recommended to improve performance.

See the Inventor Workstation certification list. These systems are marked as a "Certified Entry System".

Summery of the test results

All three systems passed the Graphics test, System Certification, and System Stress test.

Issues found during testing

  1. Intel on-board graphics have a problem using Direct3D off-screen rendering to place drawing views. This causes the computer to reboot. Please check your graphics driver (or a similar one) on this web site. A workaround is needed for Inventor R11 without any service packs. Inventor R11, SP1 or later (with the latest graphics database) resolves this issue.
  2. The automated test programs restarted Inventor too quickly.
    1. As configured for this testing, these systems were doing a lot of swapping.
    2. It was necessary to put a 10 second pause between the end of one Inventor session and the start of the next.
      1. This is necessary to allow dll's to unload after Inventor has run.
      2. It is unlikely that a user would ever push the systems hard enough to see this when running manually.
  3. Please obtain an updated graphics database.

Test configuration

  1. 512MB of system memory.
    1. This is the minimum memory for Inventor with a graphics chipset built into the motherboard.
    2. More memory will provide a substantial performance increase.
  2. Embedded graphics chipsets on the motherboard: Nvidia (128MB), ATI (64MB), and Intel (64MB).
    1. These chipsets use main memory for Video memory.
    2. Open Explorer, go to Help > About to see the reduced amount of memory available to Windows.
  3. System Configurations
    1. HP Compaq Business Desktop dx5150
      1. 500MB of memory
      2. AMD Athlon 64 3200+
      3. Windows XP Pro SP2
      4. ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Series graphics (64MB) on the motherboard
        1. OpenGL certification: Yellow, due to goo (blotches) on the screen.
        2. D3D certification: Green
        3. Driver (package value): 8.181.0.0
    2. eMachine Desktop T3304
      1. 500MB of memory
      2. AMD Sempron 3300+
      3. Windows XP Home SP2
      4. Nvidia GeForce 6100 graphics (128MB) on the motherboard.
        1. OpenGL certification: Green
        2. D3D certification: Green
        3. Driver: 8198
    3. Acer AcerPower FV Desktop
      1. 500MB of memory
      2. Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHZ
      3. Windows XP Pro SP2
      4. Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset family (64MB) on the motherboard
        1. OpenGL certification: Red (automatically switches to D3D)
        2. D3D Certification: Green with a note that a mandatory workaround is required. (Intel is working on this issue.)
        3. Driver 6.14.10.4512
  4. Test Program descriptions:
    1. Graphics certification test
      1. This is the standard automated test used to certify all graphics cards on this site. It uses API commands to run Inventor.
    2. System Certification test
      1. This and the next test uses a standard QA tool to run Inventor through the standard Graphical user interface in the same manner that a human user would use the Inventor. It does run Inventor much faster than a human can provide input.
      2. This test is the standard test used to certify workstations for Inventor Professional 11.
      3. For this test, all addins installed are loaded and enabled.
      4. For 10 unique data sets it:
        1. Rebuilds all of the parts
        2. Updates all of the assemblies
        3. Creates drawings with a base view and two section views. The drawings are saved and re-opened.
      5. Each data set is run in a different Inventor session.
    3. System stress test: This is the same as the System Verification test, except that:
      1. 24 unique data sets are processed
      2. Drawings are created, saved and re-opened for all parts and assemblies. Each drawing has a base view and 4 section views.