[nekidfrog]

So I bought a dell optiplex 745 long ago and it does work cutting and all that jazz, however I noticed that when I do bigger cuts with lots of multipass steps that the 3d viewer on the mach3 screen is LAGGY and also cause mis steps when moving it around. I'm using Ger's mach3 2010 set which makes the 3d window soooo much bigger which is awesome, however I'm starting to wonder if I should buy a slim profile style video card for this pc to help reduce the load from mach3. But is Mach3 using opengl? direct3d? will it even benefit from a new video card?

Right now it is
Processor: Core 2 Duo - 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2gb DDR2
HD: 34gb SSD

should I upgrade memory or add in a video card?

[ger21]

No, it won't benefit much at all if any. It's usually advised to turn off the toolpath when running large g-code files. I run my 2010 Screenset on a 1Ghz PIII, and I turn off the tioolpath when I run more than about 200,000 lines of g-code.

I've had about 3-4 users who's PC's would run mach3 with the default screenset, but wouldn't work with the 2010 Screenset. At least one of them tried adding a better video card and it made no difference.

[nekidfrog]

Well that's good to know then! Do you think more physical ram would work? or is it a cpu issue? Maybe build a better pc for this than the dell.

[ger21]

If you're rotating or moving the view while the machine is moving, then nothing will help. You should never even click in the toolpath window when the machine is running.

If you're running large g-code files, then your best bet is to just turn off the toolpath, as I said.

A better option than a new PC is probably an external motion controller, like a Smoothstepper.

[nekidfrog]

Noted! Thanks Gerry!!! btw seriously love the new screenset