X3 Ray Trace

[Doug Park]

X3 is designed to run on multi-core systems. We have tested extensively on systems down to dual core and a little on older single core P4 systems.

Performance is tuned for newer hardware not older hardware. This means that performance on older hardware, especially P4 systems, may suffer a little. It also means that if you invest in newer hardware you should be rewarded with much better performance.

Our design goal was to make dual core or better as fast or faster than X2. I don't think we achieve that in every case but we have in many.

A quad core system or better is what I would recommend. If you can't afford a quad core system then a dual core system is a good choice.

Even though Chief will run on single core systems, these systems are not recommended.

Ray tracing in particular speeds up dramatically the more cores you have.

Ray tracing is a bit tricky to benchmark because certain settings can make a huge difference in performance so it is critical when comparing speeds to make sure you are comparing the same things.

Ray tracing is a very computationally intensive operation. Computers that we typically have available to us today can do ray traces in minutes that a decade ago would have taken hours or days.

I'm curious to see how X3 runs on 6 and 12 core systems.