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justinfectid
09-15-2009, 08:08 PM
hi, i am a Maya 8.0 64-bit user with windows xp x64 pro

Problem Description:
when i render a scene with the 'Maya Software' renderer all my processors and cpu cores are utilized as expected
i rendered a scene with Maya's integraded Mental Ray renderer and i noticed the render took longer than i expected
so i opened the task manager and saw that not more than 2 cores at a time were utilized (25%) thus making useless the rest ~75% of my cpu power

Questions:
i suppose Mental Ray would support multicore+multiprocessor systems, is that correct?
if yes, how can i utilize all the cores on all the processors using the integrated Mental Ray?
is there some setting i need to adjust to do this?

i can't imagine what's going wrong here
thnx for your time
Theodocious
09-16-2009, 02:19 AM
it should be using all of them out of the box, but go to your render menu set, then look at your options under "batch render" (square box). you can force your cpu number there. Also turn off intel hyperthreading if you have it enabled on your cpus. there should be an option in your BIOS setup - maya doesn't like hyperthreading.
djx
09-16-2009, 04:11 AM
maya doesn't like hyperthreading
Are you sure?

I did some tests with 2009 sp1a x64 running under windows 7 on my X5550 and mr rendered about 10 to 15% quicker with hyperthreading enabled. I could not detect any difference in maya interactively - except I got several crashes with hyperthreading disabled.

I know this is proof of nothing. Just wondering what you are basing your claim upon.

-- David
Theodocious
09-16-2009, 05:23 AM
Are you sure?

I did some tests with 2009 sp1a x64 running under windows 7 on my X5550 and mr rendered about 10 to 15% quicker with hyperthreading enabled. I could not detect any difference in maya interactively - except I got several crashes with hyperthreading disabled.

I know this is proof of nothing. Just wondering what you are basing your claim upon.

-- David

urban legend? don't remember. damn, now I gotta try it out. I always just disabled it asap.
justinfectid
09-16-2009, 12:25 PM
thank your for your time and sorry for the delay, as a new member my first 2 posts require validation
render (under MR) > batch render > [ ] > number of rendering threads to use > 1 -8
render (under MS) > batch render > [ ] > number of processors to use

doesn't seem to have any effect at all
doesn't affect either cpu or core usage on batch render process and doesn't affect either cpu or core usage on simple rendering
while it doesn't affect anything and by that i mean that changing it from 'x' to 1 doesn't use either 1 processor or 1 core instead of more, batch rendering under MR uses 4 cores instead of 2 cores used by current frame rendering under MR...

this makes no sense to me so i'll wait for autodesk's reply on this, really doubt they can explain this bcz no kind of explanation would make sense
beaker
09-17-2009, 07:47 AM
The old Hyperthreading did slow things down but the newer version of it reintroduced with the i7 procs works a lot better.
Theodocious
09-21-2009, 03:51 AM
why so it does. Myth = busted. sped up both my renders and nCloth sims. rock n roll. now if only they could multithread some of those nucleus solvers...
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09-21-2009, 03:51 AM
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