Did you ever wonder how your computer hardware stacks up against other hardware when it comes to SolidWorks performance? Not sure how much better Brand X Newest Edition graphics card would be compared to what you already have? What you're looking for is a hardware benchmark.
There is no perfect benchmark, but there is at least one SolidWorks-specific benchmark test which can be run on SolidWorks 2007. It's from Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, better known as SPEC. Go to their website at www.spec.org and check it out. You can compare your numbers against some very modern machines, such as the Dell Precision 390 and 490 series workstations.
When looking at this benchmark, keep in mind the datasets being used. If you have much larger assemblies than their test assembly, then any differences in file i/o will be magnified becuase you're doing more of that operation. It's not perfect but it's better than a "gut feel".
