Benchmark

[bogusmill]

If your buying or building a new PC and you need speed in MCX2 get a Xeon quad core with 12Mb cache and 1333 or 1600 FSB!

 

I have my new homebuilt PC running now with a Xeon X3350 quad core 2.66Ghz 12Mb cache CPU, 2Gb of Patriot PC9600 DDR2 and an Asus Rampage Formula motherboard running Win XP Pro (x86). I've been able to overclock it to 3.9Ghz before hitting a wall. I haven't had to increase CPU volts more than .02 and the RAM is .1 under it's rated volts so I'm nowhere near damage or overheating the board. CPU temp was 42 degrees during the bench run so it's pretty cool running.

 

My suspicions about the Xeon were correct and we should have a new leader in the benchmark race come Monday. This machine is already the fastest but I want to finish tweaking settings before posting the time.

 

I have a couple of screen captures to show, the first is my Dell M90 laptop with a Core 2 Duo CPU that shows core usage during a benchmark run. I'm just linking the pix because they are large.

 

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n303/97...marklaptop1.jpg

 

You can see that one core is working hard and one is not. Now a screen capture form the Xeon quad core machine.

 

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n303/97...R2Xeon4core.jpg

 

Here you can see 3 of the four cores working hard. Now MCX2 is not a multithreaded app so why are three cores working so hard? If one of you has a Core 2 Quad CPU machine, can you run the benchmark with task manager also open to see if it too has several cores running? Xeon shares all it's cache between the cores and maybe thats what we're seeing here but I don't know that a C2Q shares all it's cache but it would be nice to know if it's just Xeon that does.

[connormac]

Bogusmill,how much do you have invested in your home built?

[bogusmill]

CPU $359

MB $299

RAM $85

HD $179

Case$169

HSNK$69

Vid $179

PSU $85

DVD $35

Tot $1459

 

Doesn't include twin Dell 2408wfp (24" widescreens) keyboard, mouse, printer, desk, chair, cat, aggravation!

[bmilford]

8:35

 

See below

Except now X2 MR2 SP1

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

Wow, that is awesome... I can't wait to see the time. Imagine beating the top o' the line Dells and spending less than 25% of the cash !

[connormac]

Aggravation I think is free. Because I seem to get truck loads of it every day for free!

[neil qwerty]

Bogusmill, here's a screen shot of a quad core (Core 2 Quad Extreme X9650 - 3 ghz).

 

 

Neil.

[bogusmill]

Thanks neil.

 

The C2Q X9650 shows all cores active but only one consistantly breaks the 50% range, but with the Xeon three of four are consistantly 50% or so. I think the one core on both that is low is where the CPU is helping the video card do it's work. That maybe the cache help is showing as CPU use or the Xeon can spread the work better than the C2Q. Neil's CPU is a 3.0Ghz quad, 12Mb cache CPU made on 45nm silicone so except for the 333Mhz stock clock advantage these are essentially the same.

[MattW]

Hijack on

 

Neil

 

 

Que pasa?

[neil qwerty]

That's a pic from my 430 hp turbo charged Suzuki Hayabusa. From what I can tell, the head of the valve snapped off and was pushed back into the head by the piston. Hard to say for sure because the piston was a bit of a mess as you can imagine. I rebuilt the motor last year and put 16 pounds of boost(about 350 hp) to it without any problems, this year I'm going to turn it up and see what it'll do.

 

As for the computer, when it's processing Mastercam, the total cpu usage hardly gets above 26%.

 

Neil.

[bogusmill]

Unless I missed a post somewhere on this thread this is the best time posted yet.

 

4min. 5sec.

 

There is still some tweaking to do but I don't think I'll get below 4min.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

So, you wanna post your build so we can all take advantage of your hard work?

[bogusmill]

Sure, I'm used to being taken advantage of around here. They work me 30hrs. a day and pay me minumim wage and undertime.

 

Asus Rampage Formula

Xeon X3350 1333fsb 2.66Ghz running at 3.8Ghz (8x475)

Thermalright Ultra 120 Xtreme+2 120mm Scythe fans

Evga FX8800 GTS-320Mb

Twin Dell 2408WFP 24" widescreen LCD's

Patriot PC9600 DDR2 2x1Gb sticks (1:1 475Mhz)

WD Raptor 150Gb 10K 16Mb cache

Samsung 500Gb 72K 16Mb

OCZ Gamestream 700W PSU

Thermaltake Shark case

Win XP Pro SP2 (x86)

 

 

Screen capture while running benchmark.

 

 

This is Max. CPU speed it would boot into.

 

[Guest]

all the rumors of XP SP3 running much quicker seems to be lost on Mastercam at least

 

quote:

---

wELL MY HP dv9010

 

AMD Turion64/X2 1.8 Ghz

2 gigs RAM

NVidia Go6150

 

12:30

---

tonight's time after the upgrade to SP3

 

11:59

[GreggSymington]

6:15

3.0GHz Core 2 Duo

4GB Ram DDR2 667

Xp pro

[Chris Rizzo]

Time for a new pc for me here. Help be build her. some info:

 

-I don't have time to build it myself, done it before.

 

-don't have time to tweak/tune/overclock/etc.

 

Office guys here are going to get quotes from the local shop and Dell. I'd much, much, much rather support the local shop. it seems very hard to compare systems though.

 

I don't need insane 100 mb toolpath processing speed. Price is a bit of an issue.

 

I've read alot of this thread, but still can't make heads or tales between new hardware releases, overclocking, and effort involved.

 

this system sounds good, but some of that hardware has been superseded I think.

 

quote:

---

6 min. 25 sec. on a new pc, home built, Core2Duo E6750 2.66 Ghz, 2Gb DDR2-800 ram, XP-Pro 32bit, sata-II 16Mb cache hd, MSI 256Mb 128bit GeForce 8600GT video. Under $650 to build with new everything except XP-OS.

---

[bogusmill]

You don't say what the MB is but you should get an Asus, Gigabyte, Abit, or MSI brand board. These are enthusiast boards and will have BIOS settings for your overclock. My previous build was and Asus P5B-Deluxe, Core 2 Duo E6320 (1.86Ghz, 4Mb cache) and Crucial Tracer PC8500 RAM. Clocked it to 3.4Ghz and ran the benchmark at 5min. 6sec.

 

My machine (spec'd out 3 posts up) is a minute (20%) faster and to get that last 20% you'll need a Xeon Quad core with 1333 or 1600FSB and 12Mb total cache plus a MB that supports it. It took about 1hr to OC to 3.66Ghz and you might want to stop there. It's that large cache, FSB, and Xeon that does it. There's about $200 difference in CPU's

[Chris Rizzo]

Here's what I've got spec'd thus far. Any recommendations?

 

ASUS P5K LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

Core 2 quad q9450 2.66ghz 12m 1333fsb

4g 800m supertalent

8800gt 512m 2dvi

500w power

seagate 160gm sata2

 

not tooooo bad price wise, around 1400. that's with a bunch of microsoft product, card readers, dvdr, and some other ods and ends. I could probably build it cheaper myself, but then again I don't change my oil anymore either.

[Chris Rizzo]

Here's what I've got spec'd thus far. Any recommendations?

 

ASUS P5K LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

Core 2 quad q9450 2.66ghz 12m 1333fsb

4g 800m supertalent

8800gt 512m 2dvi

500w power

seagate 160gm sata2

 

not tooooo bad price wise, around 1400. that's with a bunch of microsoft product, card readers, dvdr, and some other ods and ends. I could probably build it cheaper myself, but then again I don't change my oil anymore either.

[bogusmill]

Looks good. Your Core 2 Quad is the equivalent of the Xeon I'm running and if you look at my screen capture and neil's just before mine you see that the Xeon's cores are more active than the C2Q's during the benchmark run. The Xeon also runs a little cooler, uses slightly less volts, and is intended for 24/7 running in servers. But the Xeon's multiplier is locked up and down where as the C2Q's is unlocked downward thus it's a little more flexible.

 

Two 1Gb sticks of 1066 RAM might be better than 4Gb of 800Mhz but overall your machine should fly!

[Jaz]

Fresh out of the box:

Dell T7400

2 Xeon X5472, 3GHz, 1600MHz fsb

16Gb 800MHZ ram

160GB Raptor HD

Windows XP Pro-64

Quadro FX3700

 

5:13

 

Not bad.

How do I speed it up?

[bogusmill]

Not sure on the 64 bit OS. I have my Windows page file and MC regen and temp files on a second HD. I have set MC memory use to 75% of RAM but you wouldnt do that with 16Gb, a setting of 10% would be about equal. Of course the first thing to do is dump Dells installed OS and use a crap free fresh Windows install. Dells crapware is enough to choke a supercomputer.

[bogusmill]

Another machinist here had his home PC die so I told him the components to buy for us to build him a budget PC. We assembled it last weekend and he spent $850 not including HD's.

 

5:00 flat!

 

Now THAT's not bad!

[Troy Gossett Indepak Inc.]

Bogusmill,

 

Have you played with the affinity in the benchmark? it would be interesting to see if mastercam was pushed back to the last 3 processors it would still run the same speed and free the first for other windows apps.

[bogusmill]

I know one CPU is helping the graphics card, one is the main cpu being used, the other 2 may show activity even though it's probably just the cache of all cpu's being used. That's the reason I got the Xeon vs. C2Q. I'm not familar with the Phenom archetecture or if it shares all cache with any one core. I'll try some runs with affinity set different ways and see if it will affect the usage.