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AMD Dual Core Task Manager at 50% during render......

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:51 am
by glypticmax
OK, I have the stupid question of the day.
I've been running my first render on my new dual core set up for a few mintues, and the Task Manager is showing 50% CPU useage. I'm used to seeing 100% with my single core.
Is that normal? The 50% for dual core, I mean.
It seems to be running rather nicely, and the Benchmark is 98+ rather than the 30-70 I'm used to with my single core AMD 3800+.
Cinebench shows a 1.83 speed up for rendering so I assume the CPU and well mated MOBO are playing together well.

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:59 am
by glebe digital
I get 100% with every render in MWR regardless of scene size, not so with Lightwave for example.......if your benchmarks are high maybe you shouldn't worry? :oops: :) but I'm no expert on this area.........any area come to think of it.....maybe peat cutting. :wink:

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:59 am
by Mihai
Make sure you set number of threads in render options correctly. 2 for dualcore. Or set it at 0 and it will use the maximum nr of cores available in the system.

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:14 am
by glypticmax
D'oh!!!

Thanks Mihai, I didn't do that. I have it set to uno.

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:25 am
by glypticmax
Well, something ain't right.
I made the render thread change to both 0 and 2. Task Manager shows 50% CPU useage.
During Cinebench it shows 100%.
I then went into Everest to monitor CPU useage.
During a Maxwell render I get 97-100% of Core 1 and 0-5% of Core 0.
During Cinebench I get 100% for both.
Soooo, what do I do now? Maxwell doesn't seem to be using the dual core.
Although I did get a Bench mark of 103 on that first render.

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:33 am
by glypticmax
OK, its working now.
I don't need to understand why.

Geez, it looks kinda fast.
Cool!

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:44 am
by Mihai
Gremlinz :D

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:55 am
by glypticmax
Yep, ghost in the machine.
And Benchmarks are now in the 190+ range.
:D

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:04 pm
by ricardo
Hi Larry,

How did the upgrade process go? Painless?

Ricardo

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:20 pm
by glypticmax
ricardo wrote:Hi Larry,

How did the upgrade process go? Painless?

Ricardo
Stressful to put it mildly.
My local geek shop (which lets me bring all my parts in for them to assemble) started by just changing the CPU, hoping to upgrade the BIOS. The HP/ASI MOBO wouldn't let that happen. It wouldn't even recognize the disc with the new BIOS on it. Once we got around that, it choked during the install. That was two hours of head banging.
So I got a new MOBO FED X'd in. Which required a new power supply ( I had a 470W, 20 pin and it needed a 24 pin). Then a new vid card was added as the MOBO is PCI-E not AGP like the old one.
Once the MOBO was in we noticed the wires connecting the extermal switches did not match, so the connector has to be cut into 8 pieces and hand soldered onto the appropriate wires.
I had to walk off and play with "Slur" the shop cat.
When we fired it up we got the Blue Screen of Death. So we had to do an OS backup/install hoping all my soft came up.
3 hours into the proceedure, it all fired up OK.
Rhino, C4D and Maxwell just sing. And the cat's are happy too. :)
So I didn't upgrade my CPU as much as totally rebuild the box.
The other good news is that all the left over parts will be configured into my wife's new household computer so she can play with PS-CS2 and Corel X3.
So all's well that ends well.
I hope all is well down your way.
cheers,
larry

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:48 pm
by numerobis
...btw:
Is there a reason why voxelization can't use 2 cores? Could be much quicker at the beginning... :roll: