set affinity, what is it

[Jody]

What is 'Set Affinity' I am now running a dell somethin with two dual processors and hyperthreading. and a an ATI firegl v3400.

Mastercam does not seem any faster than the old 3.0 single processor to me. when I run cimco HSM and turn all 8 affinity's on then the time of process is almost the same as elapsed time. If I leave the affinity on just 0 is it using all the processors?

 

Thanks

Jody

New Place of Employeement

Regal Mold.

X Mr2 and Cimco HSM

[3rdstring]

Affinity tells a certain task to run on specific processors. I usually just let Windows handle that.

[Jody]

how do you let windoze handle it or how do I know that it is handling it in a good way. if i have two MCX open it seems slower.

 

Thank you

jody

[Colin Gilchrist]

Hi Jody,

 

Mastercam does not take advantage of processor affinity with multiple sessions of Mastercam open. It it highly recommended that you DO NOT run multiple sessions of Mastercam at the same time because it causes Mastercam to crash and dirty up your toolpaths. That being said, if you want to run other programs at the same time (Solidworks + Mastercam, or Vericut + Mastercam) Setting the Processor affinity will speed up the calculation times for both programs. To set the Affinity, go into the windows task manager and right-click on the mastercam.exe process. Choose the "Set Affinity" option and pick your processor. On a dual processor machine you will see processor 0 (1st) and processor 1 (2nd). On a dual processor, dual core machine you will see processors 0,1,2, and 3. The first tw0 (0 and 1) are the two cores of the first processor. The second two (2 and 3) are the two cores of the second processor. You would need to use Processor 0 and Processor 2. Windows will handle the interaction between the cores on a single chip.

 

HTH,

 

Colin Gilchrist

The Boeing Company

MR2 and Beta test site

[Jody]

Colin thank you

I have 8 processors it says because of hyperthreading. which numbers are the hyperthreading processors? and why are they not all on I think that would make every program running use all the processors avalible.

 

Where is the best drivers for the ATI firegl v3400 for Mastercam?

 

Thanks

Jody