Can trimming processes speed rendering?

[Johnny]

Is it possible to squeeze any significant amount of speed out of a system by shutting down all processes but those needed to run Lightwave while it renders–(Screamernet or not)?

Sometimes when I've visited Process Viewer to see what's gobbling up cycles when I have almost nothing going on, I see that some process I can't identify is the culprit. If the Mac is just sitting there blasting away at rendering and not being used for anything else, not even text editing, then other processes need not be allowed to rob cycles (?)

has anyone played with this?

J

[toby]

I've found that iTunes for example can take up 15% cpu power when idle (!) but render speed only increases by a few percent with everything off

[Beamtracer]

For anyone who hasn't used the Terminal application, launch it and type in 'top' and it'll also show you what applications are drawing on CPU power, and how much RAM each one is hogging.

It's always better to switch unnecessary apps off. I don't know why some apps draw CPU power, even though you are not actively using them and they are sitting idle.

If an application running in the background is taking up 5% of your CPU resources then that could mean the rendering of your Lightwave animation takes an hour longer.