Mastercam Gpu Requirements

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Seethe table below for minimum and recommended system configurations for Mastercam. These recommendations are based on systems we have in use at Mastercam for testing and evaluation purposes. Our recommendation is to get as much power (processor, video card, and memory) for your systems as you can afford.

Mastercam continues to review the operating system (OS) requirements to provide the best possible user experience for our customers.

We recommend Windows Professional editions with all latest updates installed. While Mastercam may run on other Windows editions (such as Home Edition) or virtual environments (such as Parallels for Mac), it has not been tested on these configurations and is therefore not supported.

For Windows 10, we recommend version 22H2 64-bit Professional editions.

Mastercam 2022 was the last release available for Windows 7 and 8.1.

Mastercam 2023 and later fully support Windows 11.

The processor speed will impact how fast the software will calculate and complete tasks. With each release, more and more aspects of Mastercam are becoming multi-core processor aware. Toolpath calculation and Simulation will generally run faster with a multi-core processor. We typically see a 50% reduction in toolpath calculation time with the latest Intel processors.

When Mastercam uses all available RAM, it switches to using virtual memory space, which is stored on the hard drive, and will dramatically slow the system down. We recommend a minimum of 8 GB memory. For large toolpath generation and simulation, we recommend 32 GB of memory.

Most of our internal systems utilize dual monitors and we find this to be a more productive setup. Mastercam displays on the primary monitor while applications such as Mastercam Simulator and Code Expert use the secondary monitor.

The minimum recommended resolution for the primary display is 1920 * 1080 resolution, typical of widescreen monitors available today. Mastercam will run on lower resolution screens but beware of potential sizing issues with larger dialog boxes and panels which may be awkward to work with. Lower resolution monitors may work fine as a second monitor in a dual screen setup.

Mastercam will run on large format displays, including 4K monitors and high-DPI devices, however, we do experience some display issues with these configurations.

We have found that one of the best computer upgrades is to invest in a Solid-State Drive (SSD). These drives are now priced at a point which makes them a good investment. Many of our test systems employ a smaller primary SSD for the OS and installed applications, with a second large capacity conventional drive for data.

Most computers today have some type of anti-virus software to protect from unwanted malware. In some cases, the anti-virus software has been found to interfere with applications running on the computer, such as Mastercam. Mastercam does not recommend specific anti-virus products, but if you see unexpected issues, it may be a conflict with anti-virus software. Try temporarily disabling the anti-virus software or setting an exception for Mastercam.

Unless you need the portability that a laptop offers i suggest steer clear of Laptops, its hard to find many budget friendly laptops that can support a full sized graphics card. so you end up paying almost twice as much on the build. If your computers just gonna sit at work all the time i think its best to go desktop, plus they typically have better cooling options and much better for future upgrades. for those that work from home though or need portability then obviously there is no point to go with a desktop because no one wants to have to haul something like that around but i have seen at least a handful of times where a company purchases a laptop for an application that a desktop could have been in and they could have got about 2x the performance for a desktop of the same price point.

I have been with my company for years, and for years i used a laptop, but this year i got my first desktop since they were upgrading systems and i Love this thing, i have a nice Gaming keyboard (with really nice switches - you cant find keyboards like this on laptops) and this is the best pc i have ever worked with (and this pc probably was like i said half the cost of my dell workstation laptop that i used the years prior). - well you can plug any keyboard into a laptop but i mean not the built in keyboards, those are normally those little thin keys that are squashed together to take up less space

Much of this is probably obvious, but wanted to mention it anyways because after I have been using laptops for years and now using this Desktop i am very impressed with how well this desktop works. The only problem with this desktop is it dont fit in my computer bag like my laptop did lol but thats ok because they still let me use the old laptop whenever i want to work from out of the office.

at my work, my one friend co-worker needed a new computer so they enlist the help of our purchaser to buy a computer, guy knows absolutely nothing about mastercam. so he buys this like word processing computer with 500 gigs of harddrive space, full on microsoft office, 4 gigs of ram, dont even know the processor. im sure an integrated graphics card. what a waste of 1000 bucks. was an hp.( im surprised mastercam can even run on only 4 gig memory, but he does say it crashes a lot )

so then another friend co-workers computer goes down, hes asking me which one to buy and our plant supervisor is also looking. i choose the one i would get, but of course my supervisor has the final say. he gets an acer with an i7 with 8 gigs memory, 1 gig dedicated video not too bad for him because he programs lathes. again 1000 bucks.

so i knew my budget go in and tell my boss i need a new computer. he was like, ok i will get our purchaser and supervisor to look for one for you. i straight up told him no i would pick it out myself because they dont know what specs i want. so finally i find a refurb at best buy i7, 16 gigs memory, 2 gig dedicated video. same price. colin told me to put another 16 gigs of memory into it, but would probably be out of my pocket but whatever.

Get a decent Quadro if you can afford it, but in my experience unless you're working on huge models Mastercam works fine on GeForce gaming cards. A $300 GeForce card will be way better than a $300 Quadro if you're budget constrained.

we got new computers back in sept. 2017 and was using X9 and they seemed fine but when we moved up to 2019/20 we started having issues they are Dells our IT guy spec'd out. According to our re-seller they are not up to specs, our IT has since quit and our new IT guy is supposed to be working with our re-sellers to get new ones have yet to see the specs on them.

I'd be interested in seeing people's specs of what work and what doesnt. We just talked the boss into buying new pcs as we get ready to go to 2021, and I wanna buy something that works and is faster than the xeon w5580 I have now.

Generally speaking, get an I7 or I9, the fastest bus speed you can afford, 32 gigs minimum of RAM, 64/128 for heavy work.....if I am spec'ing a computer, I am buying a Quardo card period. Here again, work dictates how powerful...

Agreed, i7 or i9, 32gb ram minimum. Probably a Quadro P5000 minimum. But on the contrary, I would always build myself, however I'm very good with it. Worked in a mold shop where they gave me a slow Dell Precision with a BTX board and constant problems. But, the IT guy was the laziest I've ever seen. If you already talked the boss into it then start high, nice PCs are worth it in this field.

The plan is to replace my PC first(we have 4 potentially that may need replacement). Another crucial part of the plan is to get at least 5 yrs out of these next PCs. I've worked in plenty of shops that have had PCs that were 5yrs old still quite able to get the job done, and only choke, or slow down when doing solids, while running verify on multi axis(usually nothing too festive, just 3+1, or 3+2) I know whatever I get, even if it is at the low end of the spectrum, it will be faster than what I have now which is:

We've already told the boss that the next box won't be cheap, close to $2k or so. I would like to start with the first one being as close to Mastercam minimum specs as possible, but it will have at least 64gb ram.

One thing I'm curious about and I will need to look at more, is the graphics. I know Mastercam wants the Quadro cards, but I have run it in the past on GeForce cards with no issues. After only a few minutes of specing out a few different PCs, it seems to me that I may not save enough money to justify not getting the quadro card.

99% or what we do is basic 3 axis work, with some surfacing. I haven't created any models in quite awhile so I have to remember how to do it. 99% of our files have solid models in them(usually only the part), and we have started saving temp copies of the files locally to reduce network(thats a whole nother issue). And we've set the Toolpaths memory allocation to 80% for Mastercam in the config.

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