Duel Quad Xeon - Not Performing???

[TomElcott]

Hey Gents,

 

So i just upgraded from a Core 2 Quad with 8 gigs ram to a Duel Quad Xeon 12 gigs ram, and i seem to have saved myself 30 seconds on a half an hour render...

 

Now the main problem i have is that the new PC will only use +- 30% of the CPU power when rendering... it fluctuates between 20% and 30%... so now i have 8 cores as opposed to my old 4, but the old PC uses between 90 and 100%...

 

Now my question is has the new PC some how come limited? is there something i can change to get it to actually use its full potensial?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Strega

[ihabkal]

I am pretty sure that you have a ram problem, check ram used during render, also check if you have in vray the dynamic memory set correctly per your scene

[TomElcott]

ok i tested the ram, all working fine there, the ram cranks up to about 6 or 7 gigs with the scene,

 

Its a pretty hectic scene with millions of poly's, what should my vray dynamic memory be set to? iv never changed it before? its currently on 400mb?

[luckyluc]

Just put it to 10 G if you have 12

[F J]

if the CPU load went up to 100% on the previous PC with the same settings n all was fine then forget the RAM..

 

try this:

first, make sure u save ur vray settings somehow (keep a copy of the .max for instance)..

second, open the scene on the new PC n switch renderers (from vray to mentalray or scanline or whatever n save/reopen the file)..

then, switch it back to vray again n configure the vray settings all over again the way it was (go check with that copy of .max u kept to make sure its all good)..

 

last, hit Render!

[Bruce Hart]

Do you have the BIOS Hyperthreading enabled?

[ihabkal]

if the CPU load went up to 100% on the previous PC with the same settings n all was fine then forget the RAM..

 

try this:

first, make sure u save ur vray settings somehow (keep a copy of the .max for instance)..

second, open the scene on the new PC n switch renderers (from vray to mentalray or scanline or whatever n save/reopen the file)..

then, switch it back to vray again n configure the vray settings all over again the way it was (go check with that copy of .max u kept to make sure its all good)..

 

last, hit Render!

 

I wouldn't discount the dynamic memory settings if he is using proxies even if the old system was running fine: 8 cores need more pumping of information than 4 cores to keep busy.

But your advice of resetting the vray settings is a good one too.

[ihabkal]

Do you have the BIOS Hyperthreading enabled?

 

Hyperthreading used to cause a ton of problems years ago, when the "thread" would be busy rendering a bucket at 5% of the cpu capacity, while the actual cpu has finished it's bucket and idle. But I read a lor of reports that the new hyperthreading is flawless. In any case don't discount it as an issue because Intel marketing people would say anything to sell on Hyperthreading.

[R.S]

What OS are you running?

 

To run multi-socket systems you need to run Vista Business or 7 pro. Home editions will not support multiple cpus.

[DanGrover]

What OS are you running?

 

To run multi-socket systems you need to run Vista Business or 7 pro. Home editions will not support multiple cpus.

 

Or XP pro, too!

[TomElcott]

Hi guys,

 

Thanks for all the responses,

 

ok so i tried redoing all my V-ray settings, still only uses 20 - 30% of the CPU? I upped the Dynamic memory limit to 10 gigs, that doesnt seem to have made a difference with the Cpu usage either?

 

Im Running Windows 7 Pro so thats not the issue... And my machine doesnt have any Hyperthreading available in the Bios so it cant be that either?

 

Anyone else?

[ihabkal]

could you post the file or a link to it?

Can you try your computer with a different file to see if it uses more cpu?

[TomElcott]

Well i cant upload the scene because its just to big, but i seem to have identified the problem...

 

I have a large amount of trees in the scene, and iv used V-ray Proxies so my scene doesnt freak out to much... now if i delete the proxies the scene renders at full 100% across all 8 cores which is a thing of beauty... but when i merge in the proxies it freaks out and drops to very low percentages...

 

Any ideas?

[John.RenderStream]

If interested you could supply your full hardware-software system configuration it may help diagnose the problem. Please be as specific as possible.

 

Thank you

John

Edited February 10, 2010 by John.RenderStream

[ihabkal]

Check your performance and see if all 8 cores are there. I just made the mistake of upgrading to Windows 7 home 64 bit and only to realize that it doesn't recognize 2 processors. I have to buy Windows 7 professional 64 bit in order to see 2 processors and all 8 cores.

 

I made that mistake too many times, and every time I say I will read the fine print next time, but they always make new confusing things.

home, business, ultimate, platinum, uranium...what the @#$%

Just two days ago I opened a bank account, I signed 10 papers and read nothing. After I took them home I read them and I understood nothing.

[TomElcott]

@John.RenderStream : Hows this?

 

------------------

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 2/8/2010, 10:44:32

Machine name: TOM

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Intel Corporation

System Model: S5520SC

BIOS: BIOS Date: 09/30/09 12:52:30 Ver: 08.00.10

Processor: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5504 @ 2.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz

Memory: 12288MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 12228MB RAM

Page File: 9186MB used, 15266MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

User DPI Setting: Using System DPI

System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)

DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled

DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode

 

Im still concerned with the proxies... I tried just rendering the proxies alone in my scene to then composite the alpha over my scene and use photoshop to get the desired effect, but the problem still occured with the tree proxies...

[ihabkal]

then the problem is the proxies. redo them a different way.

[TomElcott]

I sort of did figure that out...

 

How could i do them differently?

[ihabkal]

how did you do them the first way? can you post a small jpg of what they are?

[John.RenderStream]

@John.RenderStream : Hows this?

 

------------------

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 2/8/2010, 10:44:32

Machine name: TOM

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Intel Corporation

System Model: S5520SC

BIOS: BIOS Date: 09/30/09 12:52:30 Ver: 08.00.10

Processor: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5504 @ 2.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz

Memory: 12288MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 12228MB RAM

Page File: 9186MB used, 15266MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

User DPI Setting: Using System DPI

System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)

DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled

DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode

 

Im still concerned with the proxies... I tried just rendering the proxies alone in my scene to then composite the alpha over my scene and use photoshop to get the desired effect, but the problem still occured with the tree proxies...

 

Okay thank you. To summarize the thread and please correct me if I'm wrong.

1. System-wise everything looks good.

2. Running v-ray without proxies uses 8-cores The E5504 is not double threaded MPU so you will see and use eight physical cores.

3. Running with proxies effectively runs 1 to 2 cores plus some overhead that is why 30% and not 12.5% or 25%.

4. These proxies run fine with your previous single quad-core system.

5. You tried some sort of reloading process to no avail.

 

First thing I'm curious if hyperthreading is turned on because since the E5504 is not double threaded I suspect it should not. This can be checked in the system setup screen at time of boot. However, since vray runs fine I suspect this is not the issue but should still be checked. Incidentally if you wanted hyperthreading the first processor in the series to do this is the 2.26GHz E5520. Anyway I digress, sorry.

 

I searched and continue to search the Chaos Group site to try to gain some enlightenment but no response yet.

 

I suspect in the vray proxy application needs to know how many cores you are working with. As an example that may not solve your problem but finding its equivalent for proxies may prove useful, we found with the double threaded X5550 processor we had to go set the light passes from 8 to 16 to get all the cores to be used. To do this we did:

1. open the vray scene file.

2. press F10 to open the render scene dialog

3. at the top of that box click the indirect illumination tab

4. you will see a series of horizontal tabs in that section. click on the v-ray light cache tab and make sure the passes are set to 8 (though while the E5504 is not double threaded setting to 16 might be interesting).

5. render the scene and note the time.

 

Like I said this fixed our problem but I suspect while this is not the exact solution something similar is.

 

But at the end of the day everything you showed looks fine so as it appears you've concluded as has others in the thread this is an issue with the application. I'm asking one of our applications person to look at it and we are polling some customers unfortunately no one uses the E5504.

 

Best regards,

John

[TomElcott]

Well i can if need be, but they were about 6 different types of trees, all i did was connect all the parts of the tree's so it was one mesh with a sub object material, then right click V-ray mesh export to make the proxies?

[TomElcott]

Thanks for all the responses!

 

Iv sorted out the problem... My machine was using all 12 gigs or ram, so once it started paging memory the processors dropped to 30 percent because they obviously had to wait for the paging to happen... I put in another 12 gigs or ram and the problem was solved...

 

So as it turned out the scene just needed more ram to render...

[John.RenderStream]

Thanks for all the responses!

 

Iv sorted out the problem... My machine was using all 12 gigs or ram, so once it started paging memory the processors dropped to 30 percent because they obviously had to wait for the paging to happen... I put in another 12 gigs or ram and the problem was solved...

 

So as it turned out the scene just needed more ram to render...

 

That is great news. Out of curiosity did the single quad-core have more RAM than 12GB?

Thanks

John

[ihabkal]

Thanks for all the responses!

 

Iv sorted out the problem... My machine was using all 12 gigs or ram, so once it started paging memory the processors dropped to 30 percent because they obviously had to wait for the paging to happen... I put in another 12 gigs or ram and the problem was solved...

 

So as it turned out the scene just needed more ram to render...

 

You know I told you so two weeks ago

two weeks ago I said "I am pretty sure that you have a ram problem, check ram used during render,"

and "8 cores need more pumping of information than 4 cores to keep busy."

I hope you remember it. If you don't I hope that I will develop a mental restraint on posting on this forum. I feel people don't appreciate my intelligence. too bad, so sad.

[F J]

huh, now thats weird..

 

That is great news. Out of curiosity did the single quad-core have more RAM than 12GB?

Thanks

John

 

yep, i guess in order for his theory to be correct (that of CPU efficiency gettin' back @ 100% just by throwing RAM at it) he would have to answer ur question affirmatively..

we'll be back at square 1 if he says no..