Recommended Computing For ANSYS Products
(Windows 64 bit)

ANSYS and CFX are now supported on Windows XP Professional x64 (Windows Vista x64 is also supported). This platform gives the analysis community much greater computing capacity than previously possible, while delivered at commodity pricing. A multicore x64 processor system can address large amounts of RAM and allows much larger file sizes than a 32 bit operating environment. A suggested x64 analysis system may be something like:

- Duo Core or Quad Core Processors
- Windows XP Professional x64
- 256 MB (or higher) graphics card (DRD has had good experience with NVIDIA cards)
- 16 GB of RAM
- DVD and CD Burner
- 100 GB or more hard drives drives in a RAID 0 configuration
- 17" or larger flat panel display

 

Minimum PC Hardware Requirements
(Windows 32 bit)

Obviously, the bigger and faster a PC is configured, the better the performance. However, listed below is a configuration to solve many finite element problems (a static structural analysis with 300,000 degrees of freedom or less) using ANSYS in 10 minutes or less. This configuration is capable of solving analyses with close to 2,500,000 degrees of freedom for certain classes of problems.

For larger problems, networked PCs can be used simultaneously to perform the solution. The ANSYS Mechanical HPC product is utilized for parallel processing with greater than 2 processors whether the processors reside on the same computer or over a network. A computer with a single dual core is considered as two processors. A dual quadcore machine would be considered an 8 processor computer and would need 6 of the ANSYS Mechanical HPC licenses.

Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista
Dual 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 processors or faster
100 GB or more hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration
Two (2)  to Three (3) GB of RAM
DVD and CD Burner
One of the ANSYS tested video boards (with 128 MB of memory or more if possible)

Related Hardware Notes:

  1. DRD currently has many NVIDIA graphics cards in use with no problems. However, DRD's experience with the use of ATI graphics cards has not always been positive. These cards do not appear to perform well with the ANSYS Workbench environment.)
  2. A fast SCSI drive will improve ANSYS solution times (sometimes by a factor of 2 or more) but the amount of improvement is problem dependant based on disk space needed for solution.
  3. CPU speed is more important for CFD problems (CFX / Fluent) than with FEA (ANSYS) as the amount of data written to the hard drive is often much less.
  4. ANSYS does support dual processing. Multiple processors will help decrease solution times. The additional processor will also help you utilize other windows software during an ANSYS solution.
  5. ANSYS is shipped on DVDs so a DVD drive is necessary. Often the data you would like archived will exceed the capacity of a CD so writing to DVDs is important as well.