Hi there, Poser renderings at my machine take a long time to finish. When I look at the taskmanager/performance... it seems poser is only utilizing 50% of the CPU power. Is this a common thing for a Hyperthreading P4 3Ghz? Is there anyone else experiencing this problem or has anyone a solution to it?

How much RAM do you have? How big is your HD? Both can make Poser's performance suffer.

Not only can RAM and HD be an issue, but you have to remember that Poser can not utilize hyperthreading. For hyperthreading to work, the program that is running must have threading built into it. Curious Labs has said that they will try to include threading in the next version. They also hope to include multi-processor support which would totally help me out, work goes by so much quicker when you can render on a cluster.

.

I had this problem with Poser 5, it was so slow to move figures and to render. With Hyperthreading on, Poser only use 50% of CPU. You can easily disable Hyperthreading in the BIOS menu, but if you are not familiar with the BIOS settings u should ask to your PC's provider, many BIOS settings cant be altered. I have 1 mega Ram, but its not enough for Poser 5, it need to use HD as virtual memory too. Windows manage this "memory" by default, you should change this in order to have better results. Check this thread from the forum: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1649983

I'm very interested in this thread as I am (was) considering a 3.0 ghz PIV with HT technology and 1G of ram. Right now I run P5 on a 1.7 ghz PIV with 512 ram and it sounds like I have less problems with speed than you guys do! Maybe I'll just add more ram and forget about new fancy Hyperthreading machines, especially since the only purpose for getting it was to increase the speed of P5! My understanding of this new technology is that it simulates having two processors.......maybe that's why P5 is only using 50% of CPU.

That should be the problem. The hyperthreading is used to simulate the two processors, but the problem is that Poser 5 is only compatible with a one processor machine. So with a dual processor unit, it will only look like half (one processor) of the machine is doin any work. I sure hope that the next version of Poser has the ability to thread itself out, it would make it 100% quicker. You also have to remember that with almost any 3D rendering software, the bottleneck is the CPU speed and the amount of RAM available. Even with a 3 GHz box with 2 GB RAM, I still run into a bottleneck. There is so much processing happening, that there is always a slow-down somewhere and even with tons of RAM, Poser still requires Virtual Memory. Nothing pins a CPU more than a render job. THe only way I have found with any 3D program to speed it up is to ensure that it can do network rendering and than set up a cluster that acts as a multi-processor unit (as many as you can attach).

Well.....that makes my decision about the new machine :) I'm just a hobby user, so I doubt I will ever encounter some of issues you're talking about Blur014 :) But I certainly don't want to buy a brand new machine only to find out that I went from a "sort of slow" machine to a "reallllyyyyy slooooooooowwwww" one! :) I'll just wait until the hyperthreading can be used correctly.

Most developers do not have these links optimized. some have drive references other than C. Many references are found to be for Metacreations directories.

I have 2 comp, one is P4 2,6gH 1 meg Ram and 256 megs VideoCard, and the other is AMD 1,6 512 Ram and 64 megs VC, and trust me, the first comp render and move the figures 500% faster than the second. If u dont use to work with progs wich use HT u may disable it. If u do, Poser take 100% of CPU.

I just can't see spending the extra money on HT technology when the programs I'm going to run on it doen't utilize it. Seems smarter to wait until the programs are capable of using it......I suspect it will be cheaper by then as well.

Thanks for all the fast replies so far! Now I still have to figure out I I can disable HTT when using Poser but enabling it again when using Visual Studio. Enyone has experience with that?

Are you sure that Poser is actually running slower with HT on than off - measured on wall clock time? Ignore the 50% cpu figure. Intel is fooling XP into beliving that there are 2 processors, and as Poser is still stuck in a Windows 95 API timewarp it can't possibly use 2 processors, so XP reports 1 CPU, i.e. half your PC, underutilized. If it does run slower in HT mode, then by how much? The difference if small it's the overhead of Intel's HT, but I'd be surprised if it's really that large. Only other thing that could be the cause is those very old API calls in Poser (i.e. that it's not really a Win2K/XP product). To speed up rendering in Firefly play with the bucket size. In terms of actually trying to speed up Slowser 5 outside of Rendering time (assuming that your at SP3), consider removing Content Parasite if you've not already. How much speed up you get varies (not sure why, but related to some or all of: how old your P5 is, how you applied patches, whether you were in CL public "beta", whether IE is your default browser, what prophylatic aids you have implemented on your system.) Instructions over on PoserPros - the Sticky under Poser 5 Tips & Tricks is easiest place to find it. CorrectReference will speed up load time of >50% of the products out there, because all versions of Poser go off on a walk through your entire Runtime everytime they hit a sub-optimal texture reference, even if it's the same reference re-occurring, e.g. eye textures.

layingback: Hope Phoenix Sungod doesn't mind if I invade his post this way :) I just downloaded CorrectReference and as we speak, it is working on making a tons of fixes. Hopefully the little critter works correctly :) I never did install SR3. It seemed like it created additional problems so I avoided it. I especially don't want to install if it will mess with my ability to import .pz3's to Vue! Will run and check the instructions for removing the Parasite :)

No I don't mind at all! In fact I'll try downloading it myself. Tomorrow I will reinstall my old AMD 2400+ machine and try to render the same scene with the same settings and time it. If the AMD is faster then it is only utilizing 50% of the CPU. Installing SR3, did however, fix tons of bugs and load times but not the rendering times, at least not noticable. So I hope using CorrectReference does the trick... If HT doesn't on/off doesn't...

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html#1

Removing Content Parasite helps with Poser load times (all), and with responsiveness of Parameter Dials esp. on some instances of Poser 5. (Save the old unedited file though, you may need to install SR4, or better just comment out the necessary lines.)

Correct Reference helps with load times of products with incorrect texture filenames (even if Poser can find them without asking you to).

Only help with rendering times is a minimum memory size (which depends on your scene complexity), raw CPU power, and/or by playing with the FireFly parameters. Check link above for info on the latter. (For the CPU/memory discussions, see http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1418149 and follow the 3 links provided there.)

keindesign has some excellent tutorials....got a lot of good tips there. Correct Reference really does help! It's amazing how much....plus it helps you find out if textures are missing. This can be a huge help in preventing P5 from going nuts when it can't find a texture! I hage multiple runtimes and virtually every image was out of sinc with the character, pose and prop files. Consequently Poser would take a huge amount of time finding each of them. Never realized how important it was to keep things in their respective folders......if you want to speed up loading. Now.....gotta try that "Parasite removal" technique and see what happens there!

"Parasite" is gone!! Yay! Now P5 starts about the same as Paint Shop Pro 8 :) This is a happy day! BTW: I only have SR2.....the one that removed the protection scheme....and it seems to run stable so far! I did save the original .xml file.....just in case :) Thanks layingback!! Those were two great tips for speeding this thing up! :)

Sandoppe, Your welcome! Did your parameter dals become more responsive too? Less overshoot, etc.? 2 other small improvements - they just save operator time - are the smaller folder images in Parameter Dial window (reduces scrolling), and the smaller Dial adjustment panels (see more per scroll). Both over on Poser Pros - the latter is a Sticky on Poser 5 forum. (I did the smaller parameter dials just 'cos I suggested it during the Poser 5 public "beta" and was told by CL that it couldn't be done . If you've use After Affects or Photoshop CS you'll recongnize the concept.)

I've turned HTT off... it really makes a difference. However in normal day life it's better to leave HTT because the system keeps responding to your actions while 1 thread is utilizing the CPU to the max, however when you're going to run poser, it's best to turn it off. Tonight I will try CorrectReference and time some actions again to see how much it improved... What does 'parasite' mean anyway?? It seems to make a difference aswell!

Bummer on the HTT stuff. Means - as I feared - that the Poser (3, 4, 5) API interface is so old, that XP can't manage it properly in an HTT environment. My hunch is the Windows API interface for Poser was essentially developed when Poser first was ported from Mac to PC, and has essentially remainded unchanged since then. I assume that was for Windows 95, but I guess it could have been Windows 3.1... "Parasite" was just a play on "Content Paradise" - as it didn't seem to offer a paradise to me, it just robbed compute cycles when using the Parameter Dial window. And as it turned out also during load - at least for those of us loading at 32-bit ;-) I'm guessing that you also have ATA drives? That should theorectically speed up very large load times (like Poser) because it doesn't have to share the PCI bus with all the other traffic.

It is a bummer.....I just cancelled my order for a new HTT enabled machine. Doesn't make much sense to pay the cost of a new computer and then have to turn off one it's best feartures! :) I'm getting an additional 512 mb of DDR Ram instead (that's the most I can add to my current machine). That will give me 1G of Ram and should help. I'm sure the company I buy from would have perfered to sell me the new computer, but they seem to understand :) If the interface for poser is that old, it's funny that it's even compatible with XP. To answer your earlier question Layingback, yes the dials are more responsive.....the entire machine is less sluggish. As for the smaller dials: Sounds like a good idea to save space, but my eyesight is not as good as it once was. I'll have to check them out nevertheless. You've got to wonder what they were thinking when they built this software. The protection scheme and the "Parastie Portal" are two of the dumbest ideas in a long line of dumb ideas :) I have my own portal as do most people......and it's a lot more efficient. It's called a "links bar" LOL!

Sandoppe, I was certainly not trying to disuade anyone from buying ;-) But it is getting had to figure out a system that meets all your requirements these days. The "smaller dials" was not a good definition. What I've done is hidden the dials - totally - and put them over the parameter name. So everything works exactly as before, and the text, etc is still the same size (I understand the eye sight issue ;-) just that each entry now takes up a single line of info, rather than 2 lines as before. So it's not harder to see, it's easier! IMHO anyway. And you can see just about twice as many parameters at the same time over what you could before. Picture on PoserPros. Hint, while you can still operate the Parameter Names the same way you operated the dials (sliding over them left-right with the mouse), Poser has always supported up-down mouse movement of the dials too. This seems all the more natural without the dial image there, and gives your stressed carpels a change if nothing else.

You didn't disuade me layingback.....the experience of others did :) It was a good move at this point. Will check out the picture at PP. So far the other tips have worked great! :) Now.....if you can fix the rest of the problems we won't have to wait for CL! LOL!

Nah. Can't help you with the last request! 'Cos I don't use Poser 5!!! :-O I was in at initial release stage, and was active through the public "beta". But as several things got skipped during that, and then 2.1 came out which was not quite the same as the last of the pre-2.1 "betas", I kinda lost interest. It was too slow on my system, and by the time I'd heard of the CP removal - which fixed the too slow on my system - I'd already purchased PP... Will probably give it another spin when SR4 comes out, just in case... But after 18 months I long since gave up expecting much from them. I've made a career out of testing software, and have killed many products at Alpha and/or Beta stage - and paid the ultimate coproate penalty at times - for programs which were in far, far better shape than Loser 5 is in even at SR3! And yeah, I've worked for companies where we were forced to ship something too early due to monetary issues or risk folding, a la CL, but we were doing fornightly (every 2 weeks) releases therafter until it was working... 18x7 days for everyone, some longer.

Sandoppe, why don't you go ahead and still buy the HTT enabled system? I've got HTT turned off but it's still a lot faster than my old Athlon. In fact 3.06Ghz and up Intel processors will support the technology which in fact only keeps the response of the system better. Consider it as an onboard Raid-controller for people who don't use Raid. The other features like a fast memory bus and a faster cpu speed will make up for it! Because the FSB is faster, the CPU multiplier is lower which means that you can speed up the FSB more without too much overclock on the processor. I think a larger memory bandwidth is also better for programs like Poser. I have a P4 3.06 @ 3.6Ghz and my FSB runs at 240Mhz, because it's quad-pumped, it runs at 960Mhz instead of 800Mhz. In the sisoft sandra bench... everything is blown away by my current rig! I ran Correct Reference but it didn't find anything to fix :( no speed gain there...

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/messages.ez?forum_id=28&Form.sess_id=661350&Form.sess_key=1076508129

Went there last night Ynsaen! Some good tips for sure :) Phoenix Sungod: I won't buy it now, because I have an aversion to spending lots of money on new technology that I can't use :) The logic escapes me, I guess. The only reason I even considered a new computer was to improve the speed in Poser. I might as well just wait.....add all the additional Ram I can to my existing machine (which amounts to an additional 512 which will cost me $100 and that includes installation) and then wait until the prices come down on HTT or CL comes out with a version that will use HTT, Open GL and Video card Ram. Vue and Bryce run just fine on my current box.