Ky Lane Posted June 30, 2008 Share Posted June 30, 2008 The juggle continues.. So, my studio machine here at work (8 core mac) is now running 64 bit Vista just lovely, and Max gets to play with all 4Gb of memory now, and its loving it. Much more stable, renders without drama etc... Now, my home machine is currently running 32bit, with 4Gb memory (so, only seeing 3), I can install 64bit Vista on it to get all the memory going, but I have 2 other machines on a small renderfarm that are 32bit. I currently use Vray - so, will a 64bit machine be able to post distributed renders to 32bit nodes successfully? And Im now in the process of learning MR, so will MR do the same? Trying to decide whats the best outcome. Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amer abidi Posted June 30, 2008 Share Posted June 30, 2008 I'm facing the same issue now. Just got a dual xeon quad-core with 8 GB of RAM (windows xp64 bit)..and needless to say, LOVING IT! yet when i try to DR using mental ray, my 32-bit machines cannot connect and will not participate in the render; havent tried vray on it yet though. Im still testing ..might be a windows issue as opposed to max 32-bit with max 64-bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macer Posted June 30, 2008 Share Posted June 30, 2008 From what I understand (feel free to correct me) you can't render (over BB) from 64 bit max to a 32 bit version of max. But If you install both 32 and 64 bit max on your 64 bit machine you can just send the render to BB from the 32 bit version of max. I don't think there are any issues with the hardware compatability, you just have to use the same version (32 bit or 64 bit) of max. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrawli Posted June 30, 2008 Share Posted June 30, 2008 Weve just setup a render farm at the office and have sent jobs from backburner with Vray on a 64 bit machine to 32 bit machines without any problems. Havent run into any problems YET with the two types of machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted June 30, 2008 Share Posted June 30, 2008 yes it works fine, just need to send the job as 32 bit from bb gets annoying when you get a massive scene on your 64bit comp then get trapped by 32 bit render farm limitations tho! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 30, 2008 Share Posted June 30, 2008 yes it works fine, just need to send the job as 32 bit from bb gets annoying when you get a massive scene on your 64bit comp then get trapped by 32 bit render farm limitations tho! Bingo. That is the biggest problem in mixing 64 and 32. More than likely ou will wind up setting up more complex scenes on the 64, since you have more ram, and then when you send them to the 32, you will run out of ram. Max 64 can render to Max 32 through BB by going into the advanced tab on the network render dialog, and telling it to send the job as 32 bit. I am almost positive I have distributed with vray from a 64 to 32 bit machine, but again, monitoring the ram is vital. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amer abidi Posted July 1, 2008 Share Posted July 1, 2008 OK, so i've tried Vray DR from a 64bit 8 core workstation, using two other 32bit dual xeon slaves. wierdest thing happens... all workstations using 100% CPU power, yet render times remain 2 minutes wether i use two or three computers to render the scene! mind you, scene renders in 1:39 when rendered on workstation alone!! will continue testing.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ky Lane Posted July 1, 2008 Author Share Posted July 1, 2008 Thanks for the feedback guys. Will keep investigating wether its worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amer abidi Posted July 1, 2008 Share Posted July 1, 2008 ..and a bigger scene that takes 8 minutes to render on the 8 core, takes 12 to DR over 3 computers!! very strange, since the scenes im using are all procedural and have no maps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted July 1, 2008 Share Posted July 1, 2008 I really feel there is a point where the network throughput is the bottleneck. I mean, an OctoCPU is incredibly powerful! And to take a job from the local, high-speed bus and dump it on ethernet, piping it to another motherboard.... The i/o is the killer me thinks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted July 1, 2008 Share Posted July 1, 2008 If your scene is taking 1:39 to render w/o DR, then there is no need for DR. It takes a little bit of time for all the machines to connect together, and if you have a machine that is not going to connect, it takes a while before it realizes that it is not going to connect. I wouldn't start w/ DR until your scene starts to get around 15 minutes of render time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amer abidi Posted July 1, 2008 Share Posted July 1, 2008 I realize that, that's why i rendered a more complex scene of 8 minutes. took 12. I tried a really complex scene that takes 3 hours and 15 minutes to render on 64 bit 8 core. rendered in almost 5 hours when distributed with the 32 bit machines. This is completely the opposite of what i had been expecting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted July 1, 2008 Share Posted July 1, 2008 not nessesrially, if the render is swapping to disk it can really slow things down. jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 2, 2008 Share Posted July 2, 2008 Something strange I've noticed on my 64 bit system running Max 2009 is that I can work with a scene that takes up 12.7GB but I only have 8GB of physical ram but with Max9 the biggest scene I've ever been able to work with uses a max of 2.7GB. Does Max 2009 have better disk swapping? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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