Mastercam X System Requirements?

[yongchiprsnapr]

asked a question a while back got a lot of help so here goes again:

Our shop uses X, the computer im using is a pentium 4 2.0gig, 768 meg of ram, and a mobility radeon 7500 videocard.

just starting to learn 3d, but whenever i get a lot of tool paths and a few circmill or helixbore toolpaths, when i go to backplot. mastercam crashes.

i looked on the mastercam website, and it said 1.5gig, 1 gig ram, i forget the videocard.



so i guess im trying to find out what the problem is, one of the three(i know the ram is low)or all of the three, something else, or if the computer is just too old?

and, if the computer is too old what is a good computer to run X, and possibly in the future for X2,X3?



(i hope that made sense)

[Matt Berube]

Mastercam historically hasn't played well with ATI hardware especially with the first version of Mastercam X and earlier. You should look in the Mastercam configuration for "disable hardware acceleration". Some ATI users are able to improve their situation to some extent.

768MB of memory is pretty low but should be sufficient for all 2-D and basic 3-D operations.

Mastercam X could well be part of the problem too. X3 and X4 are far better for stability (and everything else as well).

Regarding what type of system would be recommended... There is a link on Mastercam's system requirements page to recommended Dell configurations which comes up as shown below...



You could also take a look here to see what the higher performance systems are composed of. There are hundreds of posts in this thread but you'll mostly want to scan through the last 5 or 10 pages...

http://www.emastercam.com/cgi-bin/ul...c;f=1;t=026247

Just curious...

What operating system ?

How full is your Hard Drive ? Your computer will compensate for low memory amounts by using a swap file on your hard drive (unless it's too full to begin with...)

[yongchiprsnapr]

using xp pro, harddrive is 18 gig, but has around 12 gig free.

those dell comps are probably worth a fortune lol. i didnt even see a price.


are you talking about checking out the mastercam forum, in the second link for comp specs?

so is mastercam bad with the integrated video cards, or are the newer laptops better. i was pricing out a newer comp still with the integrated card:toshiba
but if its gonna be no better, the theres no point. those comps with separate videocards are too expensive for me.

thanks for replying

[Matt Berube]

are you talking about checking out the mastercam forum, in the second link for comp specs?

Yes. I am sure there are some laptop configurations in that thread. It's helpful to see which systems provide the best regeneration times.

so is mastercam bad with the integrated video cards, or are the newer laptops better. i was pricing out a newer comp still with the integrated card:toshiba but if its gonna be no better, the theres no point. those comps with separate videocards are too expensive for me.

In your price range I'd rather have something like this... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834107024

Or even better save up a little and get something like this...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220559

You really want an Nvidia graphics card whether integrated or discrete.

[yongchiprsnapr]

so if i bought the asus, it would be able to handle everything mastercam can do, assuming i learned everything there was to know about mastercam? or would you need an even better one to do that, i didnt see if the videocard was upgradeable.

[Matt Berube]

Originally Posted by yongchiprsnapr so if i bought the asus, it would be able to handle everything mastercam can do, assuming i learned everything there was to know about mastercam? or would you need an even better one to do that, i didnt see if the videocard was upgradeable.

Well, this is a tough question...

Unfortunately, the only way i could really evaluate this particular laptop would be to install MC and try it out. I feel 95% confident that the Asus laptop I linked to would handle any normal MC file.

Now just to be clear... Where you asked about "everything MC can do" you need to realize that this varies tremendously depending upon the type of work you do. For example, most users have MC files from 1MB to 50MB in size. Intense 3-D surfacing files probably range from 50MB to 500MB and my personal best was 1.4GB which nearly brought MC to it's knees in spite of running a really nice PC and taking advantage of the new multithreading feature in X4.

CAS: CoolerMaster Centurion 590 RC-590 Mid-Tower CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-965 Extreme Edition 3.2 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366 [+796] CD: (Special Price) LG 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR) CABLE: Round Cable Upgrade for Optical Drive [+19] FAN: Asetek Liquid CPU Cooling System (Extreme Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) [+54] HDD: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives [+29] (300GB (150GBx2) Gaming Western Digital VelociRaptor 10,000RPM SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache WD1500HLFS [+302]) MOTHERBOARD: Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard SAS Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA,Dual GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394a,&7.1Audio [+80] MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1800MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+264] (Corsair or Major Brand) NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate w/ Service Pack 1 [+105] (64-bit Edition) PRO_WIRING: Professional Wiring for All WIRINGs Inside The System Chasis with High Performance Thermal Compound on CPU [+19] POWERSUPPLY: 750 Watts Power Supplies [+39] (Corsair CMPSU-750TX - Quad SLI Ready [+90]) RUSH: *SAME DAY SHIP OUT GUARANTEE* SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO TEMP: Xion XON-MTR002B Color LCD Thermal Control Panel Display [+39] VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 X2 1.7GB 16X PCIe Video Card [+419] (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA [+5]) _PRICE: (+3325) -5% discount + shipping = $3250 delivered

Basically I would say that unless you intend to build injection molds or something with equally complex surface geometry the Asus laptop should be all you ever need.

[yongchiprsnapr]

ok easier question, i bought this:https://secure.emastercam.com/store/...=1-894487-27-3book(im sure you know it) for work. would the asus computer be capable of finishing it without crashing.

just looked my coolest design was close to 2 megs, so i guess ive got a ways to go lol

[Matt Berube]

I would feel about 99% confident that the Asus PC would run these tutorials with no problem.

[yongchiprsnapr]

thanks for all the help Matt, i think you answered all my questions at the moment, until next time.

[Matt Berube]

I just ran a little test with my wife's laptop using X3 Demo version...

It ran the "official" Mastercam benchmark file (linked to it above) in 8min59sec which I consider very respectable for an $800 laptop.

There were no display issues while I was testing this and MC was running smoothly.

Details on this system are...

Acer Aspire 6930G
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit version (rated 4.8)
Intel Core2Duo T5800 @ 2.0 Ghz
4.0 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 9600M GS video

Great system for the money and I am confident that it will run MC efficiently. Hope that helps with the computer shopping.

[Matt Berube]

Just browsing on newegg and found a nice cheap laptop and thought of this thread... $599 with free shipping today...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-571-_-Product

[yongchiprsnapr]

just lurking and saw you replied again, was looking at getting a comp, with a Quadro FX 3600M. but its like 1500, before taxes. will look closer at the one you linked thanks again.