A puzzle

[gcode]

My work machine

3.2 Xeon w 1meg onboard cache

2 gig ram

OS is XP2 SP2 factory install

NVIDIA 3400 PCiExpress video card

 

 

My home machine

3.2P4 with 2 meg onboard cache

2 gig ram

OS is XP2 SP2 upgraded from SP1

 

Mastercam version is V9MR0904

 

 

The mastercam file

58 meg

330 operations mostly 5xcurve and 5x swarf

1 big solid and hundreds of surfaces

extracted from the solid

 

 

Both machines are running identical cfg files

and memory allocations.

 

32767

32767

200000

200000

422.4 ram allocation

 

I've been working on this file for weeks at home and at work. Both machines seem to have about the same performance. My home machine (P4) may be a bit faster.

 

Over the last week as more operations were added,

the lttle hard drive warning symbol statred poping up on my work machine. Running ramsaver would get rid of it.

 

Yesterday I passed some threshold. Now the light comes on and stays on. This does not seem to

effect performance any. Changing tool allocations

has no effect.

 

Here's the puzzle.

My work machine is running one seesion of Mastercam and Norton AV corperate. That's it.

 

My home machine is running one seesion of

Mastercam, Norton AV, ZoneAlarm, Outlook

and a couple of sessions of IE.

 

My home machine never gets the hard drive light

and actually regens a little faster that the work machine even with a bunch of other stuff running.

 

Aren't Xeon's suppossed to be a faster proccessor

that Pentium's.

Does anyone have any idea how to kill the hard drive light. It drives me nuts????

[chip]

Marks-a-lot or sharpie markers work pretty good. I prefer sharpie even though I hate that kid that drives their Nascar car!

[jeff]

You said that changing toolpath allocations doesn't affect it.

Are you referring to the memory allocations also?

with 1 gig of ram maybe you could bump up the memory allocations.

Just a though.

[gcode]

I'm referring to the Mastercam memory allocations settings

I tried bumping them and it delayed

the onset of the harddrive light but getting them too high causes a tool allocation error

when creating toolpaths

What I'm running now has always worked well for me

in the past, but this file is getting out of hand.

[Bullines]

Your P4 has double the amount of onchip cache that your Xeon has. There's no memory faster than a CPU's cache.

[iowajim62]

gcode,

 

is ur work box connected to the network ?

maybe something there, but just guessing out loud

try running local only and see if that helps

[chip]

quote:

---

The mastercam file

58 meg

330 operations mostly 5xcurve and 5x swarf

1 big solid and hundreds of surfaces

extracted from the solid

---

Gcode

 

You probably straight have your machines pegged. Once the files start getting that big I will dice it up. I run autosave, when that thing triggers every 15min. It could take 30 sec to a min. Mabe dice up your program rough, finish?

 

My old computer I use to get the little box at the corner of the screen. I haven't pegged this one yet. :knocking on wood:

[gcode]

"is ur work box connected to the network"

 

Yes the work machine is connected to the company router.

The home machine is hooked to a home network/DSL router.

 

"Maybe dice up your program rough, finish"

That is the plan.. I've got about 30 OPs left

on the ruffing program . I'll start a new one for the finish paths. It looks like I may need 2 finish files.

 

"I run autosave"

I don't use it. May left hand is trained to hit

AltA at apropriate intervals.

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

gcode,

 

I am just curiuos about the hard drives on both machines?

 

Mike

[gcode]

My home machine is a 120g 7.2K rpm HD

the work machine has a 73g 10k rpm HD with an 8meg buffer

[MCam Newbie]

gcode,

 

A long shot, but ya never know what might work. Besides, I need human interaction .....

 

Is Windoze swapfile configured the same on both machines? It's been a while since I ran an XP machine, but remember it seeming to enjoy reading and writting to virtual memory, even with lots of RAM unused, especialy with Norton resident. I set the size smaller, as I recall, and the hard drive activity decreased.

Why? No clue here. Only Windoze knoze fer sure.

[gcode]

I've played around with the swap file size, but

it didn't seem to have any effect.

It might help if I had a clue what I was doing.

I still remember the old DOS days when you spent half your time tweaking the memory just to keep it running.

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

gcode,

 

I wonder if the indexing service has anything to do with it? I always turn it off. I am just guessing though.. Wow, this is a big file gcode! be careful!

 

Thanks,

Mike

[gcode]

What is the "indexing servive"?

 

quote:

---

this is a big file gcode

---

One of my co workers has a file that is over 600meg. It takes over 40 minutes to bring it into

Mastercam.

[Bullines]

quote:

---

What is the "indexing servive"?

---

Right-click on your hard drive in My Computer and choose Properties. On the General tab, uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching" and then click OK. If any errors popup, click "Ignore". You can then disable the Indexing Service completely (or set it to Manual) from the Services applet in Administrative Tools group in the Control Panel.

 

However, I'm still sticking to my idea about the difference in onchip cache.

[gcode]

I can see the onboard cache giving a faster regen time, but does MC use this as part of the ram.

or is it just a buffer feeding the chip??

 

On my work machine I've got nothing going but MC

and Norton AV. The hard drive light comes on while the file is loading and stays on

 

At home I've got Norton, Zone Alarm, a couple of IE windows and Windows media player going.

The hard drive light never comes on.

 

I though I was buying a hot machine when I ordered this 3.2 Xeon, but my 3.2P4EE is kicking its butt.

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

quote:

---

One of my co workers has a file that is over 600meg. It takes over 40 minutes to bring it into

Mastercam.

---

Wow! gcode, you guys need some kind of "super computer" over there.

[Bullines]

quote:

---

I can see the onboard cache giving a faster regen time, but does MC use this as part of the ram.

or is it just a buffer feeding the chip??

---

The most recently executed instructions and data is stored in as much onchip registers and cache as possible before being sent to RAM and beyond. It is possible for developers to force data into RAM (the heap) but for the most part, data will go to the fastest place first until it's full.

[gcode]

I lowered my Memory Allocations on my work machine this afternoon .

I set them at

32767

32767

20

100000

100000

Total Ram Allocation is 227MB.

The hard drive light went out and hasn't come back on all day.

That makes no sense to me. I wish I had a clue why it worked????

[Art@Pegasus_Tool]

Our two new Dell 470's workstations

3.2 Xeon w 1meg onboard cache

2 gig ram

OS is XP2 SP2 factory install

NVIDIA fx1300 PCiExpress video card

with HyperThreading OFF are 30% faster

in mcam9sp2.

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Bullines,

 

Since we are on the subject here. I have a question for you. With large amounts of ram, like with greater than 1 gig, is it better to run ecc ram on a non-ecc board?

 

If so, I wonder what difference it makes in speed for Mastercam?

 

Thank you,

Mike

[Müřlıń®]

While we are on the the subject as well.....

 

Why would you want such a high point and patch allocation?

 

I always leave mine set to default and just bump up the database and toolpath allocations to 250,000.

 

I have never seen the HDD symbol except on my old p3 that only could afford under 100,000 on those...

[Bullines]

quote:

---

Bullines,

 

Since we are on the subject here. I have a question for you. With large amounts of ram, like with greater than 1 gig, is it better to run ecc ram on a non-ecc board?

 

If so, I wonder what difference it makes in speed for Mastercam?

---

I strongly doubt that the small amount of extra memory on ECC modules would be used as storage in non-ECC mode. I think it would be ignored. Personally, I would only use ECC memory in computers such as servers, anyway. Non-ECC is better suited for non-server applications like Mastercam.

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

This is what I figured from the stuff I read but I thought I would ask since I don't really know too much about these things.

 

Thanks for the help,

Mike