what is a good combination of processor and ram for 5 axis programming

[BenK]

Three years is a LONG life for a road warrior's laptop that is his ONLY workstation. CAD/CAM software and model complexity increase A LOT over that 3 year span. Over the last 2 years, I've probably flown 120-ish flight legs. Installed and uninstalled EVERY Beta Release of MC from then until now...

 

My rig... she gets rode HARD. She only gets the most demanding projects. 5 years... 3 years is bad enough. 5 would be unbearable.

 

I fully agree and if I had to really program with it I would have never let it go this long. My desktop is my workhorse. Sounds like I might be on the road more in 2017 so the laptop will be replaced as soon as I can.

[Müřlıń®]

The tech changes so fast even over the span of a year things can be completely different.

 

I7 has been the been the faster processor for crunching tool paths, but no longer.

 

This year Intel released a couple Xeon CPU's rival if not surpass most the I7's on the market.

 

The added stability and security that is embedded in the chip along with added data protection that comes with the ability to utilize ECC memory has made me rethink my upcoming computer build.

[BenK]

The tech changes so fast even over the span of a year things can be completely different.

 

I7 has been the been the faster processor for crunching tool paths, but no longer.

 

This year Intel released a couple Xeon CPU's rival if not surpass most the I7's on the market.

 

The added stability and security that is embedded in the chip along with added data protection that comes with the ability to utilize ECC memory has made me rethink my upcoming computer build.

 

The real problem with that is the Xeon's are significantly more expensive if you want the same performance. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a Intel Xeon E5-2679 v4 @ 2.50GHz but at $2700 I will pass. That's three times the cost of my I7-5960X. Right now it's hard to beat the Intel Core i7-6900K @ 3.20GHz, for the money it packs a huge punch. I'm going to wait one more year before I upgrade my CPU so I will be doing some research over this next year to see what is the best. Who knows, maybe I will have the money to buy the top Xeon and I7 and do a real world comparison of the two. Honestly I would love to put an end to this argument of which is better. 

[Müřlıń®]

The real problem with that is the Xeon's are significantly more expensive if you want the same performance.

Ya that has been the case for several years now.

 

But this summer things changed.

 

That Xeon I linked to above is better than the I7 6900k for the same price.

 

Has the same clock, same cache size,  1/5 better bandwidth, can use ECC, and has all the security perks that us contractors need for our business.

 

Winner winner Turkey dinner for me.

 

And if you have an Asus MB chances are the Xeon will pop right into the 2011-3...

[BenK]

I'm not sure where your getting your rankings but the 1660 v4 Xeon is rated lower than my 5960X which is old tech at this point, the 6900K would be an upgrade for me. Yes, ECC memory would be nice but its not as important for a workstation. I'm not sure what security features you are talking about but I use other services to secure my data and let my processor crunch toolpaths. Still, my money is on the I7 line unless you want to spend triple the money.

 

Link

[jlw™]

We still have the gloves from mowens and Reko. Looks like ypu guys need to borrow them.

[Müřlıń®]

We still have the gloves from mowens and Reko. Looks like ypu guys need to borrow them.

hahahah 

 

Ben is entitled to his opinion just like me...

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

I imagine a graph of computer power over time, plotted as a percentage of the fastest computer on the market.  As your power approaches 100% your cost rises exponentially until you're in the territory of a custom built supercomputer costing billions of dollars.  Any computer that you chose to buy will plot at a certain point and then decay over time, and the area under that curve is your utility; how much use you can get out of that computer.  When you replace or upgrade your computer you set your point again, and have a new decay curve.  The object is to maximize the area under the curve within your budget, and there are multiple strategies that obtain similar results.  If your budget is $1000 / year You can buy a $1000 computer and replace it every year, yielding a curve which is lower but flatter, or buy a $6000 ultra performance machine but then you can only replace it every six years, which yields a curve which starts very high but has a long decay period.  The trick is to find the point in the middle with the highest area for your budget, and in my experience that's usually about a three year period.

 

Crudely drawn approximation of the idea, not based on actual data:

 

[jeff]

Ya that has been the case for several years now.

 

But this summer things changed.

 

That Xeon I linked to above is better than the I7 6900k for the same price.

 

Has the same clock, same cache size,  1/5 better bandwidth, can use ECC, and has all the security perks that us contractors need for our business.

 

Winner winner Turkey dinner for me.

 

And if you have an Asus MB chances are the Xeon will pop right into the 2011-3...

The Xeon has less cores, less threads, and is more expensive.

I'd take the I7 6900k over the Xeon E5 1660v4 any day of the week. 

What security perks are you referring to? I don't know much about that.

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/295/Intel_Core_i7_i7-6900K_vs_Intel_Xeon_E5-1660.html

[crazy^millman]

Here is more along what I would consider and I would do it with 2 of the Xeon's verses just one. Yes a lot more money, but on 1500 hours programming projects this computing power could reduce it down to 1200 hours. 300 hours of saving for a customer is some serious money. Hardest obstacle is getting someone over the sticker shock. I have the I-7 6920HQ and seeing it maxing out on the GHZ and like seeing it, but compare the 2 and you can see the difference again still a lot of sticker shock.

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/510/Intel_Core_i7_i7-6900K_vs_Intel_Xeon_E7-8880_v4.html

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/222/Intel_Core_i7_Mobile_i7-6920HQ_vs_Intel_Xeon_E7-8880_v4.html

[Müřlıń®]

The Xeon has less cores, less threads, and is more expensive.

I'd take the I7 6900k over the Xeon E5 1660v4 any day of the week. 

What security perks are you referring to? I don't know much about that.

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/295/Intel_Core_i7_i7-6900K_vs_Intel_Xeon_E5-1660.html

 

Well if you look at these 2 chips...compare them side by side...I do not think you are correct in your comment.

 

The Xeon has a tad more turbo, a tad more, bandwidth, the same cores, the same threads, supports ecc memory, has embedded security in the CPU, has trusted security cirtificate mode, has several other routines that make it the better choice....and oh ya...the price is virtually identical.

 

Perhaps you should read my posts and study for yourself what security features Xeon chips offer...

 

Hell my computer houses priceless artifacts....family pictures, videos,  valuable customer data...

 

I have always chosen processors that support ECC since 1990's or whenever it first came out I don't remember.  I think we started checking memory with parity first but

even though it was more expensive I have tried to use it....

 

Now I do not want to get into a debate whether a solar flare will sent any negative charged neurons into your little corner of planet earth and cause you to get the 1-bit error or not.

 

But sooner or later you might want to copy your family photos to a different HDD or device and you won't know about the bad memory stick until you have already copied massive amounts of old data from one system to another

try to look at the photos or watch the videos and they are all garbled and have big old black splotches on them...or you dig out a job you did 10 years ago and the proven NC file you machined that 100k piece of Ti scraps it because of one of the 0's turned to a 1.

 

Here are the specs to compare the I7 against the Xeon.

 

They look pretty close on spec's if you ask me but the perks....wow...for me it's a no brainier....

 

 

 

 

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

I think you do have to tailor the computer to the work though.  As I type I'm waiting on a stock model to regenerate, and my CPU usage is stable at 25% on an i7-6700K 4 core 8 thread @ 4.5GHZ.  Going to a processor with eight cores but a lower clock speed would slow me down.

[Müřlıń®]

Mathew Intel has a new Xeon....released 2nd quarter this year......it uses less cores and has a much higher clock....you can only use it in single socket boards.

 

and the price is good...they have 2...one is 1100....the other one cost 500 more but you get tad more cache and clock....

 

Next year if they sell lots of them the clock will be up there with the I7..

 

It rivals every I7 ever made to date....it is Brand New....

 

 

BTW U gonna burn that sucka up overclocking so much!!!   ROUR!!!

[MIL-TFP-41]

At some point there has to be some seriously diminished rewards (or even negative returns) for $$$ spent on a Xeon CPU. For example:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2679+v4+%40+2.50GHz&id=2805

20 cores is impressive, tho from what I've seen with 8 cores is mcam rarely (never) maxes out that number.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

That's precisely my point.  When you're waiting on a single threaded function all those extra cores are being wasted and all that matters is single core performance.

 

According to this:

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

the i7-7700K has a comfortable lead over all the Xeons and only costs about $350.  Plus, being a "K" you can overclock it for probably about another 10%.

[jeff]

Well if you look at these 2 chips...compare them side by side...I do not think you are correct in your comment.

 

 

My bad, I didn't link the right Xeon. My link showed the E5 1660. And not the E5-1660 V4.

 

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

E5-1660 V4 has a single thread score of 2101.  i7-6700K is 2344, and the i7-7700K is 2628.

[Müřlıń®]

E5-1660 V4 has a single thread score of 2101.  i7-6700K is 2344, and the i7-7700K is 2628.

Yes If you process tool paths one at a time and do not multitask at all you will get the fastest processing time with those chips...hands down no argument there...

 

However Mastercam uses multi threads unlike most of the software that particular benchmark test is for.

 

Then once you start multi threading, your Bandwidth and Cache size will determine how fast the data gets moved from memory to the BUS.

 

So suddenly speed goes out the window and stability becomes the major factor in processing your tool paths.

 

And since you don't have the below instructions in your chip, while crunching your hour long program you decided to multitask and some other software bled into your memory page Mastercam was using and now you must do a hard boot.

 

 

 

[jlw™]

My dad can beat up your dad.

[jeff]

My dad can beat up your dad.

My yard is bigger than your yard!

[BenK]

Like I said, unless we can test two comparable processors in a single system we will never put this argument to rest. All I can say is I don't experience the issues you are saying the I7 line has. My processor has been solid. In fact the only issues I have had with this rig were traced back to a bad water cooler causing it to overheat. Luckily the thermal cutoff did its job and saved my processor. So far rigs like mine are the fastest when it comes to the benchmark file so the I7's can't be all that bad. 

 

Now with that said, I would be glad to test a Xeon in my rig if anyone wanted to put up the money. Any processor that fits the 2011-3 socket that you think will beat out the 5960X I currently run. I just don't have an extra $1500 laying around to buy a processor to test and we all know how much value these things lose once the box is opened, so reselling it really isn't an option. 

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Murlin, yeah it depend on the kinds of work you do.  Most of my wait time is on stock models, and many of my ops have dependencies which prevent them from regenerating all at once, so single thread performance wins for me.

[jlw™]

Well, here's what matters:  will it play my Amazon music in the background whilst computing anything I want it to?

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Ever tried World Of Tanks on a three monitor system?

[Müřlıń®]

Ya I wasn't trying to say that I7 was bad...it isn't...I7 is top of the line.

 

In fact I was going to try to build me another workstation pretty soon and thinking about the I7 cause it was so much faster than my Xeon.

 

But that would mean that I would not get online with it and it would just be a box for Mastercam....

 

However I nearly soiled myself when I saw those new Xeon chips...hahaha...

 

Unfortunately no one around these parts is buying a lot of 1000 from Intel and the prices are just too high right now.

 

I only see 2 or 3 obscure people selling them and either the price is too high or I don't trust them to send me what I ordered.

 

So I will have to wait until the price is under 1k from a reputable dealer then I am going to build my next box...