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infernoskull
01-16-2006, 10:29 PM
Yo, i bought a new computer with a dualcore athlon 3800+ an
d i was wondering how i would make sure my computer and my maya to recognise and render with both processors.

I am asking this because when i go into the task manager and look at the graphs, and there are 2 graphs signalling that there are 2 processors, but in both graphs the green lines look pretty similar when running windows.

And is there any settings or buttons i have to push in maya photoshop painter or zbrush so that it wil render with both cores?

(i have heard that you need a second licence to render with the second core in maya)

on a side note, this is for you professionals out there....
I installed windows xp pro SP2 on a single sata hard drive and it all went through the setup process and recognised the harddrive but when i got done and restarted. it just forze on the windows loading screen. I went into the bios and it didnt display the hard drive anymore. i had to restart a couple of times and then when it finally recognised the hdd i pushed f8 a whole pile of times and it let me go into safe mode (WHATS UP WITH THAT!) then i searched around google and aparently MAXTOR HDDS have driver issues with NForce motherboards. Someone on another forum recommended going into device manager and turning of ncq (command queuing) in the sata part. and this seemed to fix the boot freezes. I am worried that this will not permanently fix the problems and i might lose data. This is why i havennt installed my maya and other programs yet. HAs anyone else had these problems? and if you do have problems with it, i hope that little trick with NCQ works for you too. NOTE; I HAVE ALL DRIVERS AND WINDOWS UPDATES INSTALLED.
DreamQuest
01-16-2006, 11:02 PM
Hello

I can really only answer your first question since I am not familiar with how those graphics render engines work in detail, I am sure someone else can answer that. I did a few google searches and it seems quite a few have support for two or more cores, but you have to check what versions of the programs you have etc to be sure.

To your first question, WIN XP has native support for 2 (or more) CPU´s, so have no fear, it (win xp) will use both processor cores. The two lines that you refer to (cpu utilization) will most of the time look pretty similar, and that has to do with how the operating system balances load between the cores. In many normal desktop programs the gain of two cores is slim to none, since the cpu cores have very low utilization. While under heavy load you will however see a much better system "responsiveness" with two cores.

I can also finish with an educated guess that if the versions of the graphics programs you got supports two or more cpu´s there is a very strong chance you dont have to do anything to make them render with both cpu, but as I said I am no expert on those programs.

Its a bit late in the evening here to go into the other computer trouble you had, but if I get a few minutes over at work tomorrow ill give it a shot.

good luck
regards
T.
venomgfx
01-17-2006, 02:40 AM
First of all, i don't use Maya. As you, i have a x2 3800+ too, I hope this can help you, check in the task manager if maya.exe ? is using 100% of CPU. I use Blender, and it has a button named "Threads" for using it with dual (or more) core processors, when that button is disabled, Blender.exe use just 48%/50% and I can even render in one Blender, and work in another. When I enable the "Threads" button, the cpu usage ups to 100%, and, obviously, it renders up to 80% faster.
MadMax
01-17-2006, 02:45 AM
(i have heard that you need a second licence to render with the second core in maya)


you heard wrong.
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