Benchmark

[The_Evil_Machinist]

mastercam x4's multi threading core can send data back and forth fron the cpu's cores to your north bridge as fast as your front side bus can push the data. Where the lag happens is at your south bridge chipset. The mastercam translation feature basically means, "hey i'm the cpu and northbridge working together and were ready to give the finished project to you! are you ready to write it?". At that point the southbridge is like, "oh hold on a sec, I need to get the hard drive ready and in the right spots for it........... Oh ok i'm ready for it!!!! After that the hard drive has to write the data as fast as it can to the disks (in my case, 2 disks). At this point of translation, my southbridge was the weakist link. It put the comp into thermal protection mode which broke the raid 0 array and disconnected from my cluster network. My computer is fine! just no data in the thing. THIS WEEKEND, I WILL BREAK THE 30 SECOND MARK! MASTERCAM X4 WILL DO IT! COME HELL OR HIGH WATER! In the words of GlaDOS, "I do what I must, because I can".

[Leigh @ Kodiak]

quote:

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If you're only using Mill Level 1 the test would be irrelevant. It would most likely not be worthwhile to spend money upgrading any computer used only for mill level 1...

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While for the most part true, the new dynamic milling toolpath can sometimes take quite a long while to regenerate. Why this isn't a multi threaded toolpath, I don't know, but on an older computer, I imagine it would be VERY slow to regen.

[bogusmill]

quote:

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THIS WEEKEND, I WILL BREAK THE 30 SECOND MARK! MASTERCAM X4 WILL DO IT! COME HELL OR HIGH WATER!

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Quite a claim, remember to add screen shot of MC event log when you do. Dual quads OC'd, twin Raptors stripped (old version or new?) With a machine like that you've got a hell of a shot plus it will confirm that having a dual CPU MB will pay off big with MCX4. That would be a 59% reduction from my time with single C2Q CPU. Good luck, don't harm any PC's in the production of this record. I'll be waiting to hear the sonic boom, there should be one (not kidding).

[bogusmill]

I've seen this asked before so I will put in my two cents. My benchmark time from a few posts back of 1min. 13sec. was with the PC in my sig but using XP SP3 32 bit OS on a fast HD. I ran it again on the same machine, this time booting from a Raptor HD into Windows 7 Ultimate x64. The time was slightly better at 1min. 10sec. This is a 4% inprovement and reading this may help some of you make your next PC purchase decision.

 

[The_Evil_Machinist]

Well, I called up my friend that works for apple and had him help me with my cluster network. I had too many computers on it and it was bogging down the network adapter on my pc. So I just hooked up my macbook pro to my pc and got the cluster running.

From http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=theevilmachinist&target=ALBUM&id=5352771847111806369&feat=embedwebsite'>

SONIC BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ 06-29-2009, 11:57 AM: Message edited by: kenny_wallace ]

[Brian B 74]

NICE!!

[bogusmill]

Excellent Kenny! We are starting to look at a couple of new PC's here at work and this will help me make my reccomendation on what to get. By state contract we have to buy Dell or HP. Kenny is that a Skultrail MB? If not, what.

 

I think I heard the sonic boom too. About 3 hours ago wasn't it?

[The_Evil_Machinist]

Personally, I like the core 2 extreme quad chipset (socket 771) becauce you can run duals and overclock the -insert bad word here- out of them. The xeons get unstable after a overclock with a voltage mod. But the modern xeons are amazing in what they can push. If you were looking for performance, look into cluster computing. Distribute the tasks over different computers. You can even use a ps3 as a cluster component! And to answer your question, my motherboard is a custon job. An experimental apple board that was built, tested and considered to expensive for daily use. So they ditched the project. We called it project simba (NO JOKE!)

[Steve Hattori]

Kenny where do you find info on setting up a "cluster"? In my case, I would need help, so as avoid setting up a "clusterf**k"...

[The_Evil_Machinist]

Well there are different was to set up a distributive computing cluster. I use Mac osx and go through x-grid. Microsoft has their own cluster setup in server 2003 and you can refer to their technet website for more info. Clustering is not for everyone. But by far, the simplest way to cluster is in mac and just run mastercam in a virtual machine with main system and network priority. It's just a simple google away to bring the pains of corrupt data and endless kernal panics!

[bogusmill]

Clustering, distributive computing, it sounds a lot like a render farm. You have many PC's and distribute a task over many CPU's. Many large video files are completed this way.

[The_Evil_Machinist]

Basically that's it. The cluster was perfected by pixar animation studios. But lets see some benchmarks now! We can start a thread on distributive computing. Someone beat my score! If no one can, this thread is now called, The_Evil_Machinist appreciation station!

 

 

(The_Evil_Machinist is my 4chan administration screen name!)

[Leigh @ Kodiak]

quote:

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(The_Evil_Machinist is my 4chan administration screen name!)

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There is a /b/tard among us gentlemen! Run for your lives!!!

 

Just playng with you of course

 

Would this cluster processing be feasible over the internet, ala SETI? I suppose for some shops with a lot of programmers and the right tool paths, this could have great uses, but the internet thing makes me curious.

[The_Evil_Machinist]

If it was possible, your Internet connection would have to push at least 100 mb a second. But if someone would make a mastercam folding at home like system, we could all benifit from it. Just because of the sheer number of computers on the network, we could get away with a 1 mb line each. Thus allowing distributive computing to all mastercam customers! Just a idea.

 

And I am not a /b/tard. I keep the /b/tards at bay and keep the yotsuba servers still running during the night raids of illegal content.

 

 

Posting in The_Evil_Machinist appreciation station!

[[email protected]]

Just ordered new workstation, should be here end of next week

 

Dell Precision T7500 Workstation

Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processors X5550 2.66GHz,8M L3,6.4GT/s,turbo

Memory 4GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory,1333MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS)

1.5GB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 4800, DUAL MON, 2DP & 1DVI

Boot Hard Drive 300GB, 3.0Gb/s, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive

Hard Drive Configuration C21 All SAS drives, RAID 1, 2 drive total configuration

 

2nd Hard Drive 300GB, 3.0Gb/s, SAS, 3.5 inch, 15K RPM Hard Drive

Hard Drive Internal Controller Option PERC6/i SAS/SATA Hardware RAID Card

 

Will post benchmark time as soon it gets here and I can get X4 on it.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

If the guys at CNC managed to get Mastercam to use CUDA on the video card we wouldn't need distributed computing to get those kinds of results. Folding@Home is claiming 140X faster crunching on the GPU vs. on the CPU.

[The_Evil_Machinist]

But the problem with that is programming for CUDA is like trying to stop the government from spending money. It just ends in tears. Plus for optimal results it would require a CUDA enabled card with the horsepower to back the cpu (not a geforce series). But Ive only tried CUDA for osx so maybe windows is easier to program for. *snickers and then bellows a heardy laugh. But Matt, you are on the right track to instant toolpaths!

[MotorCityMinion]

Murry, I'm curios about those pricey SAS hard drives. Anybody in here using solid state drives?

[[email protected]]

I didn't see an itemised bill to see the prices of them, but the total tag was HIGH!! I about

sh!t down both legs when the bossman showed me the invoice, but with the multi-threading in X4 it will pay for itself in no time. Just last week I was working on a mold and one HST Restmill path took over 1 hour to process. Thats when he decided to by a new one. It will have 8 cores so I can do 8 toolpaths at a time!!! I cant wait to get it.

[Toby-Axis]

It looks like you guys are going to need a new Bench Test soon.

 

BogusMill, I like your PC but is the Core 2 Quad Extreme better than a Xeon Processor??

[bogusmill]

The Xeon has a slight advantage in the way it's cache is shared which might have made a difference when the bench times were 3 to 5 minutes, but at the speeds we have now the C2Q's are probably the better choice.

[Steve Hattori]

MotorCity, I have a ssd on my laptop- Intel X25m. It makes a big difference on anything that uses the hd, like the page file...and evidently mcam does that. It also boots really fast (Dead to Vista64 desktop in about 12 sec), mcam starts in about 3 sec.. Calc times for 5axis paths are about 20-40% faster than with a Western digital 10k raid 0.. Benchmark is about 15%faster. It is set up to only have applications on it, and the pagefile. All other data goes on a 500g mechanical drive.

I have had it for about 8 mo, no problems. The price has come down to about $300, so I will probably get another one and raid them together.

[micr0]

motorcity, SAS or SSD? SAS is serial attached SCSI which is an interface that ia mainly used in server back plane raids. Desk top mother boards are now coming with it as my new Asus pt6t deluxe did. The 15k RPM drives are almost all SAS and not SATA. I'm currently using a 15K SAS drive as my primary boot drive and with win 7 it is way fast. Haven't bench marked it but seat of the pants it's about 40% faster than the 10K raptor it replaced. Solid State is a whole nother animal. I was going to go that route but I'm waiting for the single layer SSDs to come down in price for the sizes that I'd like to use.

[MotorCityMinion]

Both actually. Murry mentioned his new comp had SAS drives. Coming from Dell, that probably was a pricey option. I got that option on my Mobo and was curious. I was also curious about the solid state drives. Not too much talk in this thread about their performance though.

[Tyler Robertson]

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But if someone would make a mastercam folding at home like system, we could all benifit from it. Just because of the sheer number of computers on the network, we could get away with a 1 mb line each. Thus allowing distributive computing to all mastercam customers! Just a idea.

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This is a very interesting idea. Done well enough, could maybe contribute it to mastercam install, ie: "Would you like to join the Mastercam Distributed Computing Community?"