Real life computer recomendations

[G Caputo]

I now this has been covered numerous times, in fact it has been covered so many times, I don't know where to start, so I thought I would ask you forum members for help that I can pass on to our systems manager. I will be getting a new programmer up here with me and we are in need of 2 new computers. The boss asked me to find out what works well with mastercam and mastercam only. We are running mill level 3 with solids. That is all that I have installed as far as cad/cam packages on my computer. I am and will be using Windows 2000 pro as the operating system. Right now I have a 1.8 gig pentium, with 1 gig of ram and a NVIDEA GeForce4 Ti with AGP8X graphics card. I briefly tried a NVIDEA Quadro4 750 xgl and didn't have the ability to change the hardware acceleration to see if it worked better, so we pulled it out and put this card back in. Right now my hardware acceleration is down 2 clicks and it works reasonably well, but not great. Also, I cannot leave my e-mail open as this seems to give my computer a "memory leak" and it locks up like a rock. If I leave mastercam open and don't touch it, say go to lunch and come back, it also locks up. I looked on tigerdirect.com and as far as nvidea chipsets there are 56 of them. I want one that works good and is reasonably priced.

 

These are the problems I would like to alleviate with the new computer.

 

I also would like something that would be compatible with version x when it comes out.

 

Looking at the recommended hardware page helps, but does not really let me know what hardware plays nice together.

 

What are you folks currently using as far as processor, video card and ram type and amount that would keep each computer in the $1000 - $2000 price range and rid me of the problems I am having? Any info that I could pass on to our systems manager would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Greg

[Steve Biehl - Cimquest Inc]

Greg,

we do a PC for our customers that has,

3.0 GHZ Pentium 4

1.5 Gb RAM

Quadro4 FX500 256 Mb RAM

80 Gb 7200 rpm HD

for right about in the middle of your price range.

[Mike Mattera - TFM]

www.magicmicro.com

 

AMD64 3200 w/ 1GB Ram - Nvidia FX5600 w/ 256mb - 120GB HD. about $1000. Hot Box. Great Price. They also sell on Ebay. That's how I found them. Since then I bought 2 lesser boxes and love them.

 

Mike Mattera

[JAMMAN]

Wow G that system should not be locking up even with hardware acceleration at full throttle. You got something else wrong with the system.

 

The geforce 4 ti was a very good card for mastercamming.

[G Caputo]

-------- bump -------

 

Anyone else care to share what they are using and what works well. Thanks for the replies so far.

 

Greg

[Ken Erman from CNC Software Inc.]

It looks like your specs will do well with X. The minimum graphics requirement for X is 1024x768 resolution, BUT, we are recommending 1280x1024 as a minimum.

 

To really take advantage of the new Constant Z code in the MR0304 release more RAM is good. Our new techniques really fly when there is enough RAM available. How much is enough? I suspect 1 Gig should be plenty, but it depends on the part. I've done some fairly large files on 512K.

[Bullines]

Our training computers are Dell Precision 360s with P4 2.8GHz /w HT, 512MB DDR400 RAM and Quadro FX1000 video cards. They run great.

 

quote:

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I've done some fairly large files on 512K.

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With a 286 running at 5MHz?

[G Caputo]

My biggest issue seems to be a ram problem. Right now I have a very simple part opened (96k -solids and 2 toolpaths so far) and my memory usage is at 612 mg. My database and toolpath allocations are both set at 150000 each. The memory usage usaually continues to climb slowly during the day until it locks up. I took a very similar part home and left it open on my home pc for 4 hours without touching it to see if I could duplicate what happens here, and nothing, worked like a charm 4 hours later. I was explaining that to our systems manager and she asked me to ask all of you what brand of ram is preferred. Is a certain brand better than others?

 

Thanks again,

Greg

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

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...The memory usage usaually continues to climb slowly during the day until it locks up...

---

Eeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww! Memory leaks....

[Camdude®]

+1 to James,

sounds like a memory leak.

[Bullines]

quote:

---

The memory usage usaually continues to climb slowly during the day until it locks up. I took a very similar part home and left it open on my home pc for 4 hours without touching it to see if I could duplicate what happens here, and nothing, worked like a charm 4 hours later.

---

Which OS are you using; both at home and work? What other processes are running on your work computer. Also, if you're running XP, look for HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAlwaysUnloadDLL in your Registry. If it's there, make sure its default valule, called (Default), is set to 1. If it isn't there, create it. This will force Windows to reclaim orphaned pages in RAM.

 

quote:

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Is a certain brand better than others?

---

Kingston, Crucial and Corsair are the way to go.

[G Caputo]

I'm using Windows 2000 Professional here at work, and I have a cheap HP 2.0 gig AMD at home running XP. The home puter only has 512 ram and 64 mb is dedicated to the onboard Nvidea graphics card, and in all honesty, my home computer smokes this thing here at work. I hope your onto something here Bulliness, I'm all ears and appreciate all the help and responses so far from you and everyone else.

Greg

[Bullines]

Post a list of running processes on your work computer. From a commmand prompt, type 'qprocess * /SYSTEM > processes.txt'. Open the text file in Notepad, copy n paste everything here. Or instead of writing out to a text file, just copy and paste from the command window.

[gcode]

I just bought a refurbished computer from the Dell

Small Business Outlet Store

 

Dell Precision Workstation Desktop: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, Extreme Edit. 3.20GHz, 2MB L3 Cache

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

1 GB DDR 400MHz ECC SDRAM (2 DIMM)

1.44 MB Diskette Drive

120 GB EIDE SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

NVIDIA,QUADROFX 3000,256MB, dual monitor

48X CD-RW Drive

Software

Software

Shipping Material

Mouse Pad

Logitech PS2, 2-Button (grey)

Entry Level Keyboard

Cable

 

 

$1960 plus tax and free shipping

Sounds too good to be true.

I had it shipped 3-5 day for free so I'll report next week on how it runs

[G Caputo]

Bulliness,

I tried and tried but could not get what you told me to do to work. I did a print screen and saved it as a jpeg in to the FTP under unspecified uploads. It is called process.jpg. Sorry, but I could not get it to work any other way. It was telling me the qprocess was an invalid command or something like that. Also, while I was trying to do this, it went to about 1.7 gigs of ram being used and locked up. The MILL9.EXE was around 900,000 mb at this point, so I had to bail and this .jpg is from after I was able to restart MC.

 

Greg

[Bullines]

Nothing looks funny in your processes (mind you its cut off). I never realized how many processes McAfee requires Anyway, which version of Mastercam do you have? And this happens if Mastercam has a file open but is idle?

[d00d]

FYI I get most of my computers and stuff from a place close to us here in Alabama. Might want to look here when you determine what your setup is going to be. I have purchased products here for the last 6 years and can swear by there service.

http://www.cmicomputer.com/ Usually beat everyones prices and so far we have recieved free shipping on everything we have purchased.HTH

[G Caputo]

I cropped it off, everything is there. I have 9.1 sp2 originally it was 9.1 sp1 I believe with every patch available including maintenace to this point. I am waiting for our systems manager to come down here and log on as administrator so I can put in 9.1 MR0304. I have always had this problem though with 9.0, 9.1 sp1 or sp2. It really appears as though if another window that is not full screen opens over mastercam (task manager for instance) the ram just starts to climb from that point on, at least that what appears to happen from my point of view. I am at a loss with this and have been for a year. That really was the origin of this thread was to find what to buy to get rid of this POS and start from scratch to avoid these problems, and I will print this out and pass it on to the proper channels no matter what the outcome of this is.

 

Greg

[Bullines]

Weird. Hardware itself shouldn't cause memory leaks; careless use of pointers and dynamically allocated storage does. I'm guilty of it sometimes, too. I know, you're all gasping in shock Unless there's some hardware correction errors in the RAM. I doubt this will help, but it's worth a shot...performed a BIOS update on that mobo lately?

[G Caputo]

I will definitely have to get back to you on that one. That flew so high and fast over my head that I didn't see or hear it. I am sure the answer is no, but when someone comes up here with half a clue, I will show this to them.

 

Greg

[gcode]

Greg,

does this happen with shaded solids?

If I leave a large solid model on my screen for a long time with no mouse or keyboard activity,

Mastercam will eventually lockup. Unshaded, there is no problem

[G Caputo]

Yes, always shaded 'dumb' solids from inventor. I don't make any models, just toolpath them.

 

Greg

[gcode]

I'll bet if you leave them unshaded when you are not actually working, the problem will go away.

[G Caputo]

Bulliness,

We did a bios update and this thing appears to be rock solid now. It has the same memory usage as my computer at home instead of starting out 200 (mb?) higher. 338 vs around the 570 or so it was. You are the man. THANK YOU! And thank you everyone else for the hardware advice, I will pass the info on.

 

Greg

[steve f]

How do I perform a BIOS update for my computer? I'm getting very similar problems with Mcam locking up after lengths of inactivity and would like to resolve this as well.

 

thanks,

 

steve