Just did a render speed comparison between my "old" (ahem) Athlon64 3500+ and my new Athlon64x2 4400+. The results:

Poser: The dual core Athlon64x2 is neither faster nor slower than the single core Athlon64. Actually, this is quite surprising. Since Poser is not multi-CPU aware, the Athlon64x2 is only used at half its capacity, a virtual "2200+". So Poser performed faster than I expected.
The 4400 has 1 MB L2 cache per core, the 3500 has a single 512 kB L2 cache. Both machines run the same OS and have identical disk systems. The Athlon64x2 has faster memory (Kingston HyperX), both machines have 4 GB RAM.

Apparently the size of the L2 cache and the speed of the RAM are very important for the speed of Poser renders.

Vue 5 Infinite is a completely different story. The Athlon64x2 4400 renders almost twice as fast as the Athlon64 3500+ (2'30" vs 4'50" on a Vue tutorial scene). Looks like the speed increase is not CPU speed alone, I think the faster RAM and the much larger L2 caches are also responsible for this speed increase.

Conclusion: the dual core machines are not worthwile if you only use Poser, or other applications that are not multi-CPU aware. But if an application is, the speed increase is very significant. I'd like to hear from someone with an Athlon64x2 4200 (512 kB L2 cache per core) how the Poser and Vue render speeds turned out. This is what I used: Poser: The P5 CPU test scene by Jim Burton, rendered in P6 in 180 sec on both machines Vue 5 Infinite: the Ecosystem Fire tutorial scene, rendered at Final, 640x480. The 4400 did it in 150 sec, the 3500 used 270 sec.

I'm VERY happy with my new machine!

Message edited on: 12/18/2005 17:06

Now I really hate you, Steve! ;PPP Now link them all up and hook up to Maxwell AR....45seconds with blurred reflections...harrr

a virtual "2200+" No, each core of the x2 4400 runs at 2200 MHz as does the single core of the 3500+.

If only the dual cores were cheaper. I've been eyeing them, but I can't justify spending that much on just a little heat generator. Intel dual cores start at almost 100 Euros less than that, but they seem to require more cooling, and I can't stand loud computers.

Dizzi, you're right. Just checked the real speeds, and they're equal, 2.21 Ghz. In that case, the results are as they should be, the dual core funtioning as two 3500+ cores in one package. Hmm. So every multi-CPU aware (and CPU intensive) app should run about twice as fast on my new rig. Sounds good! I'll try 3DS Max next.

The new rig is not very noisy. An Arctic Freezer CPU cooler, plus a Fortron PSU with a 12cm fan, plus two silent 8cm case fans, the loudest parts are the disks (2x WD Raptor 10k RPM) and the DVD player. Oh, and a decent heavy case always helps.

Well, when I don't want to spend $400 on a CPU, I surely don't want to spend $100 just aon a new cooler and case either ;) Anyone remember the times when CPUs were cooled passively? The 68000 in my first Amiga didn't even have a heat sink.

Message edited on: 12/18/2005 17:24

Those were the days when the silicon traces weren't so close (in both layering and parallel) and speeds were measured in at less than 100MHz... ;) I had an A1000 and A2000 back in the day. Latest I had was an A4000 retrofitted into a tower with like 128MB memory, video card, PPC, and whatnot about four years ago. Now I only do Amiga in emulation using Cloanto's AmigaForever. They were the days when a single fan was more than enough. Now my current tower has four case fans, two CPU heat sink fans, fan on the video card, two on the power supply, and it still runs hot!

I couldn't afford a PPC back then (now I have one in my PowerBook), but I had an A4000/040 with 64MB RAM, Picasso IV, Cinema4D and whatnot installed. The only thing that made me sell it was BeOS R4, which looked like everything I wanted AmigaOS 4 to be - unfortunately, they indeed became the Amiga of the 90's (financially...), so now my hopes for a better computing world are on YellowTab...

...uh...excuse the interruption, back to your regular topic. Dual Cores, cache sizes and Poser performance. Did I ever tell you how my single-core Celeron 2.0 with only 128kB cache has an appaling performance when rendering?

Message edited on: 12/18/2005 18:23

svdl, I'm surprised at your score. I just ran Burton's test and got a result of 165 sec. My machine specs are P Xeon (dual) 2.66 Ghz, 2 Gb Ram, Win 2K. It's a fairly old machine (2+ years)

jeffg, what is the L2 cache on your CPU? I second the notion that L2 cache size is the factor that REALLY impacts Poser render speed. stewar, I have and still use an entirely silent computer. I can only use it to do word processing on MacWrite, but that's okay, I have it up in my "quiet creative corner" away from my other whirlybird computers. Macintosh from 1984 Original 128K RAM fattened up to 512K No hard drive. Mac OS 3.2 on a flexible disc Just enough room for MacWrite and a small working file. No hard drive. No fan. Floppy drive only whirrs when saving. Pefectly silent ::::: Opera :::::

It's 100 seconds for my X2 4400.

Operaguy "what is the L2 cache on your CPU?"

512 kilobyte secondary memory cache...

(Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 3
2.67 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 (2 installed)
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache
2048 Megabytes Installed Memory
Maxtor 6Y060L0 [Hard drive] (61.49 GB))

Incidentally, I recently ran a VRay speed test and the lates dual/dual core AMD beat my time by 400% (2 min. to my 9 min.)

My results:

101 seconds
Poser6 SR2
Windows XPPro SR2 and latest patches
AMD 3500+
4 Gig RAM
Dual Raptor HD with RAID 0
I opened the file by double-clicking it on the desktop and made no adjustments.

This is far faster than the last time I tried this test. I wonder if the image size is somehow smaller.

My test yeilded a 400x400 .png that sized out at 163K, which I converted to a jpg for the next post.

::::: Opera :::::

Going to redownload that CPU test file. Times are different indeed. I rendered in Poser 6, not Poser 5 (didn't install P5 on the new rig). Very interesting results!

Just did the tests. Rendering to 400x400 took 90 sec on the Athlon64 3500+, 89 sec on the 4400. Must have to do with the resolution. The original file rendered at 800x800 to a new window.

Poser's inability to use multithreading when rendering is simply sad (and Daz Studio can't either).

Almost every other 3D app is able to use multicpu (Max, lightwave, Cinema 4D, Vue 5 Infinite, Carrara 5, etc.).

Since you mentioned V5i at the beginning of this thread, there is a complete benchmark thread here for those who are interested : http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=391
with a lot of results for a lot of machines, PCs and Macs.

Steve, you are still 11 seconds better than me on nearly the same rig. I am going to knock on your door some day and see if you are using electricity on steroids, or something! ::::: Opera :::::

I have a dual 4600 supposed to be being delivered on Wednesday ... A thing I have noticed with dual processors is that, even if an app can't take advantage directly, it makes life a lot more pleasant if you want to do something else while a time-consuming task (like rendering) is on the go.

I'm bloody sick as a parrot........ ENVY ENVY ENVY. mind you im buildingg a new cluster at the uni.... Hmmmmmmm Poser on 1000 opterons.... Fun Fun Fun

Did the tests described on the Cornucopia forum. The results fitted right in with the rest of the crowd. Those dual Opteron rigs are very nice indeed! Almost twice as fast as the 4400x2. I know what my next power rig is going to be (first I'll have to grow some replacement money....).

I know what my next power rig is going to be Expensive? ;-)

Steve, now you are talking dual opteron and double the speed....but not with Poser, right? Where is the Conucopia forum? ::og::

Nope, I'm talking about Vue 5 Infinite. That's one proggie that is definitely taking advantage of multiple CPUs. The link to Cornucopia is in post #18. Cornucopia is e-ons Vue store, just like Content Paradise is linked to e-frontier and Poser/Shade.

Interesting thread here. I have a AMD X2 4800+ and a benched it with Cinebench I got around 186% increase in rendering speed over just rendering with one core. It benches but rendered first using only one of the cores and then using both cores. Yes, Poser doesn't take advantage of multi-cpus. But I have noticed that it seems to do better when rendering on higher quality settings then it used to with my old AMD FX-53 single core chip. One thing I have noticed though is you can use it to run two copies of Bryce at the same time rendering and it will finish both renders nearly at the same time. I tested this using the same scene file in each. Bryce is only single threaded as well :(.

Attached Link: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53037&page=1&pp=25

If you've got two Poser licences, you can also render two images at once, or work on one scene and render the other, but it's a little bit complicated to get Poser to cooperate ,-)

I have two Poser licenses. Three, if I include the P5 license. But I haven't got two instances of Poser to run on the same machine yet, not even P5 and P6 together. So, as a Poser machine it's not a real improvement over the 3500+. But Vue - ahhh, that's something else. And that's why I bought this rig.

Well, it'll work with fast user switching...

Steve, I have a license for VuePro4, I could upgrade. I am not interested in Vue for landscape or anything, though. I am just looking for a dynamite Poser renderer for animation. I am in love with soft raytrace shadow, AO/IBL/GI on faces and skin. Are you moving your Poser scenes into Vue to render? ::::: Opera :::::

Opera: Exactly. Animations and all. Dynamic cloth and hair both work (dynamic hair doesn't render really well, though). Soft raytracing in Vue works, but only if you set the render quality really high - not what you want when rendering animations. You're better off using mapped shadows. One of the nice things in Vue is wind and breeze. Vue plants react to wind by swaying quite naturally - you don't have to keyframe the tree/plant movements. It's got some nice animation tools, especially with paths (pedestrian, vehicle, airplane), and it'll allow you to have your characters walk on the surface. Check out the demo at www.e-onsoftware.com.

doesn't sound like a home run for me. I've left shadow maps behind now, and am heavily into massive use of dynamic hair, even in close-ups. Also, shaders, shaders, shaders, plus I don't need the plants and foliage. And yes, I'd have to render in very high quality, and that sounds like it brings VUE back to reality, in spite of dual-process-aware. Thanks tho! ::::: Opera :::::

I regularly use Poser with Vue in animation (downloadable anims at http://renderfred.free.fr). With patience and a lot of computing power you can do very interesting things, but it can be hair-pulling too because of memory usage problems.

Been lurking for some time because I need a new computer and have no idea what to look for. My brother has promised to build me one and got stuck with something so now I'm looking commercial. Running Poser 6, Bryce, Vue Infinite, Photoshop, Deep Paint and P3dO. Right now I have 1 gig ram and a 64 mg video card. I watch screen redraw. Didn't have this when doing web graphics but now I'm doing textures and trying to jump back and forth between programs and I often see portions of Photoshop and Poser overlayed on each other and am generally going crazy. I want to have Poser, P3dO, Photoshop all open at the same time. Very difficult and everything takes forever to do. I wait and wait and wait and forget rendering anything more than one figure at a time. I haven't got enough time left on earth to do that. And render in Vue? Ha! I don't care how noisy the thing is. I have ringing in the ears and live near a highway. My concern is keeping the dog hair out of it. Need motherboard that will support two hard drives. One fast for system and one massive for graphics. Got the new Dell wide 24 inch flat screen monitor as a gift and have never been able to use it with this system because my graphic card won't support the resolution necessary. So it's time. So who do I give my credit card to and go into debt for the next ten years? Anybody who can guide greatly appreciated. If this is too much trouble, just a link would be helpful. Thanks!!!

I recommend a custom built system consisting of high quality components. Mainboard: MSI/Asus/Abit/Gigabyte. I tend to go with MSI. The newer MSI Socket 939 mainboards can connect up to 8 drives (4x parallel ATA, 4x SATA), and I've even seen boards with 4xPATA 8xSATA. Chipset: nForce4. Accept no less. CPU: if you can afford it, dual Opteron dual cores. Vue 5 Infinite will love it. Will make for a very pricey mainboard though (Tyans are among the best when it comes to multi CPU boards). If that's too much, Athlon64 4400x2 is a sweet fast CPU, fully ready for 64 bit operating systems (did anyone say Vista?) and a good MSI mainboard for an Athlon64 costs about $100 or less. Disk drives: multiple SATA drives. At least two. WD Raptors are FAST, but expensive. I'd recommend two smaller very fast drives for OS, swapfile and applications, plus a larger slower drive for mass storage. Buy a good PSU with plenty of power. Fortron is good. Pabst is good. Zalman is good. 400W minimum. Good PSUs deliver stabler output, prolonging the life of your mainboard and CPU, and they're usually fairly quiet. The boxed cooler included with the CPU does the job. Fairly silent too. Graphics card: for Vue you want a GOOD OpenGL card. The professional graphics cards are the best, of course, but they're also very expensive. My personal favorite is the 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm series, but the cheapest one starts out at $800 or so. Brr. A decent nVidia consumer card (6600 GT, 7800 series) will do fine without costing an arm and a leg. If your budget allows for it, you could go for an nVidia QuadroFX or ATI FireGL. My personal experience with ATI consumer graphics cards isn't very positive. OpenGL support was definitely not good. Lots of Vue and Poser crashes. My old Ti4200 was both more stable and faster than the Radeon 9600 Pro. Don't fall for the SLI hype. You could go for an SLI mainboard and a single graphics card, upgrading to a second graphics card later on, when 3D applications are starting to make use of it. Right now SLI is only useful for the most demanding 3D games. Case: a good one. I'd suggest a midtower with plenty of space for extra drives, extra fans, expansion boards. Good brands are Antec, Coolermaster, Zalman. Chieftec isn't bad either. Chieftec cases come with a decent PSU, the other cases come without PSU. For a 4400x2 plus a powerful graphics card the PSU included with the Chieftec is not enough, however. Or - a BOXX workstation. Prices range from expensive to outrageous, but you will have an extremely fast and reliable machine, plus lots and lots of support.

Wow. Some truly great information. You work for them don't you? I'm just kidding. I have to chew on this a bit and throw it back at my brother who's going to tell me that I don't need most of it. Price, is of course, important and commercial systems are just so overpriced. Of course if I could work faster I could produce faster. So... Thank you!