Altium 20 performance on AMD Ryzen 3rd gen

[aabbcc]

So I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and buy a desktop machine. I'm interested in the Ryzen platform but seeing as Altium has amongst the least detailed recommendations for hardware I'm asking here.

From Altiums documentation on v20:

Recommended System Requirements
Windows 10 (64-bit only) Intel® Core™ i7 processor or equivalent

I mean the difference between a 1st and 9th gen i7 is pretty huge...

Is anyone running Altium 20 on a Ryzen 3rd gen and can comment on performance? I'm looking at getting the Ryzen 5 3600x or 7 3700x togheter with 32gb 3600mhz ddr4 and some fancy gpu (mostly for gaming hehe).

[ajb]

I don't think the processor much matters, within reason.  I regularly run AD19.1 on an i7-3635QM+8GB (laptop), an i7-4770+32GB, and a Ryzen 7 2700x (2nd gen)+32GB, I can't say there's an appreciable difference in performance among the three.  Having an SSD makes a HUGE difference, though, especially for when an autosave hits right in the middle of doing something.  In general an SSD is kind of the best bang-for-buck way to improve just about any PC these days.

[aabbcc]

I don't think the processor much matters, within reason.  I regularly run AD19.1 on an i7-3635QM+8GB (laptop), an i7-4770+32GB, and a Ryzen 7 2700x (2nd gen)+32GB, I can't say there's an appreciable difference in performance among the three.  Having an SSD makes a HUGE difference, though, especially for when an autosave hits right in the middle of doing something.  In general an SSD is kind of the best bang-for-buck way to improve just about any PC these days.

Great answer, thanks. Mostly wanted to make sure there is no weird bittleneck going on with altium+ryzen. Yea I've a samsung evo ssd that I can and will use!

[olkipukki]

Is anyone running Altium 20 on a Ryzen 3rd gen and can comment on performance? I'm looking at getting the Ryzen 5 3600x or 7 3700x togheter with 32gb 3600mhz ddr4 and some fancy gpu (mostly for gaming hehe).

I'm using Altium 20 on Ryzen 3600X almost every day and didn't find any issues that might caused by AMD CPU.

What GPU are you after?
Altium runs very well on gaming cards (at least Geforce used to be recommended), not sure about Radeons

[free_electron]

There are issues with AMD GPU's !
Make sure your graphics card is nVidia.

[maxpayne]

I am using Ryzen 3900X and RTX2070 Super.

Altium is running like butter ..

[aabbcc]

There are issues with AMD GPU's !
Make sure your graphics card is nVidia.

I went team red for the gpu too  have not had time to fiddle around with altium mroe then just opening up a current project for a few min. Well we'll see how it goes, hopefully drivers will get better and seeing as ai bought a 5700 xt performance should be all good.

[tszaboo]

It uses 1 thread. Nvidia GPU, definitely, not AMD, doesn't need Quadro, Geforce GTX 1050 is fine. 8G RAM, two monitors, 2560 resolution minimum. The part that will speed up the software the most is an SSD.

They write i7 for big companies. Some IT guy will actually read the recommended system, and buy you a computer like that. So they write i7 there, so people dont end up with a " cheapest hp laptop with i3".

[ajb]

I'm curious about all of these apparent AMD GPU issues.  I have AMD GPUs in two out of three of the PCs I regularly use Altium on and have not found them to be any less reliable than the third, or the previous nvidia GPU I had in one of them.  Only real issues I regularly have with Altium these days are ones that are clearly issues with the software itself as opposed to the sort of graphics or general stability problems that could be GPU (or any number of other things, really).

[tszaboo]

It uses 1 thread. Nvidia GPU, definitely, not AMD, doesn't need Quadro, Geforce GTX 1050 is fine. 8G RAM, two monitors, 2560 resolution minimum. The part that will speed up the software the most is an SSD.

They write i7 for big companies. Some IT guy will actually read the recommended system, and buy you a computer like that. So they write i7 there, so people dont end up with a " cheapest hp laptop with i3".

Depending on how do you define "fast". At work I have an AMD R5 3600x+GTX1650+16GB 3600CL18+256GB NVMe computer, and it runs Altium kinda smoothly, but not nearly as good as I experienced from older versions (pre-18).

I used to be able to run AD6.9 butter smooth on a dual core, integrated GPU i5 ULP back in the days, and only slightly stuttering in a VM on the same computer.

They can either add new features, or optimize it. Honestly, I dont see the point in optimizing it, so you can save 100 EUR on a software that costs 5K. Just buy a faster cpu when updating. If it will be unbearable, then they will address it i'm quite sure.

I'm curious about all of these apparent AMD GPU issues.  I have AMD GPUs in two out of three of the PCs I regularly use Altium on and have not found them to be any less reliable than the third, or the previous nvidia GPU I had in one of them.  Only real issues I regularly have with Altium these days are ones that are clearly issues with the software itself as opposed to the sort of graphics or general stability problems that could be GPU (or any number of other things, really).

I had issues with graphics drivers in draftsman. It wasnt rendering correctly. On Nvidia though

[olkipukki]

It uses 1 thread. Nvidia

Not always, it's depends what and where are you doing.

They can either add new features, or optimize it. Honestly, I dont see the point in optimizing it, so you can save 100 EUR on a software that costs 5K. Just buy a faster cpu when updating. If it will be unbearable, then they will address it i'm quite sure.

That's a bizarre attitude that some companies follow these days.

Let's say I am losing 10 minutes (easy) per day over 150 working days because Altium is not optimised here and there very well. A new CPU does not solve those issues in a brutal way. We are talking about 3 working days (or full day of a life) I'm watching 'sand clock'... I would rather spend my time on something else.

[tszaboo]

Honestly, I dont see the point in optimizing it, so you can save 100 EUR on a software that costs 5K. Just buy a faster cpu when updating.

Keep in mind that R5 3600X is one of the fastest single core performance CPUs ever made, rest of some unlocked i7/i9 K processors that dissipates much more heat, require an overclockable motherboard and cooling.

If it will be unbearable, then they will address it i'm quite sure.

Just a few days ago my copy refused to create a project. The only reason I could think of, judging by synchronous report on this forum as well as some of my contacts in China, I bet it is a server issue.
I disabled all telemetry and cloud. This is a really bad thing from a cybersecurity perspective.
And it's not just a one time thing. I've never seen a single version of AD that doesn't throw random access violation crash errors from time to time.

Those are two other topic, that has nothing to do with its performance. Yes, access violations are a thing, they have been since forever. Restart it every now and then. I usually do it after the first hiccup. These are bugs and not performance problems.

Also, are you really complaining about the internet in China?

[Pseudobyte]

I have Altium open for days at a time, it starts to get a bit weird to say the least.

[olkipukki]

I have blocked Altium completely from internet 

No relying on their vault etc., so no much a side effect.