2024 Machine Simulation

[gcode]

Dang, I'm getting old!!

The Quadro 4000 is 13 years old

[Aaron Eberhard]

46 minutes ago, gcode said:

Dang, I'm getting old!!

The Quadro 4000 is 13 years old

[sharles]

thanks everyone. I appreciate it. Like I said: it wasn't our IT guy. He literally left the company because the grandson thought he knew more than our IT guy. After a year of things falling apart so badly (phones not working, computers not working and more), the grandson got the boot and our IT guy came back. He wasn't happy with the gaming computer I was given, but it's mostly been working, but I've sent along your suggestions and perhaps he will be willing to get me a new card. I know those were supposedly on the list of things to get replaced this year...

[crazy^millman]

3 hours ago, gcode said:

This will solve your problem

Quadro RTX A4500   $1100

A word of caution.. if your PC is really cheap, the power supply may not be adequate.

This card does require a secondary power cable above and beyond the power it gets from the PCie slot it plugs into.

This is the one I want ATX-8000 48GB

[Tinger]

Are the professional AMD Radeon PRO W7800/W7900 cards good for Mastercam? Wondering if anyone has gone that route?

[SuperHoneyBadger]

5 minutes ago, Tinger said:

Are the professional AMD Radeon PRO W7800/W7900 cards good for Mastercam? Wondering if anyone has gone that route?

For sure! Recommended specs on the official site:

"NVIDIA Quadro® or AMD FirePro™ / Radeon Pro card with 4 GB (or higher) dedicated memory."

A workstation GPU released this year with 32GB memory will treat you well for the years to come.

[JParis]

On 9/20/2023 at 1:42 PM, Tinger said:

Are the professional AMD Radeon PRO W7800/W7900 cards good for Mastercam? Wondering if anyone has gone that route?

I've not used an ATi card for 8 years. That said, in my experience they worked, sure but that always had shortcomings. Has it changed? Don't know...I'd be leery if I got a new system with one...

[gcode]

Mastercam.com' Minimum Requirements page says yes

Mastercam.com

I had a laptop with an ATI card in it 20+ years ago.

It gave me nothing but trouble, till i found a little patch file that emulated OpenGL support.

Then it worked OK.

I'd never consider an ATI card today. The stuff NVIDA builds works well.

I'm not up for a $1K+ bet on door #2

 

[JParis]

13 hours ago, gcode said:

Mastercam.com' Minimum Requirements page says yes

and their "minimum" requirements are a joke for anything much beyond flat 2D wireframe work.

As you and I both know, the years are littered with people whose IT departments bought on those "minimum" requirements only to find out it was far too weak to do what they needed.

I've never understood the "cheap out buyer" when a CAM station should be considered on par with an engineering workstation level computer. With heavy math computations and graphical viewing, that is exactly what they are at its core.

[crazy^millman]

55 minutes ago, JParis said:

and their "minimum" requirements are a joke for anything much beyond flat 2D wireframe work.

As you and I both know, the years are littered with people whose IT departments bought on those "minimum" requirements only to find out it was far too weak to do what they needed.

I've never understood the "cheap out buyer" when a CAM station should be considered on par with an engineering workstation level computer. With heavy math computations and graphical viewing, that is exactly what they are at its core.

Yes having done Tech Support for Mastercam I agree. They really handicap their customers trying to be the nice guy not putting a realistic requirement out there. Funny old NX programmer I have known for years went to a Mastercam shop. He calls me and said what should they get? Owner gave him $10k budget for each of the new systems.

Best i9, Best RTX Card, M2 Samung 990 or Sabrent SSD, 128GB of memory were the first words out of my mouth. Settled on the RTX6800 with 24GB of memory. Card is over $2k but an owner who gets it and amazing they got more work than they can handle. Owners cheeping out on computers to save a buck almost always are the shops struggling and can't find work.

[Johnward Holmeson]

16 hours ago, JParis said:

I've not used an ATi card for 8 years. That said, in my experience they worked, sure but that always had shortcomings. Has it changed? Don't know...I'd be leery if I got a new system with one...

ATI hasn't existed since 2006...

[JParis]

8 minutes ago, Johnward Holmeson said:

ATI hasn't existed since 2006...

What do you want to call them?  I believe we ALL know what I am referring to...

[crazy^millman]

17 hours ago, JParis said:

I've not used an ATi card for 8 years. That said, in my experience they worked, sure but that always had shortcomings. Has it changed? Don't know...I'd be leery if I got a new system with one...

I have never used an ATI card in 40+ years of being around computers.

[Aaron Eberhard]

I've used various ATI cards sporadically throughout the years from the general gaming lines up to the Fire (professional) lines.   In general (note: blanket statement, take it for what it's worth), the hardware was quite good, sometimes even better than nVidia in the comparable generations.   The thing that always caused problems was the drivers & openGL implementations.  So, you might have smoother/more responsive behavior, but it'll suffer a video crash once or twice a day kinda thing.

I haven't used them in a while.  I've heard it's a lot better now.

I wouldn't gamble my dollars on it, though.

[gcode]

Next on the agenda

AMD ThreadRipper processors 

From what I've read, they can achieve clock speeds that blow Intel i9's away

I don't remember where I read it, but I've also read that they are not suitable for Mastercam or other CAD/CAM software.

Again, an AMD Threadripper  a big $$ bet I'm not willing to take.

Has anyone tried one with Mastercam.??

[Corey Hampshire]

I believe @JoshC has tried AMD Processors. He may be able to shed some light on it if he can chime in.

[crazy^millman]

That is the whole thing here we need something we can count on day in and day out to get the job done. I am willing to learn any other CAM system out there if someone is going to give me 2 years and pay me what I make to be good at it. Guess what never going to happen and same thing here we need systems that allow us to feed our families, take care of ourselves. I am willing to test any system out there and put it through its passes, but who is paying for it? I have used Dell systems for over 20 years and they have never let me down. Are their cheaper options of course, but the next one will be a Dell and it will have an i9 or i11 if they have developed them by then. I will have a Nvidia Card and it will have at least 128Gb of memory. From there I will put in my own hard drives.  

[Simon Kausch]

On 9/22/2023 at 4:07 PM, gcode said:

Next on the agenda

AMD ThreadRipper processors 

From what I've read, they can achieve clock speeds that blow Intel i9's away

I don't remember where I read it, but I've also read that they are not suitable for Mastercam or other CAD/CAM software.

Again, an AMD Threadripper  a big $$ bet I'm not willing to take.

Has anyone tried one with Mastercam.??

Short answer: They're probably not worth it for Mastercam.

Threadrippers are the AMD alternative to Intel Xeons. So they have lots of core (up to 64 at the moment) but not the highest clock speeds. And they support more than 128GB of RAM.

In professional 3D modeling and special effects (for games or hollywood movies) they get used a lot. There you can split the workload evenly, which often is not possible in Mastercam. Some of those guys are running crazy systems (Threadrippers with 64 cores, 256 GB RAM and multiple GPUs) but for this special use case it's totally worth the money because you save so much time).

 

 

[JoshC]

On 9/22/2023 at 11:17 AM, Corey Hampshire said:

I believe @JoshC has tried AMD Processors. He may be able to shed some light on it if he can chime in.

Hi Corey, my home pc does have an AMC Processor, but its just a Ryzen 7 and not the processor that i think they are discussing, but i definitely dont have any issues with my Ryzen 7 compared to intel i7 pcs' that i have used, cant say i see much of a difference between similar amd and intel processors in my experience but also have not put them head to head or had any real apples to apples comparisons, but in my experience i wouldn't be at all concerned with using a AMD processor for mastercam. in my opinion though i wouldn't switch from nvidia to amd when it comes to graphics though because i dont like amds graphics cards, also just my opinions and i could be wrong

[gcode]

If you want better machine sim and Verify performance, you need to upgrade the graphics card.

My old home rig ran a Quadro 4000, a 12 year old design

My work machine runs a Quadro RTX 4000 which is about 4 year old technology.

My new home PC runs a Quadro RTX A4500, new last year.

My new PC launches Machine Sim in 25% of the time it took my old home machine.

and beats my work machine by 50%

Vericut performance is excellent as well.

If you're running large Verify and Machine Sim files, the RIO on a new video card is pretty short.

After spending a month with my new RTX A4500, I'm regretting not spending the extra $$$

for an RTX A5000.