How To Maximize an AMD 3500+ CPU

[pirallah]

Ive recently 'inherited' an AMD system, with the ff specs:

 

AMD ATHLON64 3500+

MSI K8N NEO4 MAINBOARD

MSI NX7800GT GeForce 7800GT

WDC 200GB IDE

1 GB RAM

 

I'm using 3dsMAx 7 and several Adobe Apps on it (and a few resource hungry games). I use max for work, but Im relatively new and still trying to get a good grasp of the software.

 

My question is:

1-Are there any settings in Max that will help me get the most out of my hardware?

2-And conversely, are there any settings in my hardware that can help me get the most efficiency out of max?

3-Do I have a good system here, or do I need some upgrades? ( Ive rendered a couple Mental Ray images that took more than 10 hours each, I dont know if thats normal, or am I misusing my software/hardware?)

 

Please help! Thanks...

[AJLynn]

That's already a very good system, the 3500 is about as fast a single CPU as you can get. If you want to upgrade, adding more RAM would be the most cost-effective thing to do, and beyond that your motherboard can probably accept an AthlonX2 dual-core, which could in theory double your render speed.

 

As far as settings and render speed - mental ray is hard. Very hard. 10 hour renders are not unusual (I've done 30-40 hours) and speed depends on a lot of factors - image size, number and type of lights, amount of high-computation raytracing it's doing (multiple bounces and blurries add time), image sampling level and whether you're using caustics, photon GI and Final Gather.

[manta]

AMD just dropped their prices DRAMATICALLY...

 

you can now get an X2 4600 for $269 (last week it was $550), this is just what I've been waiting for, been holding out till prices went down, thankyou INTEL...

 

I'm pretty sure you can upgrade to X2, I was thinking about getting that MB when I built my PC, but went with Asus instead...

 

also pick up another Gig of Ram...

[pirallah]

I dont know...just have this nagging feeling this setup can go faster..an I just dont know how to do it. Anyway, thanks for your replies...I'm definitely upgrading RAM to 2GB. Thanks again.

[AJLynn]

Check your Task Manager - when you're not rendering or doing something else intensive, is there something sucking your CPU time? When you are rendering, does Max get over 95% of the CPU? How about RAM utilization - under Performance, do you have any physical RAM not in use or has Max or your Adobe app hit the RAM wall? If you've got full or near-full CPU utilization by the app that needs it and enough RAM you're using the CPU to its full potential.

 

If your display performance is suffering in Max, check those settings, and make sure you've got the latest nVidia drivers. You should probably be running Max in DirectX mode. You don't want to be using excessively high texture quality, and line antialiasing in the display should be off.

 

Also, do full scans using the most-recently-updated versions of Spybot, Ad-Aware and your antivirus of choice - this is espcially important if you didn't do a complete wipe and reinstall when you got the PC.

[Digital_Assassin]

I have the same system cepped i have 2 gigs of DDR2-800 (PC2-64000) I almost went with a dual core and im happy i didnt spend the money, this thing runs great, exspecially during render time ...

[tecton3d]

Your best bet with this machine is to make it a dedicated modeling rig since it's a single core and all apps' interfaces are non-smp (at the moment). That is a strong setup with good components but the lack of multiple cores will be painful to render with (esp. with large scenes) no matter what you do to it. I'd definitely wipe the hard drive and start fresh. 2 gigs of ram is a minimum these days but your mobo can take up to 4 so I'd get 2x1gb modules in anticipation of going with 4gb when apps/OS go 64bit.

 

so you don't run out and buy a shiny new CPU ~ that mobo won't accept dual core:

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo4-F&class=mb

 

note: following section talks about overclocking so you don't shite your britches!

To get the most out of that system you're going to have to think about overclocking which, lucky for you that mobo is a great overclocker! A lot depends on what you end up being able to get out of the rest of the parts - primarily RAM and PSU. When you go to upgrade memory, make sure it's recommended by MSI specifically for that motherboard or it will give you fits. I'd spend a little more on high-performance ram and you'll be rewarded with an overclock in the 400-800mhz (or more) range : ) The best you can do is read up a bit on what combo of ram people run with that motherboard and what kind of results they are getting and make your purchasing decisions from that.

 

You can also (via software) OC NVIDIA ® nForce4 Chipset motherboards with an application called NTune which is made by Nvidia specifically for that chipset... it allows you to change various systems settings in order to tweak your system. I use it on my dual opteron NF4 based workstation when I am looking down the barrel of a lot of renderings and it pays off over the course of a couple million poly's and GI:D Download and give it a go... I guarantee at least a 200mhz boost from the start without doing anything to your system : ) if you're interested I can provide more details and step-by-step on how to do this:)

 

I'd also invest in an aftermarket HSF for your CPU -- Not only will it keep things cooler (as heat is the enemy of any computer) it will also be quieter and allow for more of an OC : )

 

if you're not into OC'ing ~ you can get a A64 - 4000+ for cheap these which would give you another stock 200mhz (honestly not a lot) and another 512 L2 cache or you can wait for the prices of the 64FX chips to fall... which isn't likely to happen any time soon:mad:

 

cheers

[pirallah]

Thanks for those replies! Really juicy stuff...though a lot of it. I guess I'd have to take it one step at a time.

 

AJLynn - Re. running in Directx Mode, would that be the setting under Customize/Preferences/Viewports/Choose Drivers? Or do you mean another setting? Right now it is set to Direct3D with the name of the GPU beside it. I have the antiaaliasing on, so I turned it off and while rendering, the maximum CPU usage went up to 92%. Is that normal or is my CPU stretching out?

 

tecton - Great stuff. esp. on the Overclocking info. I haven't really tried OCing though I am reading up on it. Dowloaded nTune and playing around with it. I already have a HSF that came with the unit, total fans inside = 3 with the GPU fan. Quite a buzzy machine inside with all those fans running, but I havent really had problems with heat (my room is Freezing cold! ). Im trying to digest all the info but may post another Q on the forum later if I encounter problems. Thanks for the offer for help Ill post up when I get there (soon I hope).

 

Thanks for all your help and replies guys!

[pirallah]

Oh btw...I dont know what SMP means? A search pointed to Shared Memory Processor is that correct?

[tecton3d]

tecton - Great stuff. esp. on the Overclocking info. I haven't really tried OCing though I am reading up on it. Dowloaded nTune and playing around with it. I already have a HSF that came with the unit, total fans inside = 3 with the GPU fan. Quite a buzzy machine inside with all those fans running, but I havent really had problems with heat (my room is Freezing cold! ). Im trying to digest all the info but may post another Q on the forum later if I encounter problems. Thanks for the offer for help Ill post up when I get there (soon I hope).

 

Thanks for all your help and replies guys!

 

when you start adjusting the HT link/Memory bus slider make sure you back off at 200mhz above stock and test for a couple (overnight is best) of hours to ensure system stability. Running an instance of this per core is preferred umong overclockers. Ntune will let you know when you've slid too far (you may have already found out) but make your adjustments in single increments ~ apply ~ and so on... make sure you don't max out the slider and hit apply... the results wouldn't be good! Sounds like you won't have a problem with temperatures as long as you keep things within reason... but colder is always better

 

here is a forum dedicated to MSI's AMD boards

 

Oh btw...I dont know what SMP means? A search pointed to Shared Memory Processor is that correct?

pretty much... to be generic, you can say that any multi-core, multi socket, or multi-core + multi socket system is an SMP system that is multiple processing cores access the same system memory (RAM) and is therefore "shared". Unfortunately, the only aspect of digital work that is SMP enabled (that is, it can use more than one processing core to access said memory) is rendering. When you're modeling/texturing/lighting, etc. in the interface of whatever software you have, that software is only using a single processing core - no matter if you have 4 processing cores available as in a multi-socket multi-core system, the rest of the cores sit there idle until you press the magic "render" button. IMO ~ the coding of the GUI hasn't yet caught up with the multi-core hardware. This is why I said you should make your "inherited" machine a dedicate modeling rig as that is what it's best set up for, at the moment. Your single core Athlon 3500+ would perform almost the same as my dual Opterons with the same components (vid card, ram, etc) in every task exept rendering.

 

hope this helps: )

[AJLynn]

Yes, Direct3D is what I meant, sorry - it's a component of DirectX. 92% CPU utilization is okay - when rendering, the total CPU utilization should be at 100% and most of that should be going to Max. Nothing wrong with that, unless something is wrong and your system starts overheating, which brings me to:

 

It's probably a bad idea to overclock using a "stock" COU fan. You should do some Google searching to find out what the optimal temperature range for your CPU is (not the manufacturer recommend maximum - that's the point where they think it will break and often it's higher than you really want to go). Then run a utility for monitoring temperatures - your MB supplier probably has one, or the nVidia software for your chipset, and compare your CPU temperature during, say, 20 minutes of rendering. (Using the CPU at maximum will test the high end of your temp range.) If you overclock, check the temp again and if it is too high, either drop the clock or buy a better HSF - look at web sites like frozencpu.com for inspiration.