Welcome to the latest chapter in our Autodesk Inventor benchmarking series with InventorBench HD. Let’s jump right in!
Hardware Contenders
| CPU | Physical Cores | Threads | Max Clock Speed (GHz) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5-12600K | 10 | 16 | 4.9 |
| Intel Core i7-12700KF | 12 | 20 | 5.0 |
| Intel Core i9-12900K | 16 | 24 | 5.2 |
| AMD Ryzen 9 5950X | 16 | 32 | 4.9 |
The Test Environment
For our tests, we used InventorBench HD version 1.09 from Micrographics, a company based out of South Africa. We also ran all tests on Autodesk Inventor 2022 running on Windows 10 Professional. We ran 5 passes on each hardware configuration and used the results that InventorBench HD generated. You can find this tool to run it yourself on Micrographics’ website. Below, you can also check out our highlight video that includes some footage of the operations InventorBench HD performs during the benchmarking process.
| Intel Test Platform Components | Brand / Model |
|---|---|
| Cooler | Corsair H115i Pro XT |
| GPU | Nvidia Quadro T400 |
| RAM | G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB |
| SSD | Samsung 980 Pro |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z590 UD AC |
| AMD Test Platform Components | Brand / Model |
|---|---|
| Cooler | Corsair H115i Pro XT |
| GPU | Nvidia Quadro T400 |
| RAM | G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB |
| SSD | Samsung 980 Pro |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte X570 UD |
Results
Takeaways
For Autodesk Inventor, at this point I would heavily recommend the 12th generation Intel CPUs over the AMD 5000 series CPUs. AMD is able to eke out some wins on multi-thread tasks, but even multi-thread performance is close enough that it’s very rare to encounter a workflow that is multi-threaded well enough to justify the loss of single-thread performance (the driving factor behind drawing and modeling as well as file manipulation performance). In our last post, the CPUs from the two rival companies were trading blows, but the current Alder Lake Intel CPUs have provided a big leap in performance over the 11th generation CPUs and AMD has yet to hit back. The wisdom may change in Q3 or Q4 of 2022 when AMD is rumored to release their Zen 4 CPUs.
Another factor worth consideration is the recent release of Windows 11. As of right now, we are still firmly planted in Microsoft’s “guinea pig” period, where early adopters of Windows 11 are frequently encountering many bugs, driver issues etc. and here at Orbital Computers, we are still getting frequent support calls from users who want to revert to Windows 10 after a bumpy experience in upgrading. However, as time goes on Windows 11 will likely become a good choice for your CAD workstation within 12 months as software and driver developers are able sort out the issues. Windows 11 is also the operating system that is most well-optimized to take advantage of the P-Core and E-Core technology that Intel introduced on their Alder Lake CPUs. It would be interesting to revisit InventorBench HD performance of the 12th generation Intel CPUs on Windows 11 vs. the Zen 4 AMD CPUs, likely towards the end of 2022.
As always, if you would like help configuring a PC for Autodesk Inventor, you can reach out to us via phone or email and quickly get in touch with an expert. Check out our Contact Page for more details or to book a consultation and get started.