Matt Sugden Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 Hi, I wonder if anyone can shed some light on this. I put together a dual core X2 proc based system a couple of months ago. And although it seems faster than my old p4, when I suspected it wasn't as fast as it could be I checked the task manager and to my amazement both procs were working at about 50%?!?! I've attached a screen shot. Has anyone any ideas, what I can do to optimize this, I'm using max 8 and xp home. It kinda sucks that I've paid over the odds for a dual core proc, when it's only giving me half it's available performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quizzy Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 first of all... use XP profesional... and find a script called: CPU affinity for MAX8... That should do the trick... or maybe its a bios thing... just a couple of suggestions... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 As quizzy said, you have to use xp pro to get the full use of a dual processor system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lambros Posted February 21, 2006 Share Posted February 21, 2006 xp pro will do the trick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted February 21, 2006 Share Posted February 21, 2006 Hmmm. if xp home doesn't support dual processors, why do they show up in the task manager ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted February 21, 2006 Author Share Posted February 21, 2006 ok, well I've done some reading and research, infact there is a very heated debate on the microsoft software forum network msfn about the topic of xp home and x2 dual processor functionality. Without wishing to start a riot by starting a similar thread, can anyone tell me how xp home and professional differ it terms of dual processor support. What confuses me is like manta said "if it doesn't support them, why are they showing in the task manager". Can pro be installed as an upgrade or is it complete re-install time again. I did this last week to sort out a nightmare soundcard problem, so not looking forward to doing it again if possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfienoakes Posted February 21, 2006 Share Posted February 21, 2006 If you upgrade, make sure you get the version with SP 2 included. XP home really is only for basic home use, anything else really should be used with XP prof. Check out these links: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/crawford_november26.mspx http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/tips/dual_processing_system_tips/ Just make sure you get a note of all your audio drivers etc.. and can connect to the internet once installed, to get all of your drivers on line if required. You might want to create a partition on your H/D for all you work files, so it shows up as another drive letter. Then keep your program files on one, and work on the other. Then if you need to format, its a quick couple of hours work, with nothing lost. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jow Posted February 21, 2006 Share Posted February 21, 2006 the update will go straight over the top. make sure your bios is up to date as X2s havnt been out all that long.also there are windows drivers the AMD website:- AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Version (exe) 1.2.2.2 http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tecton3d Posted February 21, 2006 Share Posted February 21, 2006 I've seen this everywhere... It's not a window xp thing ~ you'll only utilize both cores when performing tasks that are smp enbled (that is they are written to use both cores). You won't get 2x the viewport performance when compared to a single core processor... dual cores are for rendering and are usually several hundred MHz behind thier single core counter parts. The FX-60 (2.6GHz) is a different story. It is only 200 MHz slower than the FX-57 (2.8GHz). BUT, it is also dual core. This gives it very strong single threaded performance, and at the same time gives it very strong multi-threaded performance. Its probably the best all around. Though its real expencive Eventually, you wont see such a difference in single threaded performance between dual/multi core CPUs and thier single core relatives. What the beauty of dual cores is, say you are modeling/texturing in Max... you have a totally unused processor to do something else like photoshopping, autocadding, etc... a real 2 processor machine that is a multitasking monster and when you need it a rendering powerhouse due to the fact that you basically have 2 processors sitting on your motherboard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted February 21, 2006 Author Share Posted February 21, 2006 I'm sorry if I'm being dim, but I still feel that there is conflicting views on this. fine everyone is saying pro should be used for business, because it has some extra features, but are they specifically dualcore optimised? Is max only single threaded or smp enabled? or is there a setting for enabling dualcores. regardless of home or pro. I just read the arcticel posted by alfienoakes saying home won't recognise the two cpus, but at the top of this post you'll see that I have a screenshot of my taskmanger showing them both? Do I need xp pro to not only recognise them, but to assign the cpu workload to them? I'm not really interested in multi tasking, I just want my dualcore to render faster! 100% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted February 21, 2006 Author Share Posted February 21, 2006 out of interest, I've just tried the unthinkable and opened another instance and max and started rendering the second half of the test animation. I am now reporting 100% cpu usage. Is this a good workaround? or will my motherboard be slowly melting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfienoakes Posted February 21, 2006 Share Posted February 21, 2006 Extract from another forum: Although MS originally specified that XP Home did not support dual core processors, they apparently reached an agreement with Intel to at least provide some level of support under XP Home. When Dell attempted to sell a friend of mine a dual core processor with XP Home, Dell told him the original restriction was no longer true. However, the extent of the support is unclear. Given that the programming to fully support dual core as a dual processor machine implies significant lines of code, my guess is that under XP Home, some operating system processes can be assigned to the second processor, but I doubt that it is as good as the full support in XP Pro. Just a guess, but as a former OS programmer it seems unreasonable that the support in both would be equal. I think the best course of action, and all would probably agree, is to go over to XP Proffesional.. I have a dual processor (intel..) with HT, and it picks up as 4 of those babies..! Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted February 22, 2006 Share Posted February 22, 2006 It's very simple. Updrade to XP PRO or live with what you have now. I would go a step further and recommend going to XP 64 bit with a dual core X2. It's very stable and you can use 4 gig of memory without concerns about stability of the system. I have switched all my machines to XP 64 bit and very happy that I did. If you work with large scenes, thats the way to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfienoakes Posted February 22, 2006 Share Posted February 22, 2006 I wouldn't get too caried away with XP 64 bit just yet.. Check out some of the other users experiences with it. Max and Viz aren't 64 bit yet, so it will do you no favours in terms of those programs. in fact, some people have reported that xp64 bit, is actually slower than XP prof when it comes to Max / Viz. Although it sounds like Tony is getting on OK, I would go with XP prof now, and then wait for Vista to be actually out and ready for use.. IMO.. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted February 22, 2006 Author Share Posted February 22, 2006 Well, I think since getting pro is going to cost me more money, and I'll have to re-install everything on my machine, which is a lot of hassle when you have as much sound software and hardware as I do, I am going to stick with home for the time being, seeing as though I can very easily work around it. Also, most of the soundcard companies aren't writing dirvers for xp64, but are however producing them for vista, so alfie may have a point about waiting for that. Also testing out v-ray it seems that I am getting a full dualcore operation anyway. i think it's interesting to note that while I've been buying supposedly future proof 64bit athalons for years now, and there still isn't the software support which is really taking advantage of them! so much for the future, or should I say the past...... Thanks for the advice, I get the feeling the pro and home aren't as different as they are made out to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agatsuma Posted February 24, 2006 Share Posted February 24, 2006 Rendering should go to 100% on an X2, even with XP Home. Try Mental-Ray or Vray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted February 25, 2006 Share Posted February 25, 2006 Well I think the only difference between home and pro, are more advanced networking with pro, thats why there are 2 cpu's in the task manager, make sure that multi-threaded is on, in your preferences panel of Max, and also I have had no issues with X64 so far, max runs great, and doesn't crash at 1.8gb anymore, its gone over 3gb and rendered fine... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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