Rendering Performance

Hi

We have a customer who is running a PowerEdge 6800 and they are using AutoDesk
Viz Render and also 3DSMax, they claim that the performance of the rendering
takes 45min per frame, yet on a workstation it takes 5 min per frame.

The Server is as follows:
Windows 2003 x64 R2
4x 2.66Ghz XEON Processors
8Gb Memory

I have already advised the customer that the performance on rendering could be
down to the Graphics Card on the server, my question is.....

No, the graphics card has nothing to do with render times.  Probable areas for
this machine could be:
1.  The server is running an x64 version of Windows which does not directly
support 3DS Max prior to version 9 and there is no x64 version of Viz or
VizRender yet.   As a result, the software is running in x32 emulation mode.
2.  The services for running 3DS Max may be set to a low priority and the server
may be spending most of its time tending other processes.  Have the customer use
the task manager to see how much of the processing capacity is being used by the
rendering.
3.  The customer may be using Radiosity with the default renderer which does not
take advantage of multiple processors because it is not multi-threaded.  They
may see an improvement by switching to mentalray as a rendering engine.

not at all!  The graphics card has nothing to do with rendering. It is only 
for pumping the graphics to the screen.

Not sure what the problem could be because that server should smoke most 
workstations.  I'm not sure whether vizR takes into account multiple CPUs 
but I know Max does.  8 Gig is a bit overkill for rendering unless you are 
using Max 9 - 64 bit.  The most a 32 bit app will use is 4 Gig.

You should send them a benchmark scene that you know works and get them to 
test it on both systems.

Regards Peter
<irishdellboy> wrote in message news:5378492@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi

We have a customer who is running a PowerEdge 6800 and they are using 
AutoDesk Viz Render and also 3DSMax, they claim that the performance of the 
rendering takes 45min per frame, yet on a workstation it takes 5 min per 
frame.

The Server is as follows:
Windows 2003 x64 R2
4x 2.66Ghz XEON Processors
8Gb Memory

I have already advised the customer that the performance on rendering could 
be down to the Graphics Card on the server, my question is.....

#3 is not entirely true - Radiosity does take advantage of multiple 
processors - I have tested it personally with up to 4 processors in a system 
and Radiosity splits the process in all 4 threads, gaining time with the 
addition of processors. Rendering itself will take advantage of multiple 
processors to a lesser extent. Regathering and Adaptive Subdivision are also 
multi-processor friendly.

Of course, mental ray will be much better than Radiosity for 
multi-threading, but it doesn't mean Radiosity doesn't take advantage of it.

-Alexander

<Sgabriel> wrote in message news:5378534@discussion.autodesk.com...
No, the graphics card has nothing to do with render times.  Probable areas 
for this machine could be:
1.  The server is running an x64 version of Windows which does not directly 
support 3DS Max prior to version 9 and there is no x64 version of Viz or 
VizRender yet.   As a result, the software is running in x32 emulation mode.
2.  The services for running 3DS Max may be set to a low priority and the 
server may be spending most of its time tending other processes.  Have the 
customer use the task manager to see how much of the processing capacity is 
being used by the rendering.
3.  The customer may be using Radiosity with the default renderer which does 
not take advantage of multiple processors because it is not multi-threaded. 
They may see an improvement by switching to mentalray as a rendering engine.

Also note that Hyperthreading can in some circumstances slow rendering
down by a factor of about 2!!  Haven't figured out exactly why yet, or
if this is still true in Viz2007.

Alexander Esppeschit Bicalho - Autodesk wrote:
> 
> #3 is not entirely true - Radiosity does take advantage of multiple