X4 Ray Tracing - Optimal CPU

[Ian Pellant]

marty,

Congratulations! You broke the minute barrier.

I am in the office running the test on a 3 year old HP workstation. It has an Intel Zeon W3505 CPU @ 2.53GHz. It's same die as the i7-9xx series. 2 physical cores; 2 thread per core. Win XP 32.

Very interesting results:

Single session: 12:54

Now the interesting bit:

2 sessions of Chief at the same time:
1 12:54
2 12:54
that is: each completed in 12:54 - same as a single session.
that is: 2 instances of Chief running on separate copies of the test plan completed the ray trace exactly as if it was one normal session of Chief. This is a doubling of productivity when many plans need to be ray traced. The computer is behaving as if it is two computers. Chief is raytracing completely within each core using 2 threads per core.

Now the decider:
4 sessions of Chief at the same time:
1 24:28
2 25:48
3 24:48
4 24:54
This indicates that each of the 2 physical CPU are sharing the 4 threads across their 2 thread capacity... so the ray tracing time per instance has doubled. Same sort of result as my old single core P4.

I closed 2 sessions and ran the remaining two simultaneously. Results:
1 12:38
2 12:36
Test confirmed. A 2 physical core Xeon processor will run the ray tracer contained within each core. (On Win XP 32bit)

However:
Tests on an Intel i7 running Win 7 64bit did not behave this way... it was back to doubling the session time per ray trace.

For rhe best performance, one may have to step up to an HP or Lenova workstation fitted with an Intel Xeon processor.... (unless the Amd FX-8150 has core behavior similar to the Xeon)

Cheers.

[marty]

Ok I said I was working but thought I would run two on my system and got 1:55 for both which is double the time.
The times you are getting are so slow I wonder why you are bothering with testing them. Its good to see the higher specs returning a noticeable improvement - so often upgrades fail to deliver.

[Doug Park]

If you are running two instances of Chief and seeing improvements it is probably because to don't have "Optimize for Ray Tracing" selected in preferences. With two cores your result is expected if you have "Optimize for Chief" selected.

Longer send to layout times are due to several things. One is that in version 10 the algorithm would give up when it couldn't figure out how to sort surfaces. This would result in a number of odd line artifact issues. The other is that the model in X4 is often quite a bit more detailed. The good news is that this operation is also multi-threaded in X4 so if you have more cores it will go faster.

So while it may take longer to send to layout you shouldn't need to spend as much time manually cleaning up elevations as in the past.

For anyone that does find issues that need to be manually cleaned up please send them to support so we can resolve them. Surprisingly few of these ever get reported. Most of the cases reported have been corrected.

[SkagitDesign]

Since you asked about two instances using an 8 core AMD (8120 at 4 GHZ).

I opened a second instance of the program and a copy of the file. Raytracing both with preference set to Raytrace it was almost exactly double the time for two. Or, exactly the same time for one, however you want to look at it.

Thanks Doug and Chief. I really appreciate how you guys are so active in making this program better.

I was happy to learn about the optimize for Chief setting. Since I can set aside one core to work, and 7 to raytrace that means I can be faster than the whimpy 6 cores machines, since my percentage of cores taken out of the loop is smaller... Hah, theoretically true, but if money were less of a factor, I would still buy full boat i7.

As far as overclocking to 5GHZ. Yeah right...Would you run your commuter car on Nitrous all the time? 4 ghz seems stable and "normal" for me. Beyond that, I would buy something else.

Here is a version of that Raytrace. I only changed it to High Quality.

4 hours... Which does not include the at least couple of hours it took shooting photons. The shadows are softer, but I don't see a great advantage other that that.

Cheers.

[Ian Pellant]

Thanks Doug,

I had forgotten to check the Ray Optimization on the Xeon. It was turned off... so turned it on an ran the tests again.

The results from the HP Workstation with Xeon processor:

***************************
Ray Trace Opimisations Off
Single session
Xeon 2.53GHz 12:56

2 simultaneous sessions
Xeon 2.53GHz 12:54
Xeon 2.53GHz 12:54

4 simultaneous sessions
Xeon 2.53GHz 24:48
Xeon 2.53GHz 25:48
Xeon 2.53GHz 24:48
Xeon 2.53GHz 24:54

***************************
Ray Trace Opimisations On
Single session
Xeon 2.53GHz 6:08

2 simultaneous sessions
Xeon 2.53GHz 12:50
Xeon 2.53GHz 12:37

Indications are that Ray Trace Optimizations are effective with a single session. Simultaneous sessions drop back to double time.

X2 Send to Layout introduced a lot of artifacts compared to CA 10. I had logged a sample plan with CA Support - typical problem was inner wall faces in external wall corners appearing in the Layout, but were not seen in the plan vector view. This has mostly been fixed in X4. (Artifacts still occur - am trying to isolate them to log for you). Increase in process time is related to reduction of redundant overlapping lines - which simplifies manual clean up... sort of... Ideally the aim is to have WYSIWYG between plan vector view and what is sent to Layout.

Cheers.

[Max]

Question to those of you truly into machine specs and premium performance.
I am a long time builder of my own machines but am tired of messing with it. At this stage all I want is a solid machine that offers mutliple options for what ever I may care to do during the life of that machine and not just running Chief.
That said, I have been interested in the all in one machines that Apple offers even though they are quite expensive (around $2600.00 for bare bones top end I-Macs).
The one I really like ended up quoting at $3668.00 with the following configuration:

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

It also comes with an optional Thunderbolt Raid external drive setup which holds 4 TB for an additional $1150.00 and 12 TB for $2500.00 (Wow!)
You have to buy a Thuderbolt cable for this option which adds yet another $50.00. (Just money is all)

Obviously this is a pipe dream as I am too conservative to ever spend the bucks for something like this which WILL be outdated in a year or so.

The specs I AM looking at:

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

This setup takes the cost back down to $2680.00 which is still extreme but doable. I figure the cost of a good box will run $1500.00. A good 27" monitor is going to be another 4 or 5 hundred so we are already at the $2000.00 mark. The difference gets me two OS systems and everything combined not to mention a great looking machine backed by an extremely reliable warranty and service package along with an out of the box setup. So I figure I will end up spending about 8 hundred more than I would on the standard machine type I have used for years.

I really thought about a laptop. The Asus machines have some really great specs and are truly desktop replacement machines. The one thing about this I don't care for is they are still laptops. I hate how the track pad can get in the way of typing (how many times have I wiped something due to an accidental brush of a finger on the trackpad). Mavis Beacon I am not! Too small for everyday use too.

Getting to my question, does anyone have any experience using an apple I-Mac machine dual booted for Windows 7? I really do like the idea of getting rid of all the various paraphernalia spread out over and under my desk. The I-Mac is a truly beautiful machine with everything all in one package. Another obvious advantage is being ready for the Chief version for Mac! (I would bet that isn't too far off). My wife has a MacBook Air and really loves it after years on Windows based laptops.

Any input?

[Ian Pellant]

Max,

I don't know if Apple support dual boot for Windows. I have no idea what CPU they use. Traditionally, Apples used Motorola, then IBM PowerPC for the CPU and never used an Intel CPU common to Windows. As a result, an emulator software was needed to provide an abstaction layer between Windows and the Apple hardware so that Windows thought it was running on Win-PC hardware. Emulators usually add overhead that can reduce performance by 10% or so.

If you can get Chief and ray tracing running on a Mac.... please report the results. I doubt that they will be quick.

What a difference a week can make.

The Intel i7 3770 was released end of April. It went on sale in Australia last week. Am ordering one for the new system. Gave up on AMD.

The i7 3770 clocks about the same base and turbo clock speeds as the i7 2600, but it is on finer wafer die which reduces power consumption and heat and reputedly runs about 10% faster than the i7 2600.

The i7 2600 chip architecture was called Sandy Bridge. The new i7 3770 chip is called Ivy Bridge. While it is socket compatible with the previous chips, it needs a BIOS upgrade and new Win 7 drivers. All of which Shuttle have... so it's a Shuttle barebones to build into.

If you want a good looking desktop look at micro-ATX form factors instead of the traditional ATX PC boxes. The Shuttle is approximately a 12 inch cube. All aluminium. Liquid cooling (which is now fanless). I have built up 4 of them. As luck would have it, the first (the one I'm sitting with now) uses an Intel P4 Prescott CPU that is the hottest (as in temperature) Intel released before cutting the speed and going multi-core in 2006. The other three Shuttles I built a year later all used AMD Athlons - which were faster and a lot cooler than the Pentium.... and if anyone didn't guess... one reason for starting this thread and asking is the AMD chip faster at ray tracing than the Intel was that in 2006/2007 the answer was in favor of AMD.

Cheers.

[lbuttery]

Macs can use Bootcamp to dual boot to Windows

I would recommend a Mac PRO if you want to run windows and chief

also be sure to get a video card that supports OpenGL
and has 1 GB+ of video ram

Lew

[dchaley217]

Question to those of you truly into machine specs and premium performance.
I am a long time builder of my own machines but am tired of messing with it. At this stage all I want is a solid machine that offers mutliple options for what ever I may care to do during the life of that machine and not just running Chief.
That said, I have been interested in the all in one machines that Apple offers even though they are quite expensive (around $2600.00 for bare bones top end I-Macs).
The one I really like ended up quoting at $3668.00 with the following configuration:

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

It also comes with an optional Thunderbolt Raid external drive setup which holds 4 TB for an additional $1150.00 and 12 TB for $2500.00 (Wow!)
You have to buy a Thuderbolt cable for this option which adds yet another $50.00. (Just money is all)

Obviously this is a pipe dream as I am too conservative to ever spend the bucks for something like this which WILL be outdated in a year or so.

The specs I AM looking at:

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

This setup takes the cost back down to $2680.00 which is still extreme but doable. I figure the cost of a good box will run $1500.00. A good 27" monitor is going to be another 4 or 5 hundred so we are already at the $2000.00 mark. The difference gets me two OS systems and everything combined not to mention a great looking machine backed by an extremely reliable warranty and service package along with an out of the box setup. So I figure I will end up spending about 8 hundred more than I would on the standard machine type I have used for years.

I really thought about a laptop. The Asus machines have some really great specs and are truly desktop replacement machines. The one thing about this I don't care for is they are still laptops. I hate how the track pad can get in the way of typing (how many times have I wiped something due to an accidental brush of a finger on the trackpad). Mavis Beacon I am not! Too small for everyday use too.

Getting to my question, does anyone have any experience using an apple I-Mac machine dual booted for Windows 7? I really do like the idea of getting rid of all the various paraphernalia spread out over and under my desk. The I-Mac is a truly beautiful machine with everything all in one package. Another obvious advantage is being ready for the Chief version for Mac! (I would bet that isn't too far off). My wife has a MacBook Air and really loves it after years on Windows based laptops.

Any input?

Max, I do have experience running Chief X4 on an iMac. Mine is a bit outdated, late model 2009 27" iMac, 8 gigs, 1 tera HD, but only 512 video ram. I run windows 7 Pro 64 bit and it runs flawlessly. I have been using this combo for a year and I am a bit surprised how well windows 7 runs on the iMac in bootcamp mode, very stable. The 27" monitor makes up for the lack of the video ram. The clarity and size makes working on prints a very pleasant experience. I am considering upgrading and I will will will be buying another Mac. I am simply waiting to see what the new upgrades bring with the Mac Pro and the new iMac models.

So if you are a Mac man do not hesitate (in my opinion).

[cbdllc]

Just built this:

Intel i7 3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz easily OC’d to 4.0 GHz on stock air cooler
32 GB CORSAIR DOMINATOR GT DDR3 1866 MHz (PC3 15000) CMT32GX3M4X1866C9
EVGA 680GTX 1084Mhz GPU, 2GB DDR5 (6208 MHz Memory Clock Speed)
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
Storage: 240GB OCZ Agility III, (2) 10k Raptors RAID 0 (striped), 1TB WD SATA III, CD/DVD:none
Corsair HX850W PSU
Fractal Design Arc Silent Insulated Case, Amazingly quiet!
(3) Noctua HF-F12 PWM fans
(1) Noctua NF-P14 FLX 750 rpm ultra low noise
W7 x64 ULT

58 sec. (@ 4.0 GHz)

[Doug Park]

The iMacs actually are a pretty good value. Some of the earlier large screen iMacs have a higher than average failure rate, but Apple has been good about fixing them.

The iMac definitely has the eye candy appeal.

They do work well in a dual boot situation.

The video card is in general a pretty decent performer for Chief, but not top of the line and you don't get the option of upgrading it later.

If you want more flexibility then the Mac Pro is the way to go.

If you want a super ray trace performer the 12 core Mac Pro is a beast. But you will be into that for more than $4000. One thing that can save money is to buy your memory separate. After market memory for a Mac is less than half what Apple charges and just as good. The Mac Pro case is well designed so putting in memory is easy.

Think of an iMac as a closed system, like a laptop. While there are a few things you can do but getting inside the case is not something that you generally want to do.

While in theory any video card is compatible with a Mac Pro from a hardware standpoint the real issue is drivers. Apple sells some higher end cards for the Mac Pro but they are pricey.

[marty]

Hi Max

A high spec machine must have a SSD drive for the main operating system in my opinion. It doesent need to be massive as it just needs to run the os and programs along with current projects - data files and older projects can be on a standard drive.

I find the speed difference noticeable particularly with elevations and sections.

[MPDesign]

So I was curious how my machine I built would do on this raytrace test.
51 seconds here,

specs
I-7 64 bit machine build

Intel 2600k 3.4ghz cpu ( overclocked 4.6ghz)
Asus Sabertooth P67 MotherBoard
G.Skill Ram16gig
Nvidia geforce gtx 560 1 gig video card
300GB WesternDigital VelociRaptor 10,000rpm sta 6.0G/bs (main harddrive)
WD Caviar Black 2TB 7200rpm backup drive
Corsair H-60 liquid cooling

[Mr Oz]

Where can this test file be found?

I did a high quality raytrace of a fairly small sized restaurant containing maybe 20 lights last week and it took over 15 hours. I have an AMD quad core 3.7ghz machine with 8g ram and a 1g Radeon graphics card.

I thought this machine would be able to breeze raytracing but maybe its not as quick as I was expecting.

[Ian Pellant]

Mr Oz,

Browse through my earliest postings on this thread - the test plan file is attached as a zip.

Cheers.