Currently I am using Vue 11 Complete on an i7-2600.  This registers in Vue as 8 cores (with the hyperthreading).  I am awaiting a new computer, which will have an 8-core i7, and I understand that Vue Complete will not use more than 8 cores (so with hyperthreading, only half of those available will be used).  Right now I can't afford to upgrade to Vue Infinite, so my question is this:

Would I be better off using my old version of Vue 7 Infinite on the new machine, rather that Vue 11 Infinite?  If anyone has any experience of using Complete without it using all cores, I would be grateful for your input here.

Not as much traffic here as I expected!  Lacking advice, I installed both Vue 6 Inf and Vue 11 Complete on the new machine and did some tests.  The results are not quite as simple as I first thought because I hadn't taken into account the optimisations to the renderer in Vue 11 vs Vue 6.

I thought that the information might be useful to anyone else who is thinking of upgrading either their machine or their copy of Vue.

Test 1: (4 spheres of different materials on a checkerboard):

Vue 6 Inf: 15 sec            Vue 11 Comp: 23 sec

Test 2: "Glass Horse" scene from Vue 6, rendered at 1024x768

Vue 6 Inf: 21 sec            Vue 11 Comp: 1 min 16 sec

Test 3: "City" GI Atmosphere with a 49cm Sphere with "ruby" sub surface scattering material, rendered on Final at 1920x1080

Vue 6 Inf: 22 sec            Vue 11 Comp: 6 sec

Test 4: "City" GI Atmosphere with a 2m Sphere with "ruby" sub surface scattering material, rendered on Final at 1920x1080

Vue 6 Inf: 1 min 11 sec            Vue 11 Comp: 59 sec

Overall, until I can afford an upgrade to Vue 2015 Inf, it looks as though I am better off using Vue 11 Complete because of the better optimised renderer.

As a final comparison, I rendered Test 3 and 4 on my old machine to justify buying the new one to myself:

Test 3 (Vue 11 Complete):

i7 5960X (3.0 GHz): 6 sec                i7 2600 (3.4GHz): 12 sec

Test 4 (Vue 11 Complete):

i7 5960X (3.0 GHz): 59 sec                i7 2600 (3.4GHz): 2 min 27 sec

Sorry, just back from vacation, been away a couple of weeks, other wise I would have answered your question. The main difference is that Vue can now use 8 pure cores from your new machine, instead of the 4 pures cores with 8 threads on your old machine. 8 pure cores will always render a lot faster then 4 cores with 8 threads.

The real question is if Vue Infinite will really be faster then what you have now. To test this, you can always download Vue 2015 PLE. That basically is Vue 2015 Infinite, with some restrictions, but not when it comes to cores. It allows you to render the same test scenes in Infinite. That way you can compare the times and see if Infinite is really much faster and worthwhile buying..... or not.

I would be curious to the see the results of your PLE tests.

I have used the PLE versions of Vue before and didn't think of this, so thanks for the suggestion and the explanation. I'm away this week, but I'll give the PLE a try and post back - I can't afford to go back to the latest version of Infinite right now but I am interested to see what difference it will make. 

When I got back off holiday I downloaded Vue 2015 PLE and tried a few test renders.  The difference between Vue 11 Complete and Vue 2015 PLE are variable depending on the scene being rendered.  Also, my apologies fgor a mistake in my previous posts - It's Vue 7 Inf, not 6.  When doing the tests I was very much aware that there are differences in the render engine between the versions, so the tests aren't as scientific as I'd like.

                                                     Vue 7 Inf                 V11 Comp                   Vue 2015 PLE

Horse @1024                                45 sec                    1 min 17 sec               1 min 16 sec

Displacement 2 @ 800x533          3 min 18 sec           3 min 19 sec               2 min 22 sec  

Reflective spheres                        13 sec                     17 sec                        7 sec

Spheres 2 @1920x1080                21 sec                    25 sec                        12 sec

HDMI City scene @1920x1080      1 sec                       2 sec                          4 sec    

So overall, there is usually a speed increase from using Infinite versus Complete, which is not surprising, but what is surprising is that it isn't always a huge difference.  On some scenes (the Horse for example), the speed differences were much lower because of one thread taking a lot longer to finish rendering an area (perhaps lowering the bucket size, which I'm not sure how to do in Vue).  For now though, it's satisfied my curiosity and I can live with Vue complete for a while longer.  Thank you once again to aeilkema for the PLE suggestion.

In a fast system with many CPU's render using Hyperview and use render cow instances... even better use a hypervisor to launch multiple cow instances.  Modern hypervisors like VMWare are hardware assisted on current CPU/Motherboards and use 1% cpu cycles at most for overhead.  They can pass GPU and RAM resources so you can set up windows or linux wine system "images" with optimal configurations and load them as hot and ready render cows and launch them at with a button on your hypervisor control panel.  The added benefit is enhanced backup, security and the easiest way to create and test optimal system software configurations. 

yes... Vue runs in wine, fine.

Seems like sticking to Complete is the best idea. I don't see how buying Infinite is justified just for s little rendering speed increase. I had a feeling the increase wouldn't be so much at all and your figures proof that. I've been toying with getting infinite for a while also, but seen enough now to let that idea go :D