Poser 8 is obviously multi-threaded aware, right?

It is only 32-bit, but it sure takes over all four cores during render in my Q6600 and pegs them out to 100%.

This is good. Fast.

i notice the slider under "General Preferences --> Render" can be moved out to 32 nodes.

So, how would you 'go upstream' on nodes?
Is it dubious on 32 bit since the memory restriction will wipe out any render speed gains from 8 core or more?

I am building a new rig and would love to obtain speed gains from Poser8 with more cores....even if not optimal.....since I will be upgrading to PoserPro2010 and that certainly WILL take advantage of more memory and more cores.

Any advice on how to approach a 'beyond four core' rig for Poser 8?

::::: Opera :::::

multiple multicore processors.
RAM doesn't really affect render speed once the textures etc. have loaded

I've been looking for a motherboard. Wonder if you have to go to Xeon or can you get a motherboard for two Q6600 for instance.   I will keep looking

I'm pretty sure you can get mobos which will take 2 quadcores - not something I've investigated that much though so YMMV

 More isn't always better.

Every rendering operation has parts that are not parallel (bookeeping operations, building scene database, etc.)....at some point rendering time is dominated by non-parallel tasks so there will be little further benefit from adding more processors.

...Parallel efficiency is defined as the speedup divided by the total number of processors. On an archaic computer with eight processors, typical scenes render about 7.7 times as fast as a single processor, so the efficiency is about 96%.

....As an example, thread parallelism works very well for small numbers of CPUs such as eight, but 32 CPUs only give a speedup factor of 24. Probable causes include data duplication and system transfer overhead, and the point where adding more CPUs reduces performance is quickly reached because too much time is spent on overhead.

...Finding the optimal number of (threads) is a matter of testing. Scenes with large amounts of scene data (polys) but simple and fast shaders will work better with fewer machines, while scenes with simple geometry but complex shaders such as fur and volumetric effects will work well with larger numbers of (threads). As a ballpark measure, begin with three or four (threads) and do not expect to efficiently use more than ten on a typical low speed network.

Paraphrased from the Rendering with mental ray, 3rd edition chapter 18 Thread and Network Parallelism. 

It is a myth that Windows 32-bit operating systems cannot use more that 4 gigs of memory.

Windows server software, running with 32-bits, broke the 4 gigs of RAM address space a long time ago. Microsoft kept these innovations for their business customers willing to pay top dollar for the OS and server hardware. It is expensive but there are servers out there that will run 32 cores, and enough memory to make it worth while to have 32 cores. I guess that Poser should run as well on one of these as it does under any other windows OS.

Be careful about getting a mother board designed to run server OSes. It might not fit into a standard case. These mother boards need a lot of power.

Apparently, SM believes that multiple cores will be the near future of computer evolution, not 64-bit OSes and more memory.

LMK

yes I would not be inclinded to go over 8 on this rig. Thanks for the info it makes sense.

My intuition is that it was easier to make it Multi-threaded than to re-code the thing in 64-bit.

In my case my ambition at this time is modest. I have a full system with a dead motherboard that is not on warantee. Intel Core2 Quad6600 and 8 GIG RAM already in hand plus cards and drives etc.

I'd love to find a motherboard that would be under, say, $300 that simply would take a second Q6600. The power supply is 1000 watts so that should be okay. This would be a significant bounce up for not much money to 8 core.

::::: Opera :::::

I tried several different Google searches, but I cannot find a dual q6600 motherboard. I suspect something will be developed. There are just too many of us that would buy something like that. If you spot a motherboard for quad-core processors that has more than four memory slots let us know.

As has been abundantly pointed out, there are many more computers with dual or quad cores that run a 32-bit operating system than a 64-bit one. But, there are far less computers with 32 cores upon which Poser is likely to be installed than there are intalled 64-bit computers.

Seeing that the software for 64-bit rendering is already written (which still allows rendering with a 32-bit OS), the real question is why not have both in Poser 8? As far as compiling all of Poser as a 64-bit application, I don't expect that for years.

LMK