Vray And Hardware

[dpizarrom]

HI!

I use vray for sketchup and was trying to figure out why my rendering speed haven't got better since I upgraded from 2 gb to 8 gb ram. Is it the ram the only thing having to do with speed or is it something else, like cpu or video card? For some reason it's taking me the same amount of time to render an image in the 8gb pc than with my 3gb laptop.

 

I appreciate any help!

[DanGrover]

HI!

I use vray for sketchup and was trying to figure out why my rendering speed haven't got better since I upgraded from 2 gb to 8 gb ram. Is it the ram the only thing having to do with speed or is it something else, like cpu or video card? For some reason it's taking me the same amount of time to render an image in the 8gb pc than with my 3gb laptop.

 

I appreciate any help!

 

RAM has nothing to do with rendering speed. Well, as long as you're not using more than you have. If your scene requires 3GB and you only have 2GB, it has to store the extra 1GB on the hard drive, and the swapping data between them takes some time. But if your scenes before were only 1.5GB, you won't really see any benefits in terms of speed. That's 100% the CPU power. The graphics card just powers the viewport, so the better the graphics card, the faster your viewport speed.

[dpizarrom]

So its the processor then? and which one would you recommend? I have the option of getting a CPU Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or a CPU Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66 GHz. Is there any big difference between these two? Which one is better for rendering?

I currently have a Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86 GHz. How bad is that?

[TheAllusionisst]

RAM has nothing to do with rendering speed. Well, as long as you're not using more than you have. If your scene requires 3GB and you only have 2GB, it has to store the extra 1GB on the hard drive, and the swapping data between them takes some time. But if your scenes before were only 1.5GB, you won't really see any benefits in terms of speed. That's 100% the CPU power. The graphics card just powers the viewport, so the better the graphics card, the faster your viewport speed.

 

In theory I agree, in practicality/real world lots of RAM helps, all that swapping out to hard drive, etc. ties up processing time and thus your rendering. So first thing is the CPU(s) as stated and then lots of RAM so that the CPU can focus on what you want it to and not memory management, etc. To confuse matters worse is the infrastructure of the motherboard and if it has a fast thorough put for everything to communicate as fast as possible and cache as needed.

 

Just tossing out my experience, on an XP machine I always top out the RAM at 4G with the 3G switch enabled in the boot.ini before worrying about the processor if I am just trying to boost some performance because usually upgrading CPU(s) involves a new motherboard, etc. RAM is just a cheap and quick performance enhancer IMHO. Of course if you are buying a new machine with a 64bit operating system, get the fastest CPU you can afford and upgrade the RAM to 16G or more as you can, I am just saying RAM does help existing computers in the performance department when it comes to rendering and "now a days" 4G is barely enough to render! LOL

[TheAllusionisst]

P.S. If your laptop renders as fast as your workstation you seriously have problems unless your desktop is much older and has poorer specs.

[dpizarrom]

I know this may sound stupid but i have to ask. Is it a big difference if i upgrade my core 2 duo E6300 to a core 2 quad Q9400? will there be any substantial improvement in rendering time?

[Tommy L]

Yes. The first thing you will see is that you have 4 cores, so there will be 4 buckets.

So far as each core performance, the mhz should roughly translate as a direct figure for render times. But remember, its per core. So a quad with the same clock speed as a duo will render twice as fast.

[dpizarrom]

i decided to go for the quad q9400. there is a considerable difference in rendering time now, of about 3 times compared to the e6300. so thank you guys for the info!