how much depends rendering on cpu

pasuka

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I work in 3ds max 9 and i'm interesting to render faster. if anyone knows please answer: how much depends rendering on cpu, ram and video card in %? for example cpu-70%; ram-20%; video-10%
 

m25

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I work in 3ds max 9 and i'm interesting to render faster. if anyone knows please answer: how much depends rendering on cpu, ram and video card in %? for example cpu-70%; ram-20%; video-10%
I do a lot of 3D rendering and have done a lot of rendering benchmarks on different PCs with different setups (different RAM with same CPU, same CPU, different chipset etc) and I can tell you, it's roughly 95% CPU, 5% RAM and chipset and 0% video card. this is because rendering is not very bandwidth limited/dependent (that's why the chipset and RAM only weight at most 5%) and the video card, in contrast with what happens in games, it's totally out of the equation because 3D software rendering is a CPU only process and the video card merely displays it's progress on the screen. As you see, the CPU can not be bottlenecked by anything else, that's why your rendering power will increase more or less proportionally with the power of your CPU.
 

pasuka

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I work in 3ds max 9 and i'm interesting to render faster. if anyone knows please answer: how much depends rendering on cpu, ram and video card in %? for example cpu-70%; ram-20%; video-10%
I do a lot of 3D rendering and have done a lot of rendering benchmarks on different PCs with different setups (different RAM with same CPU, same CPU, different chipset etc) and I can tell you, it's roughly 95% CPU, 5% RAM and chipset and 0% video card. this is because rendering is not very bandwidth limited/dependent (that's why the chipset and RAM only weight at most 5%) and the video card, in contrast with what happens in games, it's totally out of the equation because 3D software rendering is a CPU only process and the video card merely displays it's progress on the screen. As you see, the CPU can not be bottlenecked by anything else, that's why your rendering power will increase more or less proportionally with the power of your CPU.
thank u very much. your advice is very helpful for me
 

m25

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Well, this rule is pretty precise, however, with RAM and chipset, I was meaning their quality and speed but if you have make a photorealistic rendering of a lake side, with a dozen of real 3D trees and particle generated grass; just think of how much RAM will take to store all that stuff before the CPU even starts processing so bare in mind that for this sort of things you'd better have something like 4G+ of RAM and a 64bit system and 3D software to fully utilize it.
This is the only way how RAM can bottleneck the CPU and it has only happened me a couple of times; a lot of stuff swapped on the HD because I only have 1G of RAM.
 

raytracer06

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3D rendering depends essentially on your CPU, and the amount of RAM you have...

3ds max has always ben designed to handle multiple CPUs, so you'll see a great improvement with a dual or even quad-core CPU

You'll need at least 1GB RAM, but 2 GB is better, since Hi-res renderings use a lot of ram, especially when rendering with Mental Ray (GI+FG enabled)
And even when you're not rendering, 2GB is better, because when I work with max, I also often have Photoshop running, to create textures... more ram will help reduce the use of the swap file, so it will run smoothly. RAM speed, on the other side, doesn't really matter

Videocard doesn't really matter... 3dsmax can run fine with a TNT2... but a minimum is required if you wanna work with hi-polygon meshes. You should at least avoid integrated GPUs...

There are also issues with the x600/x300 generation of videocards... when in OpenGL mode, 3dsmax crashes when using Reactor's Preview... directX mode isn't much better since random issues sometimes happen (misplaced pivot points, etc...). I don't know if it also happens with other ATI cards.
To be sure it works fine, I would buy a low to midrange nVidia card (7300GT to 8500GT)

There also are professionnal graphics cards, nV Quadro and ATI FireGL, that provide better quality in the viewport, and that can accelerate renderings with some engines like nVidia Gelato Pro. Unfortunately, neither 3dsmax's scanline renderer nor Mental Ray can fully use those cards... so it is a waste of money for the average user.
 

m25

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Well, if he is really serious about rendering and has a budget around $2000, I would advice him to wait until Aug-Sept to see how AMD's K10s compare with Intel's quads and then get a dual socket mobo with like 8G of RAM.
 

halbhh

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That would be some serious power. I'm curious for your own self about how much time would you save during a workday compared to the good system I presume you already have? I bet you often use time while waiting for one thing to complete doing something else, so it's a question of whether that 2nd task is important and effiiciently done I suppose, but maybe you daydream (which might be valuable, heh heh).
 

m25

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That would be some serious power. I'm curious for your own self about how much time would you save during a workday compared to the good system I presume you already have? I bet you often use time while waiting for one thing to complete doing something else, so it's a question of whether that 2nd task is important and effiiciently done I suppose, but maybe you daydream (which might be valuable, heh heh).
Well, this dual core for me was really a boost compared to the 3000+ I had before and now I can render up to 2-3 min walkthroughs in 20, 15 or even 10 hours if the interior has little reflecting and transparent surfaces. Multitasking is good, even when I'm rendering with both cores I can smoothly edit pictures or draw plans but I can't work on the same app I am rendering with because these kind of applications often use critical resources exclusively.
The next system I get will also be built with good OC-ing in mind, so I'd get a 3.5X boost by a 3.5GHz Intel quad. I'll see if a 2.8-3.0GHz Agena X4 will be able to give me 4X the power of my current setup and for going dual socket it's 8X but I don't think I'll have the money to do it. I plan to use that power for rendering real photorealistic walkthroughs, which look much better than occlusion or radiosity compromises but actually take 5x-10x more to render.
 
Workstation mobos typically are sparse on OC options - one reason of many is having to work across multiple sockets and cores and the ECC RAM.

3dsmax provides for distributed rendering over a LAN and there are encoding programs with the same functionality. Good reason to 'spec' dual giga-lan on your next motherboard . . .
 

m25

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I don't have the option of a LAN where I live and even if I had it, it would take more than 8 Pentium4s/Athlon64s to match a Core2/K10 quad, that's why I awill be looking more at a beefy single socket mobo to OC of better a dual socket solution with no OC-ing.
 
You have an Athlon64 X2 4200+ @ 2.45GHz rig
:)

That's two cores right there . . . .

I would not anticipate more than a 40-50% increase per additional socket/core on a comparable level. And I would think OCing a single socket mobo may seriously degrade the life expectancy of your *desktop* hardware.

But that's just my opinion . . .
 

raytracer06

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And I would think OCing a single socket mobo may seriously degrade the life expectancy of your *desktop* hardware

OCing can make your rendering faster, but you should be very careful to the computer's stability... the most important is always to complete the render, isn't it ?
 

m25

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And I would think OCing a single socket mobo may seriously degrade the life expectancy of your *desktop* hardware

OCing can make your rendering faster, but you should be very careful to the computer's stability... the most important is always to complete the render, isn't it ?
There's nothing dangerous in what I call 'safe' OC-ing; that is OC-ing to the highest stock speed of the series with stock voltage, so if you can OC say, your E6300 to 2.66 GHz (E6700 level) without touching the voltage, most probably it won't last you less than an E6700 will. It's only when your voltage has to be increased before this frequency or when you go considerably above the highest stock frequency that you have stability or life span problems.
 

dsidious

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I work in 3ds max 9 and i'm interesting to render faster. if anyone knows please answer: how much depends rendering on cpu, ram and video card in %? for example cpu-70%; ram-20%; video-10%

RAM matters a lot, because if you don't have enough of it the program will use virtual memory i.e. swap on the hard disk and the program will be very slow or even crash. This is true with any CPU.

If you do have enough RAM, the CPU decides how fast rendering is. Apparently 3ds Max 9 is smart enough to use a quad-core processor properly, so consider getting a Q6600. The QX6700 is a bit better but much more expensive.

I understand that 3ds Max 9 doesn't work on Vista, by the way:

3ds Max 9 on Vista
 

raytracer06

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I understand that 3ds Max 9 doesn't work on Vista, by the way:

3ds Max 9 on Vista

Funny... max8 works on Vista, but max9 doesn't...
OK, max8 is horribly slow on Vista... but at least it doesn't crash

There's nothing dangerous in what I call 'safe' OC-ing; that is OC-ing to the highest stock speed of the series with stock voltage, so if you can OC say, your E6300 to 2.66 GHz (E6700 level) without touching the voltage, most probably it won't last you less than an E6700 will. It's only when your voltage has to be increased before this frequency or when you go considerably above the highest stock frequency that you have stability or life span problems.

I agree with what you call a "safe" OC-ing...
I'm sure I can get a bit more performance from my E6300, without making my computer unstable... but I'll have to get a new mobo first... the 775 vsta is not really made for OC-ing...
 

SirRaulo

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it's roughly 95% CPU, 5% RAM and chipset and 0% video card.

really? i thought it's all about video card. I mean, probably around 40%-CPU, 60% video card. Or is it really depends on the application. Why is it then that a quadroFX/ FireGL are soooo expensive? i'm jst a little bit confused. :oops:

another question:
-wld you recommend a raid 0 setup for rendering? and what would be the ideal partition.
-my parts list, is it ok?pls comment.. i delayed buying it coz im not really sure if those were fine.

intel e6600
2x 160g 7200 sata WD(RAID 0) and 1x250g 7200 sata WD(important files) .
2x1gig corsair
ATI X1950Pro 512ddr3
intel P965(ICH8-R) mboard(havn't decided yet on brand)
CASING=ASUS AC TA881(no psu, havn't seen it yet but nicely fits on my budget :lol: )
PSU=is there a good $60+ power supply?

*stock speed only.
 

NaDa

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Yes I completly agree 95% CPU! 5% memorz and 0% video card.

That is of course if you are using mental ray or vray or some other ray.

Best thing to speed up rendering is build a cheap render farm.

Take an E4300 + oc mobo (the cheaper the better) + 512MB DDR2 + HDD as small as you can only about 2-3GB you'll need. Then oc your rig to 3GHz.
After this is over go to the same shop and buy another 2 of these and a 5 port gigabit switch (these are very cheap). Connect these 3 render slaves with your main rig and you should have 8 cores for mental rays 8 buckets.
Render with DBR!
 

barturtle

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I use 3ds Max 8, and will be upgrading to 9 soon. Here's my setup

e6400
4 GB ram
Foxconn G965 MB with ICH8R
7300GS 256MB (stand-in till we see what's up with the midrange DX10)
Dual Boot XP/Vista Ultimate (32 currently, but soon to go 64bit)
Raid 1 data drives (2x 500gb)
160gb OS/app drive

Make sure whatever case you get has excellent cooling...renders take a long time...lots of heat to vent.

I'd add more memory to your setup, even downgrade the graphics if you have to.

I wouldn't do a raid 0...you do want to actually keep the data you produce, right? Don't think it would add much to the performance for this type of work anway.
 

SirRaulo

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actually, im planning to save all "finalized" data to the 250g drive. To minimize
the impact of a possible worst case scenario, i will create an image of the
programs installed on raid 0 on a regular basis using acronis truimage. isn't it an ideal setup? btw, except for data security isn't raid 1 much slower compared to raid 0 in overall i/o performance?
 

yadge

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really? i thought it's all about video card. I mean, probably around 40%-CPU, 60% video card. Or is it really depends on the application. Why is it then that a quadroFX/ FireGL are soooo expensive? i'm jst a little bit confused.

I am also curious about this. What are the advantages of having a quadro type videocard then? I thought they were more for video editing and stuff. I don't do any video editing myself, so I just don't know that much about it.
 

raytracer06

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Quadros provide more display options in 3dsmax's viewport, like enhanced transparency, better lighting, huge textures, etc... the real time viewport becomes much closer to the final result (and it's display is infinitely faster than with a standard 3D card). Those cards are meant to work with the MaxTreme driver(in openGL mode with max 8 & previous, D3D with max9)

So, their main advantage is that you can handle very complex scenes without any slowdown...

But it doesn't accelerate your rendering, except with the nVidia Gelato Pro renderer.

so the best for the OP is to stick with a "normal" GPU...
 

m25

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Quadros provide more display options in 3dsmax's viewport, like enhanced transparency, better lighting, huge textures, etc... the real time viewport becomes much closer to the final result (and it's display is infinitely faster than with a standard 3D card). Those cards are meant to work with the MaxTreme driver(in openGL mode with max 8 & previous, D3D with max9)

So, their main advantage is that you can handle very complex scenes without any slowdown...

But it doesn't accelerate your rendering, except with the nVidia Gelato Pro renderer.

so the best for the OP is to stick with a "normal" GPU...
Does this thing work with ANY external renderer?! By how much does Gelato speed up rendering?
 

barturtle

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I like to have my working data backed up to, as drives tend to die at the least helpful moments. As far as programs, well I tend to own those on disks, so while a reinstall in not fun I'm not worried about losing those, it's the data I created that is valuable to me.

Yes RAID 1 is slower than RAID 0...but the data I produce is worth too much to risk it.
 

raytracer06

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Does this thing work with ANY external renderer?! By how much does Gelato speed up rendering?

Well... I've never heard of any renderer except Gelato that can use the GPU's processing power.

about Gelato's speed, I've just tried the standard version, that can work with geforce video cards... but configuring it is a real nightmare, and it's not very well documented... on top of that, the Amaretto plugin, that connects 3dsmax and Gelato, is still a beta version... seems that the maya plugin is more more advanced.
Anyway, gelato seems to be made for realistic rendering, with GI and caustics, just like Mental Ray, and it is certain that the GPU's processing power must be a real plus... but it's not easy to compare renderers, since each one has its own parameters...

But one thing is sure : nV and ATI are working on new ways to use their GPUs, and things like nVidia's CUDA might, in the future, allow apps like max to exploit GPUs for rendering... I can't wait for a GPU-accelerated Mental Ray !