Dual Processors

[aloysius1001]

Anybody using dual processors out there? Does it make a world of differenc or are rendering times only slightly improved?

[Ade]

Yeah good post, what tasks in Lightwave does a dual cpu mac excel at?

[Julian Johnson]

The area of Lightwave OSX that lets you directly manipulate its usage of dual processors is rendering where you can choose to use either 1, 2, 4 or 8 threads. With most duals using 4 or 8 threads will yield significantly faster render times (maybe 40% faster). However there are many things to watch - often times volumetric lighting and HVs work best with lower thread settings; specific images seem to work better with lower thread values; some effects (like baking) require a single thread. It's often a case of suck it and see.

The real question is how effectively does OSX distribute the elements of Lightwave that aren't specifically coded by Newtek for threading in OSX - Viper, OGL, Modeling operations, PFX, Motion Designer etc. I'm pretty certain that MD and PFX are not multithreaded on a Mac. For many other tasks you rarely see concurrent maximum dual processor usage (as you do when you're rendering) - you normally see both processors used so that the cumulative amount adds up to 100% i.e. 30% of one processor and 70% of another. The load is being distrubuted but not such that it utilises both processors fully.

Julian
The Mac Lightwave Resource Page
http://www.exch.demon.co.uk

[Chazz]

They're great in the respect that you can switch to a different app (like a web browser or email) and still render in the background without the machine coming to a grinding halt.

[aloysius1001]

Being able to run another App while rendering in the BG is great, but I could just switch over to my PC while my Mac renders. I'm interested in gains in productivity, if I can render faster I can do more work. Are dual processors worth the investment?

[mbaldwin]

it's noticably faster for me. I haven't any benchmarks for you, but I definitely notice a boost worth the investment in a dual processor machine.

-m.

[ingo]

Well the benchmarks are here -> http://www.blanos.com/benchmark/

[mlinde]

An additional advantage is in network rendering. A dual processor machine can be set up as two render nodes, rather than just one, maximizing the processor power of the system.