hyperthreading worth it?

[Gibberish]

It would be worth it, as you would get a 3.0 Ghz with HT for that price ;)
The 2.4-2.8c models are very overclockable so you could get much better speeds, and therefore some faster rendering, for your buck.

Even though you can take a 2.4c to 3.0ghz on the standard fan that it comes with, it would be better for stability to spend between US$10-20 for a Thermaltake fan, Volcano or a Spark.

[juntao]

well right now my P4 2.4B is running at 3.2 with a Vantec Aeroflow
:beer:

and i heard the 2.4C is just as or more overclockable as the B too....

[tonygib]

You could browse the web while rendering right now, just lower the thread priority on max to belownormal before starting the render. That way any new runing apps will have normal priority and get preferance on the CPU. Of course the the render will take longer :)

While I don't have a P4 (got dual Athlons) from everythign I read, you can expect around a 20% increase in rendering with HT. One thing to keep in mind, in case you are not aware, you will need a motherboard that supports HT (a BIOS update my do the trick) and you need to run Windows XP.

[juntao]

how do i lower the thread priority?

[tonygib]

I assume you are running NT, 2k or XP, since it doesn't work for others.

On the buttom Task Bar, right click on a blank area of the bar, ie not square with an folder or application name.

From the pop-up select Task Manager (you can also get it from the dialogue box that pops up when you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del)

On the Task Manager, select the Processes Tab.

That will list the process name for each app, service, etc that is running on the computer.

Find the one called 3dsmax.exe and right click, from that pop-up menu move to Set Priority and then select the one you want (do not use Real-Time).

Hope that helps.

[Gibberish]

Hey Tonygib, little OT but how stable are you dual Athlons?

You using MP's?
Or modded XP's?

I had dual Athlons, XP's modded to MP's, and it was damn unstable, wondering if you have encountered the same problem?

[tonygib]

Hi Gibberish,

I have two Athlon MP's, on a Tyan motherboard. There are a little slow now, got it all 2 years ago. However, given the required cooling, and my system has more then fans then I care to count, I have had no stablility problems at all. For the whole two years, it has been as stable as a rock, excluding one or two very poor low-level device drivers. Other then that I have thrown everything at it and havn't had a problem.

I expect your problems were either due to lack of cooling, or those "hacked" XP's.

[Genko3D]

Hi Tonygib! Another OT:
Are you running with ECC RAM or not? 1Gb?


Gibberish, the MSI K7D Dual Master-L mobo can run with 2 XP forcing them to behave like MPs

A friend got this mobo with 2 2600+ Athlon XPs and is just fine!

I got same mobo with 2 MPs 2000+ and manage to crash max at least once a day. I am using non-ECC RAM and that may be bad for MP's stability?..


juntao, it's true -- with HT you get 15-25% lower rendertimes, but that' all. A lot better is 2 cpus. then you have 90-100% increase in speed :)

Good luck

[tonygib]

hey,

In total I have 1GB of RAM on my dual Athlon, 2 * 256 MB DDR sticks (which I got with the system) and then latter I added a single 512 MB DDR. While all of it is Registered and ECC RAM (it had to be registered, since that was a requirement of the board, and basically all registered ram is also ECC), however, given that I do not have the ECC turned on at the BIOS settings, it can slow things down just a little and I'm not really doing anything that needs that level of checking :)

Like I said, I still personally think its the use of XP's and not MP's. At the end of the day, if things work well with XP's then great, if not then your stuffed, since AMD don't want to know about. If I had that problem I can at least hassel AMD, I payed the extra, I want it stable, and if it wasn't, then there was going to be hell to pay!!

The only other thing I can think of is the general quality of the RAM, as I said I payed a fair bit for my little system, everything was top quality stuff, including the RAM and nothing is overclocked. Sure I may be able to squeze a bit more speed from it, but in the end I want it stable and now after two years, any very small speed increase really won't make all that much differance.

[Genko3D]

Thanx for the info, Tony!

Have a nice day!!


-genko

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