There are several factors that can affect the performance of GT-SUITE, which are addressed below. These requirements are subject to change.

CPU:

The most important factor is the CPU. CPU’s have evolved to such a state that the clock speed is no-longer the only important factor in determining its processing power. However, when comparing within a processor family, the simulation times will roughly scale inversely with the clock speed. The speed of our simulations can roughly be correlated to the floating point math operations of the system. As of November, 2006 we have found the fastest CPU for GT-POWER on PC’s to be the Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Quad (multi-core Opterons were not tested.). For other types of hardware, a comparative listing of computation speed can be found at http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results. Please see our webpage http://www.gtisoft.com/platform.html for our currently supported platforms.

Multiple Processors or Cores:

Each case of a simulation must be run on a single processor/core. Thus, processors will not speed up a single case. However, a multi-case model may be divided to many smaller runs, sent to many processors, and subsequently recombined. However, each simulation will require its own solver license. Additionally, a multiple processor system will have improved responsiveness in other applications while a simulation is running.

RAM (Memory):

The amount of RAM may limit the responsiveness of the GUI, but has not been found to limit the computational speed. 1 GB of RAM is the minimum requirement. However, we recommend you have at least 2 GB of RAM. More may be desirable if other memory intensive applications are being concurrently used or on dual processor machines. The RAM should be increased if significant memory paging is found to occur.

Hard Disk:

GT-SUITE does not rely heavily on I/O, so the choice of disks will have a minimal effect.

Video Card:

The video card performance is only important for the 3D parts of GT-SUITE, such as: GEM, Discretizer, 3D Flowsplit Viewer in GT-POWER, and 3D Plots in GT-POST. We recommend that you use a stand-alone video card rather than one that is built into the computer's motherboard. More information on video card hardware, drivers, and troubleshooting can be found at http://www.gtisoft.com/v62_VideoCardSupport.pdf.

Monitor:

There are no specific monitor requirements. However, it may be a benefit to use a fairly large monitor (ideally at least 19", but 20" or 22" widescreen are even better). It also may be efficient to use two monitors since most stand-alone video cards now support two monitors.