Hello, I was wondering how much faster I could render if I bought a P4 computer.

Can anyone with a Pentium 4 computer please do this test ? I would like to compare before I go buy a P4.

Pose a scene as shown in the picture. Figs are:
Business man with male hair 1,
business woman with female hair 5,
casual boy with child hair,
box prop with object properties: cast shadow: no.

Then render with render options:
Width: 1024 (height in my case is 902 but this value can differ)
Surface detail: check everything (especially anti-alias)
Render over: background color.
Start stopwatch when pressing "Render Now" button.
Stop stopwatch when rendering complete ("dancing poser" progress bar ends).
I did it on a P3-450Mhz, 768 Mb RAM running Windows Me.
Result : 3 min 13 sec

People with dual pentium 3 or dual pentium 4 out there ? Could you do this test as well ?

Forgot to mention resolution: 72 dpi.

1 minute 15 seconds, on a P4 1.7 mhz with 1 gb ram, Windows Me. Thats at 1024 x 768 with default lighting.

I know you didn't ask for other single P3's, but I did the test on a P3-1Ghz, 512 MB, with Windows XP Home. Kept the height at 902 to agree with yours. Render came in at 42 seconds.

Sorry about that .. the first render (42 seconds) was without the box. With the box, it came to 1 minute and 1 second on a P3-1GHz, 512 Mb, running Windows XP Home.

Many thanks Cybermonk and dmtyler for the given results! dmtyler, are you rendering with anti-alias on? I think that your render going faster than a P4 1.7 Ghz is not as expected ;-) I would estimate that, since your processor is double the speed of mine, your result should be something like 1 min 40 sec (half the time I needed), about 25 sec longer rendering time than the P4 (which is not bad after all for the P3!). Maybe if more people entered this test so we get more results to work with ... Now I am really getting curious for the double processor configurations.

I did check and anti-aliasing was on. My lighting was in slightly different positions than yours, but it still cast quite a bit of shadow on the back wall. I do notice, though, that you and cybermonk are both using Windows Me, whereas I am using Windows XP. It will also be interesting to see if other Windows XP users get faster rendering speeds. I'll try another test with the default lighting and see what I get.

Good suggestion dmtyler, Windows XP people: please join!

I made a new rendering of the scene from another angle to make the box visible. Hope this helps to compose the scene.

OK, here's something interesting. The lighting that I was using actually ADDED to the render time. I reset my interface to start up with the default setup, and then imported the figures from the previous test into the scene. I've attached a screen shot of my interface, showing the lighting arrangement at the time of render, and the render settings I used.

When rendering directly from the document window sized at 1024 x 902, the render was 50 seconds (time 06:47:40 to 06:48:30).

When rendering to a NEW 1024 x 902 window (as shown in the Render Options dialog in the shot here), the render was 53 seconds (time 06:50:10 to 06:51:03).

So right now, the main difference seems to be Windows Me vs Windows XP, which I find very interesting! I'm assuming we all have AGP graphics adapters? (Which would make a difference too, if you are using a PCI graphics card).

And here's the final render (reduced to 256 wide)

Just redid the test on a portable P3-450Mhz with 128 Mb RAM running Windows XP professional. Result: 2 min 40 secs So I can confirm Win XP DOES make a difference. Guess I could get quite a lot of performance boost by installing XP and exchanging the 450 Mhz by a 1G P3.

1.install power toys xP 2. start powertoyx 3. go to tweakUI 4. go to general 5. unclick everything in the general tab, like bbep etc. 6. these are enhancements of XP taking system resources you are welcome

Exactly 6 seconds. Default lighting, anti-aliasing on. WinXP Pro. Dual P4 Xeon 1.7g (dealer couldn't get the 2's on time) 1 gig o' RAM.

It's NEVER fast enough, but my system took ... 41 seconds. ;=] 41 seconds to render size = 1024 x 1024 35 seconds to render size = 1024 x 768 using Pentium 4 1.9 GHz 1 GB RAM WinXP cheers, dr geep ;=]

Thanks everybody, these results are very usefull. The single P4 is, as it looks now, faster but not very much faster than a 1G P3. The dual pentium4 again really flies. I will now be off the internet for a couple of days so I will not react to this thread. Please keep posting results!

Rendered in 55 seconds. I have a pentium 4,1.7GHz running windows xp home edition

First off, comparisons aren't necessarily meaningful unless everyone is rendering exactly the same scene. My first rendering of this came out at 2mins 10secs; then after some posing and camera adjustments (but nothing else) to more closely match gstorme's original render, it took 2mins 35secs. That's a big difference for some essentially minor adjustments. Making the render size exactly 1024 by 902 (and adjusting camera to suit) brought the time back down to 2mins 5secs. I'm running a PIII 500Mhz with 384Mb of RAM, on Win98SE. Poser render lengths turning out about the same on a 1Ghz PIII as a 1.7Ghz PIV sounds about right. The PIV has poorer floating point performance than a PIII (as well as some other deficiencies) that seriously count against it for rendering Poser files, even with more cycles per second on hand. The standard PIV is not suitable for dual configuration - you have to jump to the XEON for that. Poser makes no use of dual processing; and there is no way in hell that a dual 1.7Ghz XEON setup will render this scene in 6 seconds. More like 60. Graphics cards (AGP or PCI) will make no difference to the render time of this file. BTW gstorme, there are some potential problems with running WinME (any Win9x OS) with more than 512mbs of RAM. Try lowering from 768 to 512mbs and see if you get a speed improvement. It might not happen, but it could.

"there is no way in hell that a dual 1.7Ghz XEON setup will render this scene in 6 seconds. More like 60" Nope; it was 6. There's no way I could be mistaken on this one. If you don't believe me, you can come to my house and time it yourself. Really.

Anyone know how Athlon performs? The FPU should be much faster than on P4.

Oops! I just re-read the original post and realized I forgot to add the hair. None of the three in my scene had hair, but I don't think it would matter much anyway--not with the default Poser hair.

p1 200Mhz 64Mb Ram 40Gb harddrive, and poser crashed on me,not really a surprise, middle of March I'm buying the new machine, so watch out for me to start posting images at long last

How about making one standard scene to the freebies section - and start collecting information. Someone, who is familiar with PHP (or whatever those form prosessing scripts are) could do a webpage to collect information about rendering times as a table. I could do it, but I would have to do it by hand.

33 Seconds, the render was actually 1024 x 1010 or something. Windows 2000 Pro 1.4 Gh AMD Athalon (Which is really 1.33 Mhz, at least mine is) I'd guess the 1.4 Athlon should be roughly equal to the Pentium 4 1.9 or so. In a lot of ways the 4s are misbegotten chips, with the Rambus memory and all. My AMD system was built about a year ago, and dosen't have the dual ported memory like they are using now, which should knock another 10% off or so.

Attached Link: http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,apn=9&s=1005&a=5878&app=7&ap=8,00.asp

You'll have to forgive me if I don't believe a dual 1.7Ghz XEON setup will render this scene in a mere six seconds. I am reasonably cognizant of the specifications of the latest XEONs and the i860 chipset, and there is nothing about them that points to such an astonishing performance result with Poser. In the link above, you can see the results of a test with Lightwave 6.5 on a dual 1.7Ghz XEON against a single 1.7Ghz PIV (the new XEONs are essentially just PIVs with different packaging enabling dual processing and a few other niceties). As would be expected, the single PIV performed slightly better than the dual XEONs with Lightwave operating in single thread mode. With Lightwave operating in multi-thread mode, the dual XEONs are substantially faster - but still not quite twice as fast as the single PIV time. So, even with a program specifically designed to run on two processors, the best that can be expected is a time not quite half of that achieved on a single processor. If Poser was dual processor capable, a best result of around thirty seconds might be expected compared to the single PIV results given in this thread. As Poser is **not** multi processor capable, the actual result with dual XEONs will be slightly longer than with a single PIV, all else being equal. I've no idea where Jackson's six second result came from, but I do know that it didn't come from the capabilities of the Intel XEON processor. Nor two of them. (also note in the graphs how different graphics cards made no difference at all to the Lightwave render times)

69 seconds in Athlon 1.0GHz.

53s overclocked to 1.1GHz.

What is "Power Toys XP" and where is it found?

I must be doing something horribly wrong (or very right). Win98, 128MB, P3-800MHz, 1024x768 @ 50.5 seconds.

I agree with PJF. Poser CANNOT make use of the second processor. I tested that on my dual cpu system before I decided to buy a new single cpu system. Also this scene doesn't take much memory so that won't make much difference either. I've seen before that poser works faster on WinXP/Win2000 than on Win9x. Rendering in Poser doesn't make any use of the video card. BTW the dual Xeon guy didn't say if he enabled bump maps, texture maps and cast shadows. If you don't do all that I can get 10 seconds too. I highly doubt the 6s claim too. I have lots of experience with Xeon workstations and servers and a Xeon is NOT much faster than a normal processor. (about 12% in a best case scenario) My score is 39 seconds. AMD XP 1800+ 1 GB DDR Ram Windows2000 Prof. I did notice that the processor wasn't at 100% power during rendering. Also I have plenty of memory, but I still heard it do a few small things on the harddisk. I also think it would be a good idea to post the scene so that we all use exactly the same setup. Also noticed that rendering time was about the same with 144 dpi (forgot to check the resolution first time) You might want to post a more complex scene to the freebies section to get a better idea of what faster processors and more memory do in complex scenes that you normally use. Marc

I got 3 different times on mine AMD 1.3 GHz 256meg RAM The first time my lighting was off a bit and i got 1 min 3 secs, Second time i had my lighting and everything right and i got it in 57 secs. Now this is one that triped me out at the time of doing this I heard my HD make a strang esound and being the freak i am i poped open my box while this was rendering to see what was up... anyhow long story short it rendered in 43 secs (yes i had to rerender it cause i forgot to watch the timer when opening the box up so i guess its technically my 4th) Only thing i can guess is its a fluke or maybe if we keep the processor a hair cooler we get better render times. though i thought air flow made more of a difference. Anyhow this is very interesting to me and I am willing ot put a site together for this if you are all interested. I am interested in seeing what the different OS's do and also maybe we could get some compairisons between Mac users and PC users on it. (heheh finally put to rest if the Mac is a good machine or not MAhahahahahah) anyhow if one or two of you would be interested in assisting me on this email me mayb ewe can come up with something and some ideas for it.

It would be intresting if sombody would put a PZ3 up in Freestuff and we could test it - just stock P4 stuff though, not everybody has everything. As I seem to be winning so far, or maybe second ;-) Let me say I also run my working partition (I have a Win98 one too) pretty lean and mean, I don't have a sound card installed, or wallpaper or a screensaver or just about amything at all. Some of that stuff probably doen't matter, some of it does take processor cycles, though. I also have one of those special-order-from-Germany cooling fans that Tom's Hardware likes, I doubt if that helps anything other than crashing, though. Damn AMDs are really hot chips, in more ways than one! Anyway, if sombody puts one up I'll also run it on my G3 Mac, if you want to see some really high numbers! I used to teach a course called "Computers in Design", one thing I did was have a crude batch of tests that were run in Photoshop, on whatever computers the students had access to, got some intresting results. Was amazing how slow the 68000 Macs were compaged to IBMs, for one thing. P.S. - as I'm sure we all know, Poser can't use dual processors.

I have always known that Poser doesn't make use of a second processor. PJF and other non-believers: I'm no hardware expert but I can keep time. However, I won't argue the matter any further. The invitation to come and time it yourself still stands. Sorry I posted to this thread now.

P3 866 512RAM WIN2KPRO 1024 x 928 46 sec.

O.K., to get this on a scientific basis I just put a PZ3 up in Freestuff, called of all things "CPU TEST PZ3" It is in Poser Utilities. Just run it the way it opens, instructions are in th ezip, 530k download.

The file is to big for a good test on computers running W9x and 256Mb, sorry! I didn't think 4 P3 figures and some hair and a medium size render would push it into virual memory. Oh well! Anyway, for what it is worth: CUP Test.pz3 P3 525Mhz 256 Mb RAM, Win 98 - 2 minutes 58 sec. AMD 1.4 Atahlon, 768 Mb RAM, Win 2000K - 44 seconds

Jim Burton's CPU Test.pz3 benchmark Pentium 3 800MHz, 128MB RAM, Win98 : 2 minutes 14 seconds

Okee dokee: Pentium 3 1GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows XP Home: 1 minute 21 seconds.

The OS is really important in this test.Win 98 and XP home aren't enought good for graphics apps.

14 Seconds 1st try 1024 X 768 15 Seconds 2nd try 1024 X 917 16 Seconds 3rd try 1024 X 1024 My setup: AMD XP 1800+ 1 GB DDR Memory Windows 2000 Pro JV

I had to restart to try this one, as it is setup as a dual boot: CPU Test.pz3 1.4 Ghz AMD Athalon 768 Mb RAM, Win 98 - 48 seconds About 10% slower than Win2000 Pro - intresting. Hey JV, try the PZ3 I put in Freestuff, more accurate test - not really a fair test for less than about (I'd guess) 384 Mb, though.

and the result for Jim Burton's CPU Test 1st test 68 seconds 2nd test 69 seconds AMD XP 1800+ 1 GB DDR Memory Windows 2000 Pro JV

Amd 1.3 GHz 256meg RAM Win 98 Test one 48 sec Test two 49 secs

1.9 GHz 1 GB RAM WinXP 57 seconds

1.0 Ghz (Athelon) 512 MB RAM Win98SE 107 seconds

1gb Athlon, 768Mb Ram, Win XP Pro... 1 minute 46 seconds 800 Athlon, 768Mb Ram, Win XP Pro.... 1 minute 25 seconds Ed

Just curious, is everyone using a chronograph watch to time the render (including shadow map calculations)?

Jeff I started timing as soon as I clicked render and stopped when the render status window closed. I used the stop watch on my trusty ole wrist watch to time it. Ed

Not having a stopwatch, I've been watching the time on the good ol PC. I sized the Poser window to be less than full screen, and then double-clicked the Time display in the taskbar to get the Date and Time properties dialog. Then I watched the minutes and seconds tick by ) - that way my eyes were always on the screen.

I also did it the dmtyler way :o)

It was ACTUALLY ... 56.73827593 seconds (approximately) ;=] BTW - What are we gonna do with this info? [just curious] ;=]

Needed to amend my figures--I made the mistake of having other stuff open while I did it...duh. Wasn't a big difference, but still. 1.7P4 384RDRAM WinME 63 seconds