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sebseb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 24, 2014
322
16
Apparently everybody here buys a Mac for gaming but I want to know how solidworks performs on the iGPU when running on VM, I want to avoid the dGPU as much as I can.

Also is this accurate? it's rating the M370X below the Iris Pro 5200.
 
Apparently everybody here buys a Mac for gaming but I want to know how solidworks performs on the iGPU when running on VM, I want to avoid the dGPU as much as I can.

Also is this accurate? it's rating the M370X below the Iris Pro 5200.

Where does it say M370X is below Iris Pro? Don't worry. M370X is way better than Iris Pro. Thats sure.
Also I have the same question. Need it for educational purposes
 
Where does it say M370X is below Iris Pro? Don't worry. M370X is way better than Iris Pro. Thats sure.
Also I have the same question. Need it for educational purposes

If you look at the list on right side of the page, it shows all the GPUs in order of performance. In this case, the Iris Pro is above the M370X, which can't be right. The 750M and 650M are correctly placed above the Iris Pro, but it's been pretty much proven the the M370X is substantially faster than the 750M.
 
I have been running my 2011 Macbook Pro with the HD3000 like this without a problem for years, I don't even bother to use bootcamp because of this.

Obviously it depends on precisely what you are doing (I very rarely work with assemblies of over 100 parts), but I have always found that SolidWorks is much less dependant on the graphics card than people are led to believe (for the majority of tasks). On the rare occasions it does bog down with too many parts, I just adjust my workflow by suppressing and hiding parts etc.

For the most part I find the things slowing me down are using the CPU, rebuilding a part with lots of features, updating drawings, motion analysis, that sort of thing.

Make sure though if you are using parallels to use the registry hack so you can disable software OpenGL. You can even get rearview working with a program called real hack if you want, but this does effect the performance.
 
Make sure though if you are using parallels to use the registry hack so you can disable software OpenGL. You can even get rearview working with a program called real hack if you want, but this does effect the performance.

Thanx for that information. I won't probably go above 100 parts either but what happens if I don't do that registry hack to disable software OpenGL?
 
From what I can tell, when software OpenGL is enabled it doesn't use the GPU to generate the graphics, and I guess just emulates it. Still usable but you can clearly see the frame rate drop when rotating and moving parts. Its easy enough to do.

I found with vmware fusion I was able to disable it without a hack, as the drivers worked better with solidworks, but there were other performance issues with Yosemite so I made the switch to parallels.
 
From what I can tell, when software OpenGL is enabled it doesn't use the GPU to generate the graphics, and I guess just emulates it. Still usable but you can clearly see the frame rate drop when rotating and moving parts. Its easy enough to do.

I found with vmware fusion I was able to disable it without a hack, as the drivers worked better with solidworks, but there were other performance issues with Yosemite so I made the switch to parallels.

Oh I didn't know that. I know that in Parallels 10 it asks you if you plan on doing cad/cam with the machine. Do you think by selecting that, it would disable software openGL?
 
Apparently everybody here buys a Mac for gaming but I want to know how solidworks performs on the iGPU when running on VM, I want to avoid the dGPU as much as I can.

Also is this accurate? it's rating the M370X below the Iris Pro 5200.
I'm a heavy SolidEdge and SolidWorks user (not so much on my Mac) but profesionnally I couldn't even remotely contemplate using either through a VM. The performance hit would be way too big.

Do you work on large assemblies often? If all you do is parts you should be okay.
 
Thanks for the link. So this issue will happen even if I do get the AMD GPU? it's an issue caused by parallels?

Probably, I had an iMac with an AMD GPU and I had to do the same thing. I think its more to to with solidworks.

Its probably just a driver issue. Solidworks is saying, we don't think you card is powerful enough, so we will force you to use software OpenGL. The hack saying, ok guy i can run solidworks fine enough, just give me the option.
 
I'm a heavy SolidEdge and SolidWorks user (not so much on my Mac) but profesionnally I couldn't even remotely contemplate using either through a VM. The performance hit would be way too big.

Do you work on large assemblies often? If all you do is parts you should be okay.

I do work on assemblies, but I probably won't go over a 30-50 parts. Some of those parts could be screws and bolts. And the reason I want to do it over VM is cause I'm tired of booting back and forth into mac and windows.
 
I'm a heavy SolidEdge and SolidWorks user (not so much on my Mac) but profesionnally I couldn't even remotely contemplate using either through a VM. The performance hit would be way too big.

Do you work on large assemblies often? If all you do is parts you should be okay.

Can I ask how large the assemblies you work on are?
 
Usually ranges from 30-50 parts. Some of them are bolts and nuts.

Your best bet would be to grab the parallels trial, and install solidworks using the Windows 10 preview (I am currently running this now). This is how I have it setup, using 2 CPU's and 8GB RAM on the VM (I have 16GB on my MBP).

Like I said ultimately it depends on what you are working on, but for the most part it should run fine, especially as your laptop is much newer than mine.
 
It depends on what I work on. At the moment I'm talking 1K+ individual parts, perhaps more.

Ah OK, I can imagine a VM would not be adequate for that. So in that case would you use bootcamp, or do you have a workstation laptop/pc?
 
Ah OK, I can imagine a VM would not be adequate for that. So in that case would you use bootcamp, or do you have a workstation laptop/pc?
I used to have a beast of a (work-issued)desktop but now my work involves me traveling between a few plants the company I work for owns. I'm on an HP Zbook 17"(also work-issued) with all the bells and whistles (RAM maxed out, SSD, highest CPU, best GFX card for that model etc). It can get a bit on the slow side sometimes, but nothing unmanageable.
 
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