Does anyone know if there would be significant render speed / memory handling improvements in P7 with quad core versus dual core ?

Yes it should, the renderer says in the preferences screen that it is allowed to split into four threads.  Even with my dual core I can see it pegging both cores, single-threaded Poser 6 never touched the second core.  Note also that the Intel quad core QX6700 has a tremendous frontside bus, and you will benefit from that a lot as well as the extra cores (I am going the same road around maybe 2 weeks from now).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115011

Memory handling has nothing to do with processor type, that won't affect you.

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For 2/3rds of that price you can get the dual core athlon 5000+ computer.. the entire system.

It's like $950 shipped, and has a $50 rebate plus you get windows vista upgraded fo free.

I seeing outstanding render speed here with it. I can render a standard window with everything on in less then a minute.

If you choose to get that system, best current "buys" are also geta a 500 wat power supply to replace the base HP one, and a ati x1950 pro 256 meg video card. (about $200 after it's $30 rebate)

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Thanks for the link pjz99.  Even though its sort of a high premium at this point and it may take up to another 1-2 years for programmers to take full advantage of that many cores, futuring-proofing a PC definately has its advantages.

Keep an eye on the price, because yesterday it showed 1199 for some fruity reason, I guess they had it wrong and locked it because I couldn't order it ;)

I fully expect that thing to go down 300-400 bucks in the next month once non-Extreme Edition quad cores come out.  It won't take years, it will be useful immediately in the same way dual core procs are - particularly for rendering, check out some benchmarks:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=quad+core+benchmark+rendering

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How is the memory usage for P7 on a multicore cpu, is it still limited to 1.5 gig?

Memory speed shouldn't matter as much as in the raw processing of the chip.  While I love my X2 if I was buying a new box right now I'd look at a core 2 duo or the quad core, well its' 2 c2d cores glued together but thats another debate for another time, one depending on your budget.  

Here's a breakdown on DDR2 speeds to cost and what would be best in particular builds
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1966035&enterthread=y

Quote - Memory speed shouldn't matter as much as in the raw processing of the chip.  While I love my X2 if I was buying a new box right now I'd look at a core 2 duo or the quad core, well its' 2 c2d cores glued together but thats another debate for another time, one depending on your budget.  

That's exactly what I've heard about the new quad core CPU, it's a 2x2 cores and not a true quad core, may be a while before Intel introduce a true quad core CPU.

So if the raw processing speed of the CPU matters, what about the Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz and above?
Does overclocking of CPU helps?

What about the performance of video cards, do they matter in regards to the rendering speed?

Let's pretend for half a second that cinebench is sorta a good indicator of how a system might perform with the firefly multithreaded renderer.  An E6400 overclocked to 3.6 is right below a QX6700 at stock.  It was like 1107 pts vs 1397 pts I belive (this was on dfi-street).  My current Opteron 170 @ 2.6 = 717 pts.

An e6400 setup might run you 700-800 bones theres about depending on how much you want to pirate from your old system.

The multithreading of the renderer was worth the upgrade price, considering I am too lazy to put my scenes in another software :D. 

I guess to summarize.  A e6400 system is a worthy upgrade for poser if you got the cash especially if you OC the crap outta it.

-G

Ghostwolf,

A P4 @ 3.0 is roughly 1/2 slower than an X2 @ 2.4-2.6 theres abouts. (I tested a northwood 3.2 and it got like 298 pts on cinebench).

I would look at a C2D system for an upgrade is performance is getting you down.

With a dual core my render time is roughly 1.86 times faster.

Also, it seems that even if you have dual core set your renderer to 4 threads even if you don't have 4 cores.  Anyone else have similiar findings?  2-4 threads that is.

EDIT: Anyone have a python script to report render times?  That would be super helpful.

Does anyone know if P7 will take advantage of an hyperthreading pentium 4?  Also, will P7 run on a 64 OS like vista?

P7 will run in a 64 bit os, but it runs in 32 bit mode.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Most multi-threaded 3D programs can take advantage of a hyperthreaded P4. Whether Poser7 can remains to be seen. Carrara 5 Pro runs two threads on a P4, and uses 100% of the CPU in the process. I'm surely hoping that Poser 7 does the same.

I hope so... if anyone out there gets a chance please post.  I'm tired of only half my chip running.

i am running p7 on a 64x2 4800 with xp 64 and it is very fast and has not choked on
images that are huge.  it uses 100% of the dual core processors...this should be opening doors for more complex renders all around. 

Quote - For 2/3rds of that price you can get the dual core athlon 5000+ computer.. the entire system.

It's like $950 shipped, and has a $50 rebate plus you get windows vista upgraded fo free.

I seeing outstanding render speed here with it. I can render a standard window with everything on in less then a minute.

If you choose to get that system, best current "buys" are also geta a 500 wat power supply to replace the base HP one, and a ati x1950 pro 256 meg video card. (about $200 after it's $30 rebate)

 

That's my question...is there some tangible advantage of Intel dual core over an AMD dual core? In the past, Poser has usually shown better time trials on AMD than Intel. If a "dual core is a dual core," what contra-indications would remain for chosing AMD?

Also, is there an AMD quad?

Also, since "four" seems to be the Poser upper limit now, what about a motherboard which sockets two AMD dual core processors to give you four threads. Any objections to that?

I also want to throw in the mix that the front side bus has also always had a great impact on Poser, that was shown in many time trials over the past three years on these boards. Unknown if that is still the case, but why would it not be?

So what is the untilmate drive train?

::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: Specs and pricing on AMD and Intel processors at Tiger Direct

[ **AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 2.80GHz / 2MB Cache / 2000MHz FSB / Socket AM2 / Dual-Core (Windsor) / Processor with Fan**](http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2207290&CatId=2331 "Click for more information") $729 NOTE THE HUGE Front Side Bus. You Intel guys, which of the Intel products would you fairly compare to this CPU?

In either case, AMD or INTEL, can two of these dual core processors socket into a motherboard.

(Going to need a mother of a cooling system and a huge power supply)

The amount of memory your software is allowed to address is determined by operating system and the software itself, not so much the processor.  All modern Intel offerings adhere to the "EM64T" standard, which will ALLOW them to run on a 64-bit operating system, but until you make that change and you switch to 64-bit versions of application software, it runs in 32-bit mode when running software that is written in 32-bit instructions. 

Poser 7 unfortunately doesn't offer a 64-bit version ... but Vue does!

What tangible advantage over X vs. Y processor?  Check benchmarks in the link above.  It is very organic and changes month to month, who is the "best".  I stick to Intel for basically religious reasons.  People who are AMD fans are either taking advantage of their lower cost, or they are also there for religious reasons.  There isn't an easy way to look at the numbers any more and say "oh, this one has a higher clock speed" or "oh, that one has more bits" or whatnot.  It's too complex.  Benchmarking is the only thing you can even remotely trust, and even then you have to look at the parameters of the benchmark pretty hard to get some idea if it was a fair test.  Some processors do better in Application X, while Application Y will do better on the other brand's processors.

Do yourself a favor and filter out all the game performance stats.  They are meaningless when it comes to heavier applications like Poser and Vue and 3ds Max, they just don't have much to do with each other - this is why you see hard core gamers saying dual- and quad-core processors are useless, because they don't benefit games all that much (single-threaded).

re: your last post, go check benchmarks and find out :)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=quad+core+benchmark+rendering

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pjz in addition to what you said, we have been doing 'strictly poser' benchmarks here for years. Jim Burton posted a .pz3 using only default objects and materials, one for Poser 5 and then another when Poser 6 came out. Those are the benchmarks I am referring to.

We ought to do the same for Poser 7.

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There is a Poser 6 benchmark page on my site (http://renderfred.free.fr/poser_benchmark.html), and I intend to do a Poser 7 benchmark page soon (you'll see quad and dual core scores there).

Cool, that's very useful :)

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thanks louguet, that's perfect

Louguet your benchmark list is pretty cool, but I recommend you nail down specific Firefly settings;  Auto may throw some people off I'd think.

If you have your sample scene out for download somewhere I can volunteer my own stats.

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Quote - > Quote - For 2/3rds of that price you can get the dual core athlon 5000+ computer.. the entire system.

It's like $950 shipped, and has a $50 rebate plus you get windows vista upgraded fo free.

I seeing outstanding render speed here with it. I can render a standard window with everything on in less then a minute.

If you choose to get that system, best current "buys" are also geta a 500 wat power supply to replace the base HP one, and a ati x1950 pro 256 meg video card. (about $200 after it's $30 rebate)

 

That's my question...is there some tangible advantage of Intel dual core over an AMD dual core? In the past, Poser has usually shown better time trials on AMD than Intel. If a "dual core is a dual core," what contra-indications would remain for chosing AMD?

Also, is there an AMD quad?

Also, since "four" seems to be the Poser upper limit now, what about a motherboard which sockets two AMD dual core processors to give you four threads. Any objections to that?

I also want to throw in the mix that the front side bus has also always had a great impact on Poser, that was shown in many time trials over the past three years on these boards. Unknown if that is still the case, but why would it not be?

So what is the untilmate drive train?

::::: Opera :::::

The new (weill it was new a couple of months ago) Intel Core 2 Duo dual core chips are significantly faster and more importantly very cool running.  Thus allowing them to over clock to an insane level.  I may be wrong in this, but I believe that windows XP will only allow 2 CPUs.  Therefore, to use a quad CPU setup would require a different OS (I don't know the limit in Vista).  The current price levels for either the Core 2 quad chips or the AMD 4x4 chips/motherboards seems insane for performance gain at this time. IMHO the best purchase at this time is a e6600 (though I like the e6400 too).  I use both a dual core AMD and one of the Core 2 Duos and it is crazy the performance boost I have seen.

Some articles

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/14/core2_duo_knocks_out_athlon_64/
an article about the AMD 4x4 platfrom
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/30/brute_force_quad_cores/

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." -Desmond Tutu

Quote - Also, is there an AMD quad?

The only quad-core system you would be able to get from AMD in any near future is the Quad-FX, although I would strongly advice against it.
It needs to have two processors installed, which means you have to double up on CPU-cooling and which also means that it can draw about 400 watts in idle-mode. It's quite the radiator.

Another thing, if you want to buy a QX6700, don't do it at Newegg, they overcharge.

^^ can you point out a cheaper vendor then?  I've been looking around a lot and their price is pretty competitive.

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pjz try tigerdirect.com

yep that's a good price :)  Newegg must have some jacked up stuff going on with their pricing, two days ago Newegg had it at 1199.  Thanks for sending me that way, I expected the price to drop but not quite so soon!!

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okay in attempting to get educated, I now see that you can get four threads on one CPU with Intel, namely the QX6700 pjz and others are mentioning.

Whereas with AMD you have to install two CPUs (until their true 4-on-one-cpu products develop).

Well, that would SEEM to put INTEL in the lead for Poser, but the heat issue and the power supply issue can be addressed. It would be worth doing so if 1) the overall cost to build a 4-thread system were less expensive with AMD; and 2) Poser renders would execute faster on a two-cpu AMD system. The issues of the FSB and Cache for these two prospective paths cannot be overlooked.

We will be fortunate indeed if we get some Poser benchmark testers with these high-end rigs. We'll have to drop the green flag and get out of the way.

I'll continue reading, including the tomshardware links above.

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shouldn't worry too much about heat and CPU, people make huge deals out of them but basically get a 700+ watt CPU and put a big fat Zalman cooler on the CPU and you'll be okay.  Be sure to get good thermal grease when you install the cooler, often the freebie grease is garbage.  Shouldn't even try to use the Intel cooling fan that comes with the boxed version of the CPU, they are almost always junk.

Poser renders will come in at different speeds depending heavily on render settings.  I would bet a hundred bucks that it's not that simple, because rendering with raytracing on works profoundly differently mathematically than with raytracing off, and I'd expect things like Ambient Occlusion will also affect render time on one processor or another.  I'm not saying this one or that one is faster or better, but just be prepared for unexpected variation between the two brands, that's all.  Intel might whup AMD's butt in low quality renders while AMD might win in max quality renders  (MIGHT, I haven't actually looked at it that hard myself).

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Hmm..... the  
INTEL QX6700 has a 1066MHz FSB.

 AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 2.80GHz / 2MB Cache / 2000MHz FSB / Socket AM2 / Dual-Core (Windsor)  

But what does this mean? On the Intel chip is it 1066 per each or for the entire CPU? Likewise on the AMD.

I want to again raise the issue that in our Poser benchmarks, FSB counted for A LOT. 

I see no way, however, to get the price down with AMD. 2x$720 plus extra cooling, extra power supply and perhaps the dual socket motherboard is more expensive. Compare that to the QX6700, INTEL path has to be less expensive.

per the thought of rcr62 above, just a single Dual core might be speed enough to get going.

Perhaps you could build two complete AMD computers, each with two threads, for a better price than any 4-thread solution at this time, and get the highest render speeds for Poser. That gives you better flexibility, too.

::::: Opera :::::

I am running Poser 7 on various machines right now. Oh well, multithreading implementation in Poser 7 is disappointing, very primitive. I'll post everything in a few hours.

(Operaguy, FSB has virtually NO influence on rendering times, in every 3D software that I know.)

I would be greatly surprised if high FSB vs. low FSB made no difference, as far as I understand it rendering is all about moving non-cached data in and out of the CPU and main memory.

Um - Operaguy, this is really all a bit silly.  Poser 7's render is still crap next to Vue's, just spend the money you might have dumped on 6 CPUs and whatnot and look into rendering your work in Vue.  Free demo of Vue 5i convinced me to buy version 6 just on render speed, not that I know how to use it too well yet.  Even the new version of the Firefly renderer is just plain junk next to Vue's renderer, and to top it off lighting is much, much easier to work with imo.

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Rendering is all about CPU speed. Extremely small influence of memory speed, and no FSB influence (or should I say, negligible). But feel free to try for yourself. High bandwidth has almost no influence on 3D rendering, it's one of those hardware myths, thanks to all benchmark fanatics running Sandra & Co... :)

Really, what really counts is CPU speed, number of cores if the software supports them, and quantity of ram.

Well, you may be correct about the FSB louguet, but that is NOT what DaleB, svdl, other hardware people, and myself concluded last time we chewed this point.

Operaguy, Ok, then I am alone, no problem :)

I don't get how you can conclude that amount of RAM matters, but the speed at which data is transferred in and out of RAM will not. 

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pjz99 regarding rendering in Vue. Yes, I am considering that. 

I highly prize the simplicity of staying in one app, however. Also, the Vue renderfarm system has severe problems, last time I looked at it.

Regardless of renderfarm issues, I still want one mighty Poser rig for development.

I'd welcome your feedback; have you run any intense production-level poser-based animations through Vue?

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pjz99, because 

1. you need enough ram (quantity) to run your scene without swapping. If your scene fits in ram, then adding more ram is not useful anymore (for that particular scene).

2. The ram speed has a very limited influence because of the extremely high efficiency of modern CPU caches (on chip, + L2, etc.). Real memory access does not occur often when rendering because of this. Extremely repetitive computations fitting in the caches.

operaguy,

I have done some animation work with Poser 6 and Vue 6 (see the anim here http://renderfred.free.fr/animations.html, top of the page). Renderfarming in Vue with animated Poser characters is tricky, but it works.

Quote - I'd welcome your feedback; have you run any intense production-level poser-based animations through Vue?

 

Me?  Naw, I'm a nooby to Poser, I know hardware and OS and general application programming pretty well though.  I have stuck with single frame imports in Vue because that's all I have use for, but in that category when I benchmarked the Poser 6 vs. Vue 5i renderers, the Vue renders were literally a couple of hundred times faster.  I've only owned P7 and Vue 6 for a couple of days now and I've not had time to properly compare them, nor do I have the know how just yet to properly light a scene in Vue, although I'm not seeing a big enough improvement in Poser to really make me think it will make me regret buying Vue 6i.   I'll get back to you on that though.

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Uh-oh. RETRACTION.
It is 6:44 AM here in California and I have been up all night.
I have to retract some of my content above.

In our prior studies, svdl, DaleB, stewer and others did come to a conclusion. But it was about the L2 Cache, not the FSB. I got my terms tangled. So, my appologies to  louguet and I am correcting this because the last thing I want to do is influence someone wrongly about such an expensive and critical purchase.

L2 Cache, not FSB, makes a big difference in Poser render speed.

Now I am headed to Starbucks for a Vente Mocha with a third shot.

::::: Opera :::::

May I make a suggestion? Before you go dealing with PC parts warehouses such as Tigerdirect and Newegg etc, check out this place and read all the compiled customer ratings about such companies. Resellersratings is the best to find out the rep of a company before you lay out your cash. All the ratings there are left by REAL customers (both pro IT people and everyday folks)  who have dealt with all types of companies from all over the US and some places in the UK. Resellersratings helped me stay away from companies with very, very bad ratings.

Please give them a look it can't hurt.

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ok thanks pjz (does that stand for 'pajamas"?)

"Pendulous Jujubee Zorostrianism" actually.  Sealtm2 thanks for the reviewer page; it's a little annoying, I've dealt with Newegg many times and usually they are very competitive on pricing.  I suspect that there is just a price war going on for those processors.

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Quote - "Pendulous Jujubee Zorostrianism" actually.  Sealtm2 thanks for the reviewer page; it's a little annoying, I've dealt with Newegg many times and usually they are very competitive on pricing.  I suspect that there is just a price war going on for those processors.

Well, you're talking to a true newegg freak! LOL. I've had many, many transactions with newegg and never had a problem with them and have found their prices the best. As a matter of fact my new dual core machine I just built had all it's parts come from Newegg. I've had dealings with other vendors only to have them turn out into nightmares!

Cheers,
Micheál

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Yeah same here, my last two whole PCs were bought piecemeal from Newegg along with a lot of little odds and ends, that pricing discrepancy is really out of character for them in my experience.

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Opera; Here's a condensation of what I've found over the years to date: 1)As of P6, the L2 cache performance mattered with Poser because it was a single threaded app. With the multithreading of at least some of Poser 7, (and AMD's hypertransport bus system (which intel is apparently in the process of copying)) easing the speed issues, it -may- not have as much relevance. 2)A lot of memory is only useful if the OS, and through it the app, can access it. A 32 bit program can still only address 2 gigs of physical ram per operation. They can do things like page flipping to sorta kinda trick things into using more physical ram, but you still have that 2 gig limit at any one time. 3) The current bottleneck in the rendering pipeline is not CPU or RAM; its HDD. Even if its just calls to the OS, hard drive access times are the new hurdle. In the rendergarden I have, I ran a test and found that the socket 754 Athlon 64-3000 with a gig of DDR-266 performs within a second/frame render time of the socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+ with a gig of DDR-400. If it were CPU makes all, the s939 would have been kicking the snot out of the s754, since the older chip only has the one memory controller, as opposed to the dual controller of the newer chip. If the memory bandwidth was the issue, then the DDR-400 should have been turning out over 40% faster times. Of the renderboxes, the one that is fastest is an Athlon 64 3200+; and that one is the closest to the X2 main system, and the only technical difference is that I put 2 SATA 3.0 drives on the 3200+ in a RAID 0 array. (I also currently have the parts on order to place a similar RAID array on one of the s939 systems, which should enable that testbed to exceed the s754's performance). ** The test scene was a 900 frame Poser anim with dynamic hair, so their were a lot of floating point calcs going on** -IF- you can fit all your scene and shadowmaps and resources and whatnot into ram, then the HDD issues become a lot less critical once things are loaded. But any access of the swapfile or temp files really slows the process down. If you want to use the quad core Athlon 64 in the future, then either get the AM2 socket (according the AMD the quads will slip right in there), or wait until the AM3 comes out, which will use DDR-3 memory.

As far as I know the Athlon 64 3000+ in socket 754 is a 2.0 GHz CPU, and the Athlon 64 3000 + in socket 939 is a 1.8 GHz CPU, so it seems logical that the older box compensates other deficiencies by a 10% slightly faster clock.

Personally I have never found that the hard disk speed was a bottleneck, unless of course there is not enough ram and swapping occurs, or the hard disks are incredibly slow. But on a renderfarm anything can happen :)

Just curious, but how does the OS see the Dual and Quad processors? I am assuming that XP sees the dual core as a single processor. If it doesn't then what are you going to run as an OS on a quad core system? XP only supports 2 processors, which I assume means it will run 2 x dual cores. If it's really 4 seperate cores then you will have to run a server OS to fully support them.

You need a server OS to run more than 2 physical CPUs (so 4, 8 etc.). XP Pro sees  2 CPUs max, but each CPU can have many cores. So a Clovertown system (2 cpus x 4 cores) runs well on XP 64, with 8 "cpus" displayed in the task manager. XP Pro 32 bit and XP 64 have the same limitations.

Marvo:
Nope, dual core shows up as two processors (CPU0 and CPU1).  Right in task manager it shows two windows, one for each proc.

Me I'm switching to XP64, I didn't bother to investigate if XP Pro supports more than two.

edited for context

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I've been playing around with P7 on my dual-core Athlon 64 running Windows x64, versus me Turion MT-40 laptop (single core), and while you see a little bit of a speed boost, it's not that dramatic running multiple threads. From what I can tell, the multiple threaded helps more with getting around the memory limit in a single thread (and thus, more complex scenes are able to render) and the render calculations rather then the rendering itself. Honestly, if you are thinking of getting a "Quad-Core" computer just for Poser, I think you're going to be wasting a lot of money for the expected return. You are much better off getting a mainstream Athlon X2 or Core 2 Duo system and saving the money.

 As far as CPUs go for a new system, in general, Core2 Duos are the better performers right now from the benchmarks I've seen on the high end (which is mostly games, which tend to be single threaded); Athlon X2 tend to be much easier to get and are better value (they've been out far longer), and holds it's own against the mid level C2D.  Either one is going to be a MUCH better performer then Pentium 4's no matter the P4's clockspeed or hyperthreading (P4 was a complete joke of a processor IMHO). I would doubt that the newest quad-core system is really going to be that much faster then a lot of the mainstream systems in Poser. Poser, being a weird animal composed of some very old and very new software technology,  always seems to hit a wall with scene complexity  that is the real limiting factor, (haven't seen this yet in P7, but I'm sure it's there) and not the hardware it's running on. It should tell you something that Vue, Bryce, Carrara, et all, can render faster, more complex scenes with their engines then Poser can on the same hardware.

While on the topic of CPUs, it should be noted, that the FSB buses (and speed) on the Athlons and Core2s are not really "apples to apples". Athlons have an integrated memory controller and thus it does not communicate with the main memory over the FSB as Intel chips do. Core2 makes up for this by having very large L2 (and even L3) caches to diminish the performance impact when it has to do memory calls through the FSB. Either way, the FSB speed is less important than it used to be.

At this time, I think both the Intel and AMD "Quad Core" designs are not worth it; I would wait until next year and see what products develop in that segment. Both companies are involved in a marketing driven technology race at this point. Intel's "Quad Core" chip is actually just  two dual core chips on the same piece of silicon, but all four cores must share the FSB bus for access to the memory; the could be a major problem for anything that is extremely memory intensive as it could cause the cores to stall out if they have to wait in line for access to the memory (something I can see a program like Poser doing). AMD's "Quad-FX" is basically  the same thing, as it is just two physical duo-core chips on a motherboard; the integrated memory controller and Hypertransport Bus helps mitigate some of the bottleneck issues with this approach but it's still hardly what I would call a true "Quad-Core" design.

Something to consider.. in most places if you buy xp (or xp 64) before jan 1st, you get a free upgrade to windows vista or windows vista 64.. not a bad little perk...

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Yep.. the first batches of dual processors had issues as well.. that's why I opted for a rock solid dual core system now.. something I get good speed from, but also something I can rely on.

I NEVER recommend getting "cutting edge" tech.. I always get something 8-12 months old, so they can work the kinks out.

A great example is the ati 11950 pro.. it's bacially an enhanced version of one of their older "hot" cards, but with much better sli setup, and better cooloing, and higher clock speeds.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

I wonder how vista will handle all the 3D apps we use?
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I took a look at Micro$oft to see what they have to say. Basically here's a quote of how their licensing works.

*For most currently shipping Microsoft software with processor limits, each processor counts as a single processor regardless of the number of cores and/or threads that the processor contains. For example, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition can be used on a four-processor system, whether the processors in the system are single-core, hyperthreaded, or multicore.

This would indicate that there is a difference between the Intel Quad Core and the AMD Quad Core. The Intel is 4 cores on one physical chip but the AMD is 2 dual cores on 2 chips. From an OS standpoint you should be able to run 8 Intel cores (on 2 chips) but only 4 AMD cores (also on 2 chips).

Quote - Ghostwolf,

A P4 @ 3.0 is roughly 1/2 slower than an X2 @ 2.4-2.6 theres abouts. (I tested a northwood 3.2 and it got like 298 pts on cinebench).

I would look at a C2D system for an upgrade is performance is getting you down.

With a dual core my render time is roughly 1.86 times faster.

Also, it seems that even if you have dual core set your renderer to 4 threads even if you don't have 4 cores.  Anyone else have similiar findings?  2-4 threads that is.

EDIT: Anyone have a python script to report render times?  That would be super helpful.

 

Actually, yes I do. I wrote it in P6, but it should still work in 7.

I tried to attach it to this message but it won't work. Send me a private message with your e-mail address and I will send it to you.

Here are a few concrete benchmark figures, I created a new topic as I thought it could be of interest to some people outside this thread :

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2676460

Heat is not an issue with modern intel processors.  C2D is really the only answer... fanboidom aside. -G

Quote - > Quote - Memory speed shouldn't matter as much as in the raw processing of the chip.  While I love my X2 if I was buying a new box right now I'd look at a core 2 duo or the quad core, well its' 2 c2d cores glued together but thats another debate for another time, one depending on your budget.  

That's exactly what I've heard about the new quad core CPU, it's a 2x2 cores and not a true quad core, may be a while before Intel introduce a true quad core CPU.

So if the raw processing speed of the CPU matters, what about the Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz and above?
Does overclocking of CPU helps?

What about the performance of video cards, do they matter in regards to the rendering speed?

No the core 2 duo's are a much better generation of processors over the old P4 cores.  Far more efficient than the old ones were.  They are to the point where i'd consider buying another intel system again and i've used amd's for the past 4-5 years with a X2 as my current build.

Tomshardware's CPU charts clear up a ton.  Take a look at those to get a good idea of what kind of system you would like to get.  That being said, I am still looking at an OC'd 6400.  Perhaps a 6300, but I like the slightly higher multiplier. -G

Quote - ^^ can you point out a cheaper vendor then?  I've been looking around a lot and their price is pretty competitive.

 

I usually shop at www.pricewatch.com for computer stuff.

It seems the quad core processors are really almost 2xs as fast as the dual core.  Given that they aren't that much more expensive it seems that is the way to go.  

Poser says "up to 4" threads so I guess a 2 quad core machine won't use all 8 processors.  Vue will use all 8 cores though huh?

I am thinking of getting a motherboard that will take 2 quad core processors and just buying one quad core for now.  Later after the price drops considerably I will buy another and pop it in.  

Poser will no doubt support up to 8 cores in poser 8.

I am also very interested in speeding up the posing process.  For that the preview uses mainly the video card right?  I guess a video card that has open gl and a ton of memory is the way to go.  Any good picks for vue and poser?  

Fredric thanks for posting all this valuable info.  And very nice job on those animations.  

Never build a system based on waht you wanna do a year from now. A year from now, it'll all be changed, and you'll need to rebuy half of what you buy now.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Quote -
I am also very interested in speeding up the posing process.  For that the preview uses mainly the video card right?  I guess a video card that has open gl and a ton of memory is the way to go.  Any good picks for vue and poser?  

 

Yep - I currently have an EVGA Nividia 7800GTX, which is among the top end cards.  Pretty soon I'll be going to an Nvidia 8800GTX (EVGA again), which is purportedly more than twice as fast.  I have not had any graphical issues with Poser 6, 7, or Vue 5, 6. and in fact I've not had any graphical issues with any software of any kind.  The 7800GTX is a good card, can be got from ebay for around $200.

The 8800GTX is brand new, sells for $600+.
http://www.evga.com/articles/333.asp

Gareee's advice is very true, generally buying anything computer-related with the intention of upgrading it later is terribly wasteful.

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This may be a silly question coming at the end of this thread, but exactly what kind of performance improvements --in what areas of Poser use-- could I expect by upgrading my video card? Currently I have an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (in a Mac Pro Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz machine with 4 gigs of RAM)? SS

None in rendering as far as I understand it, but a lot of improvement in viewport speed, and possibly a little quality improvement (I wouldn't bet on too much of that though).  IMO the software still easily outruns the video hardware up to the maximum you can reasonably buy, I have a very solid graphics card (far from the best, but very solid) and Poser 6/7 are very unpleasant to scroll around with more than just one basic figure in the scene.  Two V3/M3 category characters with serious hair e.g. Aery_Soul's, forget about it, less than 1 FPS.  I can see serious professionals getting real benefit from two 8800GTXs.

....      hmm, I'm not serious OR professional, but what the hell, it's Christmas.  I'll go ahead and spring for two of em, that'd be nice.

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This is an interesting discussion.

Gareee and PJZ99 thanks for the good advise.  I think its sound counsel for your average bear but I am smarter than your average bear so i may still go through with my ideer.

PJZ99
I actually use a laptop with a 32 meg video card.  Your last post makes it sound like you don't fair much better with your 7800GTX!  Its hard to see what you mean by "unpleasant" without actually seeing the difference side by side.  But I am wondering what performance increases people have in fact seen in the viewport based on an upgraded video card.  I have nothing to compare it to.

Well, it depends on a lot of things e.g. what display mode you run Poser in and are comfortable with, what screen resolution you run, and how complex the scene is in Poser that you are trying to display.  I run in 1600x1200 in 24bit color (if I could reasonably work at a higher resolution I would!) and right off the bad I work machine pretty hard - what is visible in the viewport has to be calculated out by OpenGL (greatly assisted by your graphics card, if your card is so capable) in order to be displayed on the screen.  So, with an ordinary number of vertices on the screen (say one poser figure) you and I might not see too much difference in speed.  Particularly in wireframe mode or one of the less difficult preview modes.

On the other hand when you have a million vertices in the viewport (say three V3/M3 characters and hair and various props and clothes) and have shading/texturing on (the last button in preview options) to get a more accurate preview, your 32MB card likely can't show you more than one V3/M3 character with their full textures (does it?) and you're likely running in 800x600 with 16 bit color, so you're really not seeing the texture the way it will look when someone else in higher color resolution sees it.  Right now I really don't think there is a practical hardware limit for heavy numbers of polygons, the stuff is just a ton of mathematics and data pushing.

"Unpleasant" to me means trying to pan and move the camera or move a figure's limb when the screen is updating at less than maybe 10 frames per second; it's that scenerio where you scoot the mouse a little bit and the camera or limb spins around many hundreds of degrees before the screen updates.  

I think if you tried using a large screen (20 inch or larger) at very high resolution you might understand why people are willing to throw down a large chunk of money on graphics hardware, it's really a tremendous difference.

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It's hard for me to compare since I just dropped the new vdeo card in the new system, but the combo is MUCH faster then my old workhorse system.

I don;t kno wif it's P7, the dual athlon the new ati, or if the speedu-ps are combos of everything, but I'm a very happy camper right now.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

Quote - It seems the quad core processors are really almost 2xs as fast as the dual core.  Given that they aren't that much more expensive  . . .

Newegg Intel Quad core (qx6700) $1399 - Intel Dual Core (e6600) $309 = $1090 difference

At TigerDirect Intel Quad Core (qx6700) $1299.99 - Intel Dual Core (e6600) $314.99 = $985.00 difference

A thousand dollars difference seems like a lot to me.   Best bang for the buck is the Core 2 Duo 6600 or even 6400.  The ability to over clock this chips is insane.  And the tempatures they run at are incredible too. (and if you are thinking of saying you must use the core 2 duo extreme edition to compare, I disagree.  Tests have shown that the extreme edition of the Core 2 Duo is just a waste of money.  With the overclock ability the regular version can run every bit as fast).

As for the AMD vs Intel dual core, don't get me wrong.  My primary system is an AMD X2 3800+, but if there had been Core 2 Duo chips when I built this system, I would have been crazy to not get one.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." -Desmond Tutu

Ok guys, two things -

Firstly, a Hyperthreading CPU, while appearing to your system as 2 individual CPU's, is in fact a very funky way of making one CPU behave like two. What this means is basically the CPU time-cycles (grunt) is split equally between two virtual CPU's. Now Intel have made some really cool changes to the CPU that make the virtual CPU's run much faster than half the speed of the host CPU but a hyperthreading CPU will never rival the performance of a dual core or even SMP (multi-CPU) systems.

The second thing is that Windowx XP Pro will only utilize 2 CPU's, no more. Now, a virttual CPU 'qualifies' as a second CPU so effectively if you had a machine with 2 Hyperthreading CPU's in it you would not be able to make use of all 4 virtual CPU's in XP. I know that MS are addressing this so that virtual CPU's are not classed the same is physical CPU's. How far they are I don't know but the new code may well be included in Vista.

My 2c as usual.

 

Quote - I took a look at Micro$oft to see what they have to say. Basically here's a quote of how their licensing works.

*For most currently shipping Microsoft software with processor limits, each processor counts as a single processor regardless of the number of cores and/or threads that the processor contains. For example, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition can be used on a four-processor system, whether the processors in the system are single-core, hyperthreaded, or multicore.

This would indicate that there is a difference between the Intel Quad Core and the AMD Quad Core. The Intel is 4 cores on one physical chip but the AMD is 2 dual cores on 2 chips. From an OS standpoint you should be able to run 8 Intel cores (on 2 chips) but only 4 AMD cores (also on 2 chips).

 

Nope urbanarmitage marvo was right on the money with this above quote (I was wrong in my frist post, I also thought you needed a server os to see four cores).  Doing some more digging in articles has born out exactly was marvo said.  The quad core chip from intel is seen by the OS as a single chip. 

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." -Desmond Tutu

The Intel E6600 is 2.4GHz x2, has 32k+32k of level 1 cache, and 4mb of level 2 cache.
The Intel QX6700 is 2.66Ghz x4, has 64k+64k of level 1 cache, and 8mb of level 2 cache.  They are really, really not the same animal at all.  

Also note that if you can get the OEM version of the chip you should do so and save yourself a couple of hundred bucks - when you buy the retail version, you're mostly paying extra for the fan , which is trash.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2573616&sku=CP2-DUO-QX6700

In cases where all of your applications' instructions will entirely fit in L1 and L2 cache where appropriate, then having gobs more will not be of great benefit; but it really does make an enormous difference in some sitations.  Also throwing another two cores at your app, if the app can take advantage of it, will be a pretty much linear improvement in speed for the really serious stuff e.g. Vue or 3ds Max. 

Consider one set of benchmarks:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp

The numbers pretty much speak for themselves, really, although that is only one benchmarker.  Do you sit and stare at your machine(s) while rendering is going on?  how much money is it worth to you to reduce the time you spend sitting and staring?  the answer won't be the same for everybody.
Filter out the 3dmark stats and the like, which are as much about graphics card, and look at the 3dsmax and povray numbers.

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Quote - ...      hmm, I'm not serious OR professional, but what the hell, it's Christmas.  I'll go ahead and spring for two of em, that'd be nice.

 

I take that back, I'm not gonna do that, that's a little too much risk for me.  It's not so much the money as the fact that it's a brand new card, I've never touched SLI before now, and I have no idea exactly how helpful that would be to stack two graphics cards into something like Poser or Vue, in exchange for some amount of risk of stability problems.  Definitely gonna go with one though.

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SLI would bring you exactly nothing in Poser and Vue :)

I don't know about that, considering how low my FPS drops in viewport (typically in the >10 range with 4 or 5 figures in a scene) but I don't think it's a good risk to take right now, that's all.

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SLI is essentially a gaming technology, and you need a software profile optimized for an application to make it work really well. There are none for Poser nor Vue. Plus, in the case of many Poser figures loaded at the same time the burden is also very much on the CPU. I tested many 3D content creation apps on SLI systems, it was always extremely disappointing. 

But when you play on a high res monitor (1920 x 1200 and above) with heavy games like Oblivion or FEAR, now that's another story of course, SLI (or Crossfire) is great.

Well, I do look forward to a solid FPS gain in viewport going to the bigger card, at least :)  Just waiting on my paycheck to be delivered before I throw the order out there.

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Although I don't have P7 as of yet (but they said it shipped!), I just had upgraded my computer from a 3.0 HT P4 to a 2.66 Core 2 Duo processor with new mother board.  In my other 3D applications, the speed increase in rendering an image is unbelievable.  A can render a 4000 x 4000 pixel image in Carrara and Daz Studio that would have taken all night long to render in about 10-20 minutes.  The savings in electric use alone should pay for the price of my upgrade, not to mention I can get to work post-processing my renders the save evening instead of having to wait till the next day.

I wanted the Quad processor, but it was out of my reach price wise right now.  In the future I'm sure they'll drop in price.

Thanks for all the great information in here.  

A few more thoughts and questions.

First and most basic.  I thought when they said for example core 2 quad.  That meant 2 quad core cpus so 8 cores total.  That is the "2" meant 2 cpus and the quad or duo meant number of cores per cpu.  Is that correct? 

so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they

a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

My other questions involve doing the pre render work in poser.  I will post my understandings/suspicions so anyone can jump in if they are incorrect.   

1)If my  machine is slow loading objects figures or Pz3s the bottleneck is most likely due to a slow hard drive.

2)if my machine is slow posing figures and moving through a keyframe timeline then my video card is most likely the biggest bottleneck. 

The next set of questions deals with whether you woudl be better off with one big machine with 2 quad cpus (8 cores) or say 2 machines with 2 duo cors renderfarmed (with 8 cores.) 

3) Is it an advantage if you have the one machine with say 4 gig or ram (assumign a of course a 64bit system) instead of say one duo core with 3 gig and the second with one gig?  For example, if you are rendering a large scene will the machine with only one gig potentially start swapping off the hard drive slowing the rendering process down?  Any other ideas? 

Quote - Well, it depends on a lot of things e.g. what display mode you run Poser in and are comfortable with, what screen resolution you run, and how complex the scene is in Poser that you are trying to display.  ...
On the other hand when you have a million vertices in the viewport (say three V3/M3 characters and hair and various props and clothes) and have shading/texturing on (the last button in preview options) to get a more accurate preview, your 32MB card likely can't show you more than one V3/M3 character with their full textures (does it?) and you're likely running in 800x600 with 16 bit color, so you're really not seeing the texture the way it will look when someone else in higher color resolution sees it.....

 

When I add textures and clothes the image looks white like a ghost.  Daz studio gives me a better preview closer to what I will see on the actual render than poser does.   Will this change if I get a better video card?

I too have some lag between my mouse movements and what happens on screen.  I run at 1024x768. 32 bit colors 

All in all I would mainly like to improve the performance of the pre-render work.  That seems like its all driven by video card and hard drive.  The harddrives you can't do that much about (you can go scssi but that doesn't buy that much more for the price) but the video cards you can right?   
 Like you say I don't stare at the screen while waiting for a render - especially if its an animation, So the pre render performance is as important if not more so.

Am I right to say the pre render performance has little to do with the cpu (with in reason I'm not saying to put somethign less than a pentium 3 in or anything) and is mainly based on video card?

Quote - so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

QX6700 is 4 cores.  Everything else in the list including the AMD chip is 2 cores.  The names are confusing (and probably not by accident).  Try to get familiar with the specs to go along with the name, there is not a good pattern to predict what a chip is by deciphering the number on it.

Quote - 1)If my  machine is slow loading objects figures or Pz3s the bottleneck is most likely due to a slow hard drive.

I would say more along the lines of slow or insufficient memory and slow controller architecture; modern hard drives really don't vary terribly much in speed.  Basically all new hard disks are 7200rpm and have roughly the same performance characteristics unless you go VERY cheap or VERY expensive.  It is useful to have 1-2GB of memory even under Windows XP 32bit.

Quote - 2)if my machine is slow posing figures and moving through a keyframe timeline then my video card is most likely the biggest bottleneck. 

Do you see your hard disk light coming on a lot while you work?  then you are low on memory, and a faster video card may not help you.  but generally yeah, a video card helps viewport performance out a lot, because that is all OpenGL.  Processor also has a big impact as Louguet pointed out (OpenGL is a partnered software/hardware graphics engine).

Quote - The next set of questions deals with whether you woudl be better off with one big machine with 2 quad cpus (8 cores) or say 2 machines with 2 duo cors renderfarmed (with 8 cores.)

You would be better off rendering your work in another application regardless of hardware; just this morning I rendered a scene in Poser (or I should say, tried to) with two figures, hair, a nonreflective floor, and a reflective opaque background  (basically a mirror) at manual minimum settings except for 1 raytrace bounce.  Two hours !!!! later, it was about 8% done.  Rendered the same scene in Vue on the same hardware, done in about 6 minutes.

I have no opinion on renderfarming because I've no experience with it.

Quote - 3) Is it an advantage if you have the one machine with say 4 gig or ram (assumign a of course a 64bit system) instead of say one duo core with 3 gig and the second with one gig?  For example, if you are rendering a large scene will the machine with only one gig potentially start swapping off the hard drive slowing the rendering process down?  Any other ideas?

 

With a 64bit OS I would consider 4GB the minimum, really.  If you are staying with 1GB then what's the point in upgrading the OS at all?  That's the big advantage, no practical limit to memory.  I'll be going with either 4 or 8GB (if I can get the ASUS board I have in mind to take 8GB).

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Quote - When I add textures and clothes the image looks white like a ghost.  Daz studio gives me a better preview closer to what I will see on the actual render than poser does.   Will this change if I get a better video card?

for certain, but it won't happen with your laptop... 

Quote - All in all I would mainly like to improve the performance of the pre-render work.  That seems like its all driven by video card and hard drive.  The harddrives you can't do that much about (you can go scssi but that doesn't buy that much more for the price) but the video cards you can right?    .... Am I right to say the pre render performance has little to do with the cpu (with in reason I'm not saying to put somethign less than a pentium 3 in or anything) and is mainly based on video card?

 

Naw, as Louguet said it is very much a mixture of memory, CPU and Graphics card; if you have old tech in any one slot then it will only hurt the other two.  Hard disk should rarely enter into it, that is only an issue if you do not have enough memory to load and work with the entire frame at once (and that's very bad).

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Quote - > Quote - so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

QX6700 is 4 cores.  Everything else in the list including the AMD chip is 2 cores.  The names are confusing (and probably not by accident).  Try to get familiar with the specs to go along with the name, there is not a good pattern to predict what a chip is by deciphering the number on it.

 

Thansk for the responses.  I believe they do have motherboards that will take two quad cores(8 core total) or two duo cores(four cores total).  It seems no one has tested an 8 core machine.  I wonder how the memory will be handled for such a machine in rendering.  If you have a very complex scene that requires more than 2 gig of ram will each core need its own 2+gig before ahrd drive swapping occurs?    In that case you would need 16 gig total.  If its animation could the memory possibly keep track of many things that are the same in each scene being rendered?   In other words lets say you start rendering 8 completely different but equally large scenes.  Would that require as more memory than rendering 8 images of an animation where the scene itself is jsut as large but each frame only involves a small change from eachother.

I wish we could see actual tests of these processors out with 2 of the duo core cpus(four cores one machine) and 2 of the quad core cpus(8 cores one machine).

BTW: Another palce to see testing is www.anandtech.com  

Quote - > Quote - All in all I would mainly like to improve the performance of the pre-render work.  That seems like its all driven by video card and hard drive.  The harddrives you can't do that much about (you can go scssi but that doesn't buy that much more for the price) but the video cards you can right?    .... Am I right to say the pre render performance has little to do with the cpu (with in reason I'm not saying to put somethign less than a pentium 3 in or anything) and is mainly based on video card?

 

Naw, as Louguet said it is very much a mixture of memory, CPU and Graphics card; if you have old tech in any one slot then it will only hurt the other two.  Hard disk should rarely enter into it, that is only an issue if you do not have enough memory to load and work with the entire frame at once (and that's very bad).

And here, at the pre render stage, it is probably only using one core of your cpu.  If thats the case then perhaps a higher clocked single or duo core may give better performance than a lower clocked quad core.  

On memory, I think Louguet was saying that as long as you have enough that is all that matters.  Also I think he may have only been refering to render speed and not pre render performance.  I could be wrong though.

Poser can only utilize up to 4 cores.  If you check out Intels website it explains it better there, but a Core 2 Duo is a single CPU chip set  that has 2 processors built together so that the computer sees 2 CPUs.  The Quad Duo is simply 2 Core 2 Duo chips--so the computer and software see 4 CPUs.  Intel hasn't developed the architecture yet (though they are working on it) to build the 4 cores into one chipset.  Last years Dual Core Intel processors were simply 2 CPUs, independent entities working together, but not built together like they are now.  Graphics programs are the only software that really seems to be utilizing multi-processors, though it will have real performance value for the gaming industry in the future.    I don't know about AMD--but after a bad Athalon experience in the past I tend to try to avoid AMD processors and mother boards.  My laptop does have an AMD processor that seems to be decent, but I had a friend had a semprom AMD processor and it took a dump on him only a few weeks after he'd purchased it.

Funny how folks are, Tomsde had a bad experience with AMD  and I had bad experiences with Intel... LOL!!  Intel needs to do something soon cause that 3% loss they are anticipating for 2006 don't look so good.

 

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Quote - > Quote - > Quote - so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

Core = 32 bit
Core 2 = 64 bit

I believe that is the biggest difference bet the two chips. Also Core Duo is dual core. Core Solo is single core. Core 2's comes in Dual Core and Quad Core configurations.

I use a Quad and love it. I render things about twice as fast as my OC'd 6700: very helpful for heavy renders (I use Cinema and Maya). 

Here's a chart, (from Tom's Hardware), comparing different multithreaded render times...Intel Quad pretty much leaves every other processor in the dust. 

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=604&model2=465&chart=188

If you have the means, I highly recommend it :)

Quote - Core = 32 bit
Core 2 = 64 bit

 

Thank you that clears allot up for me.  Woudln't you know techies would decide to confuse people by having "2"="64 bit" in thier lingo.  Yes I do see that 64 is 2xs 32 and they probably no longer sell 16 bit processors,(.5 processors??) but core 64 would be the obvious choice for someon who says what they mean. (Of course then they would say what do you mean core 64?  we don't have 2,048 bit processors yet!)  

 It is certainly a good idea if your intent is to confuse people.  Espcially since  they are now selling computers with 2 cpus that each have 2 cores.  Why not refer to the "64 bit" as "2" as well?  

Whoa, I hadn't seen that, that is not correct as far as I know..  Any Intel processor that adheres to the EM64T standard (basically all of their modern ones) is 64-bit.  "Core" and "Core 2" don't enter into that. 
http://www.intel.com/performance/desktop/extreme/em64t.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM64T

from the Wikipedia article:

The following processors implement the Intel 64 architecture:

• Intel NetBurst- Intel Xeon (some models since "Nocona")
• Intel Celeron D (some models since "Prescott")
• Intel Pentium 4 (some models since "Prescott")
• Intel Pentium D
• Intel Pentium Extreme Edition
• Intel Core microarchitecture- Intel Xeon ("Woodcrest")
• Intel Core 2

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Ok so, fortunately, my rant was uncalled for in regard to core "2".  But after reading the wikipedia article on core 2 and all the different confusing code names, they had it coming. 

No problem :)  It is very irritating even if you're deeply into the stuff like I imagine myself to be, it's tough to keep track of all the goofy numbers.  Have fun with DDR, DDR2, PC6400 and all the other clutter that has grown up around simple "RAM". 

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ok so after a bunch of testing.  if you use raytracing shawdows instead of shadow maps, you will get faster results.  why?  (someone correct me if I am wrong)  the shadow map part of the rendering engine is not multithreaded (its part of the startup of the render).  Raytracing is handled in the thread, so each section gets its own processor (if you have more than one).  On a simple render with shadow map vs raytracing at .25 it was 37 to 25 seconds on an Opteron 170.  i intend to make a more informative post with pix when I am back from vacation.  all I have out here is an athlon 2800 barton (lol)!

Quote - Does anyone know if P7 will take advantage of an hyperthreading pentium 4?  Also, will P7 run on a 64 OS like vista?

 

On my HT (p4 3.2, with 4 gigs of RAM) machine it uses 100% of the CPU in Task Manager (as opposed to 50% in all previous poser versions) and you see it rendering to different areas of the image at a time.  

HOWEVER, towards the end it drops back down to 50% for some reason and basically kills any advantage.  I have timed renders with 2 and 4 threads (and also as a separate process) and the render times are IDENTICAL to it using a single thread.  :(  Major disappointment.  Not sure why this would be the case.

-Tim

P.S. Actually, having it in a seperate thread makes it a tad slower. 

Quote - I have timed renders with 2 and 4 threads (and also as a separate process) and the render times are IDENTICAL to it using a single thread.  :(  Major disappointment.  Not sure why this would be the case.

Because your CPU only has one core and it doesn't really matter if it's working one part of the image after the other or on all 2/4 parts at the same time. Window's task manager is showing you 50% because hyperthreading pretends that there is another Core ideling around that could do another 50% of the work - but there's no other core, as you just have one... So no reason to be disappointed. You'd be disappointed if you had 4 real cores and would then see them wasted by Firefly's poor multithreading approach you already witnessed with those 50% of ideling.