Does Irender NXT support dual processors ?

Hi Al\Rich

I wonder if you could help me out here.As previously mentioned in a earlier post I have just upgraded a 64 bit vista based machine (8 gig ram) from 1 Intel xeon E5450 3.0GHz to 2 x E5450 processors.During this process I have also upgraded to windows 7 ultimate to allow for dual processor support (the machine was originally vista home premium).I have kept the 8 gig of ram and as yet not increased.

Since upgrading NXT now only shows 2 cores in threading section instead of 4 previously and however much I change the thread usage NXT is now rendering over 3 times slower than before !

The screen grab below was taken after control render on machine before upgrade :-

The next image shows current render test with 2 processors and performace monitor which clearly shows 2 cpus.I will continue with this test but at current rate will be 15 hours!

I have also tried tweaking threads - I did also upgrade NXT to latest version for dual processor test. Is there something else I should be doing in the OS ? I am aware that I might need to upgrade ram but the performance monitor does not show any bottleneck.

Very depressing result - any help appreciated

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 26, 2011 at 8:22am

Your resource monitor shows only 2 cores (the resource monitor on my dual-core, single processor machine and reports as 2 CPUs) Do you believe you should have 2 dual-core processors?

Your system information also shows just one E450 processor. Is it possible that the other processor is not enabled.

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 26, 2011 at 8:41am

Hi Al

Both processors are recognised in the bios -even if not enabled still cannot understand why NXT is much slower.This is not really my area of expertise so I may need something else to be enabled in OS.I will keep looking

Thanks for quick response - please keep the ideas coming

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Roy Hirshkowitz on March 26, 2011 at 9:09am

Your upgrade didn't work. I'm not sure why but you'll need to talk to your computer manufacturer. Not only doesn't Win7 see your second processor (there are numerous clues in the data you provided), but its addition has obviously forced the chip into a slower mode. Nothing to do with nXt here. Once you get the OS stuff sorted it will work fine.

nXt generally doesn't care if the cores are on the same chip or not. For example, I've got two 6-core chips on this box. The Processor line of the basic system screen reads:

Six Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2431 2.40 GHz (2 processors)

Yours should have the same (2 processors) indicated.

In your case, 4 cores should be present on the resource monitor-- generally listed as CPU 0 and 1 for two nodes (0 and 1)-- twelve cores are listed on mine (CPUs 0-5-- Nodes 0 and 1).

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 26, 2011 at 9:22am

Hi Al

I think I may have found the problem - for some reason in advance boot options in msconfig the core number setting was set to 2 (must have been in previous vista config) set to 0 and rebooted and now windows info panel shows to processors and NXT sees 8 cores - will give it a test - thanks

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 26, 2011 at 9:25am

good catch. That sounds much more promising

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 26, 2011 at 12:37pm

Hi Al \ Roy

Yes that seemed to sort it out - The second Xeon processor has made the computer just over twice as fast in NXT rendering terms and is now slightly out performing my current overclocked 7i machine (sample render time of 7i = 1hour 32 mins).This machine is nearly 2 years old although quite a high spec when purchased so the addition of the second CPU which cost £240 (including tax) does not seem so far to be a bad investment