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rosendo.c asked Ben Wilson edited

Recommended Laptop Requirements

Hello Flexsim,

I will be updating my laptop soon and would like to know the recommended RAM and Graphics card to request for Healthcare modeling. My current Laptop has 16GB RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M graphics card but my models are often difficult to build and to run as I experience lag.

I read the recommended system requirements on the forum but it lists desktop graphics cards.

Thank you,

Rosendo

FlexSim HC 5.3.0
graphics cardsramlagrecommended
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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

Hi @rosendo.cardoso,

It would be helpful to know where your current computer is having a bottleneck.

You mentioned that building the model is difficult because of poor performance - so the model is not even running? This suggests a heavy graphics workload, so an upgrade there would be good.

When you are building a model, what is the RAM utilization for FlexSim? Please check your task manager to see. Then check again when the model is running. What is the peak RAM utilization while running? Do you run optimizations or experiments? How many CPU cores do you currently have?

What form factor do you need? Are you upgrading to a desktop workstation? Do you need to stay portable? If portable, how big/small are you wanting your system to be?

With a little more information we can make a more informed recommendation.

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rosendo.c avatar image rosendo.c Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

Hello Ben,

The bottleneck in my building process comes when I run the model and run experiments.

My physical memory usage starts at about 7.5GB when i run the model and increases slowly as time goes on.

I currently have an Intel Core i7-4600U processor (i believe its 2 cores) and want to stay portable.

Thank you,

Rosendo

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Ben Wilson avatar image
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Ben Wilson answered Ben Wilson edited

Hi @rosendo.cardoso,

Building Your Model

If responsiveness is not an issue when building your model, it is likely that your graphics are already good enough.

You can easily test your whether your graphics are good enough for running your model. Try closing ALL windows in FlexSim, including tree views, process flows, 3d views, tool panels, quick properties - everything - so that you are left with the main button panel at the top and nothing else. Then run your model at max speed. Is the model run speed appreciably faster than with views open? If so, this suggests that more powerful graphics would be helpful. If not, then your simulation is CPU constrained, meaning it is fairly complex and requires a lot of computation.

Single Model Run

You computer has enough memory for a single model run, so the possible bottlenecks are graphics, CPU, or both. You can test graphics as described above. If the model speeds up with all views closed, then more powerful graphics may be helpful. If the model is still too slow, even with all views closed, then you need a more powerful CPU.

Experimenter

Running two experiment instances simultaneously is probably overwhelming your hardware resources and greatly degrading your performance. The memory requirements for your model are quite high. As described in the general system guidelines, you need to have enough memory for each simultaneous instance of your model run, plus more for overhead and other system/OS processes. For your current PC's 16GB RAM, and your 7.5GB+ model, you should probably constrain the number of simultaneous experimenter runs to 1. You can do so within the Experimenter interface, Advanced tab, Max Cores widget:

You may also want to look into different modeling approaches that are less memory intensive, though this is a completely separate question and highly dependent on the nature of your simulation.


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Ben Wilson avatar image
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Ben Wilson answered

Hi @rosendo.cardoso,

The general system guidelines apply - the bigger/better/faster/newer you go for RAM, CPU and Graphics, the bigger/faster/prettier models you will be able to build/run.

In a new system today, I would want at least 16+ GB RAM, a GeForce 1060 GTX or better, and Intel's 8th Gen i7.

Depending on your answers to the questions in my comment above, we will be able to make more informed recommendations.

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Steven Hamoen avatar image
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Steven Hamoen answered

This post is maybe even more to the point: nvidia geforce vs quadro

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