To upgrade or not?

[RaiderX]

Looking for advise from those that have installed and run X9 through the latest versions of Mastercam.

We have maintenance to that is not issue here.

My question is what kind of resource usage-requirement have you seen in latest versions compared to X9?

we are currently on X9 and running a xeon 2gig processor, 16 gig ram and turtle slow hard drive. quadro 600 vid. card.

I am having a real hard time watching the crunch times as it is so am reluctant to upgrade software at this time. hardware upgrade is out of the question at this point argh.

5 axis complex surfacing.

what are others thoughts.

 

TIA

Doug

[crazy^millman]

I run a 64gb I-7 6920 with Quardao 5000m 8gb CPU with 1TB flash SSD and it is not enough IMHO.

Next one will be a 192 GB with 4.8 overclocking GHZ I-7 and 2 1TB Flash SSD in a Raid 1 using a P6000 Video card. Even then it will not be enough.

[RaiderX]

show off

I would be lucky to get a trs-80 right now. lol

[nickbe10]

10 minutes ago, C^Millman said:

Even then it will not be enough.

Have you considered requesting larger and more complex parts from your customers.....?

[gcode]

16 minutes ago, RaiderX said:

Looking for advise from those that have installed and run X9 through the latest versions of Mastercam.

We have maintenance to that is not issue here.

My question is what kind of resource usage-requirement have you seen in latest versions compared to X9?

we are currently on X9 and running a xeon 2gig processor, 16 gig ram and turtle slow hard drive. quadro 600 vid. card.

I am having a real hard time watching the crunch times as it is so am reluctant to upgrade software at this time. hardware upgrade is out of the question at this point argh.

5 axis complex surfacing.

what are others thoughts.

 

TIA

Doug

I don't think you will see much difference in performance between X9 and MC2018

Your system is bare minimum for simple work and totally inadequate for complex work.

My advice would be to install MC2018.. make a copy of a finished X9 file and kick it around

in MC2018 before you make a decision.

You are already experiencing awful performance, I don't think it will get any worse in MC2018

[gcode]

15 minutes ago, gcode said:

hardware upgrade is out of the question at this point argh.

you could double your performance over this slug for $2K

If your time is not worth $2K to your employer, it's time to find a new job

[jeff]

38 minutes ago, gcode said:

you could double your performance over this slug for $2K

If your time is not worth $2K to your employer, it's time to find a new job

Agreed, at least spend $200 for an  SSD!

[RaiderX]

58 minutes ago, gcode said:

you could double your performance over this slug for $2K

If your time is not worth $2K to your employer, it's time to find a new job

I used to roll that way but I really like my job and the people I work with so if the company wants to trip over $100 to save $1 gotta let them?

I just don't want to put salt on the wound by upgrading and making it worse?

I just downloaded 2018 and will test drive it. thanks for the advise.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Stay away from Xeon's for Mastercam unless you have $6000+ to throw at it.  They're great for massively parallel processing, but many of Mastercam's functions are single threaded or use only a couple threads at a time.  Clock speed and execution per clock are what matter most; the current top dog for single thread performance is the i7-7740X, which is only a $330 CPU:

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

I'm running a two-year-old i7-6700K at 4.5 GHz which is still doing pretty well.  SSD's really do help, as does having plenty of RAM.

[RaiderX]

11 minutes ago, Matthew Hajicek™ - Conventus said:

Stay away from Xeon's for Mastercam unless you have $6000+ to throw at it.  They're great for massively parallel processing, but many of Mastercam's functions are single threaded or use only a couple threads at a time.  Clock speed and execution per clock are what matter most; the current top dog for single thread performance is the i7-7740X, which is only a $330 CPU:

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

I'm running a two-year-old i7-6700K at 4.5 GHz which is still doing pretty well.  SSD's really do help, as does having plenty of RAM.

funny you should say that. I have found the same results in my ventures with other company's even near apples to apples xeon to I7 clocks..

unfortunately I am stuck with what I have for hardware at the moment. someday hope they see the light.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

11 minutes ago, RaiderX said:

funny you should say that. I have found the same results in my ventures with other company's even near apples to apples xeon to I7 clocks..

unfortunately I am stuck with what I have for hardware at the moment. someday hope they see the light.

Do you mean that a 3 GHz Xeon and a 3 GHz i7 perform the same?  That's what I would expect, but Xeons cost more and generally have slower clocks, which is why I recommend the i7.

Edit:

More info.  The Xeon with the highest single thread performance is the Xeon E3-1280 v6, which costs $640 compared to the i7-7740X at $330 which performs 6.4% better.  Motherboards for Xeons will cost you more as well.

[RaiderX]

no

my experience is xeon is slower. now apples to apples was clock speed only am sure the cache was the big difference? I did not spend time to fully spec them out. yes xeon is much more expensive. I have come to conclusion they are better suited for server application.