X4 Ray Tracing - Optimal CPU

[virtualhuck]

FYI for those interested...

I used Ian Pellant's ray-tracing test file. I ran it after a restart but didn't close any background programs. My rendering time was 2:31. I added another CPU and with no other changes, the rendering time went to 1:16 (way faster than I expected!).

Dell Precision T5400
CPU: Xeon E5430 (2.66 GHz quad core) (now x2)
Memory: 8 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700
Hard Drive: WD Black 7200 RPM 1TB
OS: Win 7 Pro 64 bit SP1
Chief: X4

I have ordered another matched pair of CPUs in the same family (Matched Pair Intel Xeon 3.16/12/1333 SLANP Quad-Core Processor X5460), but are faster. I will let you know if that change affects rendering time. I'm also going to switch to a solid state drive (Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR240GB 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD) and will find out if that lowers the rendering time as well.

[virtualhuck]

FYI for those interested...

I used Ian Pellant's ray-tracing test file. I ran it after a restart but didn't close any background programs. My rendering time was 2:31. I added another CPU and with no other changes, the rendering time went to 1:16 (way faster than I expected!).

Dell Precision T5400
CPU: Xeon E5430 (2.66 GHz quad core) (now x2)
Memory: 8 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700
Hard Drive: WD Black 7200 RPM 1TB
OS: Win 7 Pro 64 bit SP1
Chief: X4

I have ordered another matched pair of CPUs in the same family (Matched Pair Intel Xeon 3.16/12/1333 SLANP Quad-Core Processor X5460), but are faster. I will let you know if that change affects rendering time. I'm also going to switch to a solid state drive (Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR240GB 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD) and will find out if that lowers the rendering time as well.

UPDATE
We have a few computers that started with the exact same specifications so it enables me to test different options fairly easily. Unexpectedly, changing to a high-end SSD drive from a 7200rpm optical drive did not change the rendering time in the single cpu machine (quad core). I then changed from the single Xeon E5430 (2.66 GHz quad core) to dual 3.16Ghz processors. The rendering time dropped to 1:06 from the original 2:31. On the computer that got dual 2.66Ghz processors, the speed was 1:16, so I'm assuming the 10 second speed increase was the change from 2.66 to 3.16Ghz processors.

In short, going from a single quad core processor to dual quad core processors is a great bang-for-the-buck change, going to SSD, not so much (exclusively talking about renderings here)...

I now need to update my specs in my signature line :-)

[Ian Pellant]

Hi Huckle,

Ray tracing should have very little to do with disk I/O - everything should be in memory once the ray tracer starts. Memory size should not be an issue either - use taskmanager and note that Chief X4 ruinning the ray tracer on the test plan uses very little memory (my old system running 32 bit Chief sits under a 1MB of total system memory usage when ray tracing small plans).

The Xeon processors were developments from the Pentium (sort of solid legacy chips while the newer i-Core series were "getting up to speed").

Great that you can swap a few cpus around and greatly boost performance. The multi-cpu socket mb's were designed for such a reason.

What I can glean from the web - Xeon style processors and boards have now plateaued where the latest i-7 3770 cpus single chip systems can outperform the mutli-chip boards for mid range applications. (Web and database servers are a whole different ball game). There could be a mutli-cpu vs multi-core battle yet to come...

Heavy weight engineering design software (such as ship building) usually sit on a SQL server data base. For those apps the Xeon workstations reigned supreme.

Cheers