vRay: CPU and core count limitations

[parahumanoid]

Hi.

 

I was presented with a task of building a render farm for vRay 1.5 running atop 3ds max 9. As a hardware base I was looking to use 4-CPU Quad Xeon machines (16 cores total per machine). However, while Windows 2003 will "see" all these cores, I am not sure that the max9/vray1.5 setup will be able to utilize all of them (I heard so somewhere). So the question is: what are the core/cpu count limitations on this software combination. Also, are there documented limitations on the max amount of RAM this software combo is designed to handle? And to finish it off, where can I find material shedding light on the issue of possible bottlenecks while using this software combination.

 

Thank you very much for your help.

 

Alex.

Edited September 16, 2008 by parahumanoid

[REDVERTEX]

No hardware problems with this combination. 16 cores + 16/24 gb RAM is

OK with MAX9x64 SP2 + Vray 1.5sp2.

 

For more specific questions you can ask on chaosgroup forum or directly www.chaosgroup.com

[northern monkey]

Good setup.... your nodes would never be used all at the same time unless you used either the split render utility in Backburner or Distributed bucket rendering.

Default setup sends one render to each node, if you've only got one render on the go only one will be used.

To use all of them you can use either mentioned above, but i'd be wary of using DBR in Vray, with this you have to setup and use the Vray Spawner service which is a b*t*h to get running on a consistant basis!

Look up Vray Spanwer Service and you'll get an idea.

Can't help on the rest!! Sorry!

[DavidR]

We have dual quad-cores, and Vray uses them all at 100%. and I heard that Box'x quad socket quad-core system (32 cores) are all used bt Vray, so add all the cores you can -Vray uses them really well -close to 100% linear scaling.

[parahumanoid]

Thanks to everyone.

I really appreciate it.