Processor Core Usage In Chief ?

[HumbleChief]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

Graham,

 

I saw the Tom's link, thank you. One thing I can't seem to find are recent (2015) comparison.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

[TheKitchenAbode]

One way may be to compare this new configuration to your older system. Say for example the older system was 6 years old and was doing the job then the new system with 6 cores and all of the other significant upgrades will be a giant leap forward. Keep in mind that all of the additional cores will really only have an appreciable effect if your system is being maxed out. Also, the law of diminishing returns applies to computers. It can cost a ton of extra money to get that last few percentages of performance.

 

Yes maybe you may leave a few cores (6 versus 8) on the table, but this is going to happen anyways no matter how many cores you buy today. A year from now or less the next gen processors will be faster with more cores or some other architecture. It's impossible to keep-up and that's exactly what the want!!!

 

Graham

[HumbleChief]

Guess I am still struggling with the "almost double the price on the 2630 over the 2620 for 2 additional cores. Logic would dictate go for the two cheaper units now and have 12 cores and hyper-threading (24 cores) for about the same price as 8 (16).. I could always upgrade the CPU's later when the price drop in a year or so. I am virtually dead-in-the-water and two commercial project waiting to be completed.

Now this would be a great question for the tech guys at CA, and probably one that's very difficult to answer.

 

"With almost identical throughput (10,472 - 2630 8 core and 10,047 - 2620 6 core) what effect, how much of a speed increase, will the additional cores of the 2630 have on CA Ray Tracing speed?" I would really like to know.

[mrscott]

Doug,

 

What is your thought on the "EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card" vs. say the GeForce GTX980 4GB? Will Chief take advantage of the 12GB? or the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB Server Motherboard Dual Intel Socket 2011-3 with a AMD FirePro W8100 8GB Video Card

 

Thanks.

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

Now this would be a great question for the tech guys at CA, and probably one that's very difficult to answer.

 

"With almost identical throughput (10,472 - 2630 8 core and 10,047 - 2620 6 core) what effect, how much of a speed increase, will the additional cores of the 2630 have on CA Ray Tracing speed?" I would really like to know.

 

Larry - The link below shows benchmarks for a number of dual CPU configuration. There are other benchmark pages for single CPU. Comparing may provide a general idea as to the potential performance gains.

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/multi_cpu.html

 

They also have benchmarks for other components such as vid cards, memory, etc.

 

Graham

[mrscott]

Price per benchmark tends to favor the 2620, IMHO.

[HumbleChief]

Doug,

 

What is your thought on the "EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card" vs. say the GeForce GTX980 4GB? Will Chief take advantage of the 12GB? or the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB Server Motherboard Dual Intel Socket 2011-3 with a AMD FirePro W8100 8GB Video Card

 

Thanks.

 

I have a 780 and I see no appreciable slow downs with any rendering movement full shadows etc. I'm not sure I would spend much extra for the extra muscle that's designed to run the world's fastest games. Chief is pretty demanding but there's that diminishing returns thing again.

[HumbleChief]

Price per benchmark tends to favor the 2620, IMHO.

Sure does IMHO.

[HumbleChief]

Larry - The link below shows benchmarks for a number of dual CPU configuration. There are other benchmark pages for single CPU. Comparing may provide a general idea as to the potential performance gains.

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/multi_cpu.html

 

They also have benchmarks for other components such as vid cards, memory, etc.

 

Graham

Thanks Graham, Didn't know they had a dual CPU bench mark chart

[Doug_Park]

For ray tracing more cores are almost 100% utilized. 10 cores is almost twice as fast as 5 all other things being equal. This isn't typical for multiple threaded algorithms so in other areas while more cores can continue to improve performance it may not scale as well as for ray tracing. Whether the price difference between a 6 and 8 core is worthwhile depends on what you are doing.

 

My read on the Titan vs the 980 is why spend all the extra money for marginally better performance. I don't have any reason to think that card will be appreciably faster than the benchmarks indicate for Chief. But I haven't bench marked it and am unlikely to do so given the price. I would not even consider a FirePro card based on really poor experience in the past with that brand, but I do know that the FirePro cards on the Mac Pro computers work OK with Chief, but are not as fast as their price would indicate.

[HumbleChief]

VERY helpful Doug, Thanks for clarifying.

[mrscott]

Doug,

Is the FirePro and issue with the MS OS and CA or the card in general? From a price standpoint the 8100 is far less money than the Quadro4000. Both are rated well for CAD and our kind of rendering while the other Nvidia cards seam to shine mainly with gamers. I want a kick but Workstation.

[HumbleChief]

Doug,

Is the FirePro and issue with the MS OS and CA or the card in general? From a price standpoint the 8100 is far less money than the Quadro4000. Both are rated well for CAD and our kind of rendering while the other Nvidia cards seam to shine mainly with gamers. I want a kick but Workstation.

The single most important consideration with any hardware purchase is to know your software. According to the Chief tech guys Chief will utilize a gaming card better than a CAD card like the Quadro4000 - save your money - and remember 'rendering' is a term Chief uses for its 3D views which can be rotated etc. That function will utilize the video card. Also remember what Doug just posted "My read on the Titan vs the 980 is why spend all the extra money for marginally better performance."

 

Ray Tracing which in Chief terms will take the 'rendered' view and trace the light rays if you will, uses 100% CPU so the world's fastest video card won't help with Ray Tracing. The world's fastest video card won't help 'rendering' in Chief beyond a certain point either so get a really good video card and spend your savings elsewhere.

[mrscott]

Doug,

Again, thank you and the team for the constructive feedback. In Chief's humble opion, would you consider the following as the optimum performance GPU

Single or double GPU boards?

970 or 980 units ?

Memory 4, 8 or greater?

Just lookimg for what you guys would pick if you had your favorites.

Thanks again for the terrific support

[Doug_Park]

I would go for the cost effective solution. I don't actually have any favorites. I have one laptop with Intel graphics and one with an Intel/Quadro combination, a desktop with, I think an NVIDIA 750 and a Mac desktop with an ATI card (I forget the model). The 750 was a replacement for an ATI card that was giving me problems during the development of X6 that were subsequently corrected with some programming changes. That card is still in our stable of cards that we use of testing things.

 

I would never spend big bucks on a video card if there were another cheaper option available.

 

The Quadro I have was not what I would have picked, but came with the machine I wanted, which is a high end touch screen with high resolution display and really good CPU performance. But then I was looking more for a system to do development on. In fact for Chief the built-in Intel is almost as fast as the Quadro for most operations.

 

The price on the Quadro cards is not justifiable to me for several reasons.

1) Benchmarks indicate that they aren't any faster with Chief, and even on other CAD programs where they are tested I've read a number of reports over the years that cheaper gaming cards were faster.

2) We have seen many cases where these cards don't work because they have buggy drivers. Those drivers are often not updated as quickly as the gaming cards.

3) The are are really expensive.

 

As I understand the performance the Quadro cards are tuned to make old OpenGL technology fast. We have been moving away from this for years and will eventually have a fully modern OpenGL pipeline. They are also apparently quite fast in rendering wire frame models which we don't do. Although I can't imagine a wire frame model in Chief ever being anything but blindingly fast even on the slowest of gaming cards. Even when Chief was using the old OpenGL technology we never saw the performance benefits of the Quadro. Possibly because of the way we were using it.

 

The benchmarks here are generally a good guide to performance of video cards within Chief. Actual performance will almost certainly not track exactly, but I feel confident that if you buy a card from this list with a good price performance rating you will be a lot happier than if you buy the most expensive one.

 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

Personally, I would probably never spend much more than $300 on a video card. It's just not worth it to me.

[HumbleChief]

Personally, I would probably never spend much more than $300 on a video card. It's just not worth it to me.

Looking at that chart $300 will get a GTX780 or a GTX970, both plenty fast for Chief. And I don't believe that Chief utilizes SLI either so dual cards won't benefit you either.

 

There's a temptation, when the budget allows, to get more, bigger and faster no matter how the software application uses that technology. How the software uses that technology is the key.

 

Perhaps there's a Chief model large enough that requires (4) GTX Titan X's run in dual SLI but I don't think the money spent would be justified, in Chief.

 

On the other hand merely possessing the biggest and fastest of anything can be, in and of itself, quite a noble (albeit pricey) goal.

[mrscott]

I've settled on a EVGA 980 4GB. Hopefully all the components will be here mid week so I can get back to work. The Gateway i5 laptop I am currently defaulting to is subpar to say the least.

 

I'll list the components of my system in my signature and attempt some benchmark test for all you wonderful folks who helped me through this process. I can't thank you all enough for your terrific responses and expertise.

 

Much success to all of you!!!!!

[mrscott]

I can't tell you how excited I am to test a 12 Core (24 Core Hyper-threading) system out on X7. Stay tuned!

[HumbleChief]

Awesome Scott,

 

New stuff is always exciting. Run some Ray Trace comparisons from your old machine and maybe post a plan with RT times so we can bench mark.

 

What was your system cost, if you don't mind?

[mrscott]

Awesome Scott,

 

New stuff is always exciting. Run some Ray Trace comparisons from your old machine and maybe post a plan with RT times so we can bench mark.

 

What was your system cost, if you don't mind?

Larry,

The old i7 motherboard laptop crashed so there will be no rendering from there. I just completed the build today and loaded Windows 8.1 and Chief x7. Not fully operational just yet but I did perform a sample full screen high res render of a stock Chief plan and it was running about 70 seconds per pass.

[TheKitchenAbode]

It's always pretty exciting getting a custom build up and running. Lots of anticipation, especially considering the amount of research and thought that went into this.

 

I think it would be very useful if Chief had a standardized plan that we could use for testing & benchmarking. If we all had this our system results would be relevant and comparable. This could also be used as a trouble shooting tool.

 

Graham

[mrscott]

Here is where you can change the number of cores being used.

Mine now shows 12 which would indicate X7 recognized the two physical CPU (6 cores each) but when I run a raytrace, only one heats up and by only 7 degrees. The other appears to be at idle. Hum!

[HumbleChief]

My dual 6 core Xeon processor system shows 24 cores and when I Ray Trace all 24 are pegged at 100%.

 

Maybe there's a bios setting to increase cores/usage?

 

[mrscott]

Larry,

 

That would explain why when I use CPUID HWMonitor CPU1 temps don't change and CPU0 ramp up. See attached. Really weird why I cannot find an app that will report both CPU's. Do you know what your BIOS settings are, and maybe where the function you suggest might be found?

 

Thanks,

[HumbleChief]

No time right now Scott but if it were me I'd google the problem and see what fixes there are out there.

 

Here's a start.

 

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=only+1+xeon+processor+showing