Core i7 Doesnt Speed Up While Rendering

[Raudel Solis]

I have a hp Laptop works great with all the software i have no problems except while rendering in autocad.the cpu stays at 1.73 ghz although its a core i7 and its max frequency is 2.86 or 2.93 does anyone have the same problem any fixes?

[Cad64]

Looking at your render, I don't see any reason for your processor speed to increase. That scene looks very simple and basic.

What was the total render time? I'm guessing probably less than 10 seconds? There is no need for your processor to do anything really.

 

Try building something very complex, apply some highly reflective materials, enable Global Illumination & Final Gather and adjust your render settings up for very high quality. Then hit Render and watch your processor speed. I'm sure you will see a speed increase.

[Raudel Solis]

Looking at your render, I don't see any reason for your processor speed to increase. That scene looks very simple and basic.

What was the total render time? I'm guessing probably less than 10 seconds? There is no need for your processor to do anything really.

 

Try building something very complex, apply some highly reflective materials, enable Global Illumination & Final Gather and adjust your render settings up for very high quality. Then hit Render and watch your processor speed. I'm sure you will see a speed increase.

 

i rendered all of those images some at 800x600 some at 1600x900, my cpu stays at 1.73 ghz no matter what. at 1600x900 =+30 minutes

640x480 and 800x600 it takes about 15-20 minutes

Edited November 14, 2010 by Raudel Solis
added more details

[Guest]

From the Autodesk Website, about the mulit-core processors. I was just debating this with the IT guy today.

 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?linkID=9240617&id=15224826&siteID=123112

[busseynova]

So, as the article says this:

 

AutoCAD only supports multi-core technology in a couple of very specific areas of the product, including:

• 2D regeneration
  
• MentalRay rendering
  

So for more complex scenes where mental ray is employed it's worth having a multi-thread processor...

 

Is that right?

[Raudel Solis]

the only software i have that actually uses all available resources while rendering is 3ds max.

interesting right?

well make autocad use all 4 of my core I7 physical processors,

and 4 of the logical >:0 ...

 

 

why: i paid for a $1400 machine, with a core i7, i expected great things from it, and autocad, but it has failed me

[ReMark]

You got exactly what you paid for. I don't see any reason for you to be complaining.

[Bill Tillman]

I'm not someone who actually watches the CPU and/or memory useage during a rendering process but I can share your disappointment. I had some not so complex drawings that were well beyond simple but certainly far from mega-complex. My AMD64 Dual Core would take sometimes up to 2 hours to complete a render. I asked for advice here and the advice came back to increase RAM, so I took it from 768MB to 3 GB. The renders still took almost 2 hours. Then someone in this forum suggested that I run it on a "REAL" machine...quad core with at least 8 GB of RAM. They said it would reduce the render time down to only minutes maybe even as quick as 35 seconds. So I built a killer machine with an i7 quad core and 12 GB of RAM, spent about $1,300 on it. The results...the same rendering took about 45 minutes. Not much to brag about but I do like my new machine. Just wish it would get those renderings down to minutes that I was told it would do.

[Cad64]

Ummmm, I believe I told you that you would cut your render time in half, which you did, right? You went from 2 hours to 45 minutes, right? That's more than half, isn't it? So I believe you got more than what I told you.

 

This is why I'm not going to give advice on hardware anymore. I'm not going to be held responsible when the machine doesn't work magic.

[Cad64]

Here's the thread: http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?39876-How-to-Speed-Up-Rendering-Time&p=267778#post267778. And I never said you could render that scene in 35 seconds.

 

I also stated in that thread that I'm no expert in Autocad rendering and I offered to take a look at your file in Studio Max to see what kind of render time I could achieve, but you didn't take me up on my offer. I still believe that scene could be rendered in about 10 minutes in Max.

[ReMark]

If fast rendering times was your main goal then you should have invested more money. I would have suggested looking at the Thinkmate HPX QS8-2410 featuring a 2 x 8 core AMD Opteron model 6128 chipset, 2.0GHz with 8x512KB L2 cache and 12MB L3 cache. Max this out with 8x1GB PC3-10600 (1333MHz DDR3 ECC Registered) RAM. With a 500GB hard drive and one of the nVidia Quadro graphics cards expect to pay about $2900 U.S. before shipping, handling and taxes. For another $2000 you can bump this configuration up to a quad processor (4 x 8 core) system with 16x2GB PC3-10600 RAM. That should complete your renders in near record time.

[Bill Tillman]

CAD64, sorry dude I wasn't singling your advice out as bad. On the contrary your advice is one of those I value on this forum. I can't recall which post I did but I do recall someone telling me that with the right machine you can get renderings of even the most complex shapes and lighting down to less than 1 minute with a quad core and 6 GB of RAM. Like I said I like my machine, it's a real screamer. But I still have to sometimes let the rendering run while I go off to sleep and see the results in the morning.

[Cad64]

Ok, I thought you were talking about the advice that I gave you and I really couldn't understand why you were complaining. By purchasing the machine that I recommended, you cut your render times by 60%. That's a pretty huge improvement, and well worth the investment in my opinion. If someone else told you that you could render everything in under a minute, then I would like to talk to that person because that advice is unbelievable to me and he/she should not be giving people false and misleading information like that. I've been doing this for a quite a few years now, and there is no way anyone can make a blanket statement like that. Every render is different, so you can't just say, "buy a quad core machine and you can render everything in 1 minute or less". That is just blatantly false. I've done a lot of rendering, even built a render farm at work, and I've never been able to render anything in under one minute. Unless I was rendering a very small, low resolution test render. You're just not going to get presentation quality in under a minute, no matter how incredible your machine is. That person is either vastly uninformed, or they're rendering out low quality, low resolution images.

 

The machine you have is good and you should be happy with your render times. But if you still feel they're taking too long, you should start looking at your models and try to figure out ways to lighten them up and optimize your scenes. The machine can only go so fast. After that, it's up to you to build efficient models and cut out anything that might slow down the render.

[kwiaci]

So I have a question.

Does autoCAD during rendering use more CPU than RAM ? I have 4 cores and during rendering I see 4 small boxes in a window - does it means that every box is rendered by a separate core ? During rendering I have 100% usage of processor but only 45-50% of RAM (I have 8GB). More cores = faster rendering ?

[Cad64]

Yes, each box represents a core, and yes, more cores = faster rendering.

 

Rendering is primarily all CPU. The RAM is just there to store information while it's being processed. But, if you don't have enough RAM, that would slow down the rendering. 8GB is typically more than enough.

 

Your machine will only use as much RAM as is necessary during rendering. If it only needs 45-50% then that's all it's going to use.

[Raudel Solis]

im 15 and know more about hardware, hacking, reading scripts then most might believe, anyway

i dont think autocad can utilize all available resources just saying instead of running with 2 cores and lets say 2 threads to acompany the cores, it would just use 1 of each, since i dont think it can split the rendering job among other threads

[Raudel Solis]

if you want serious rendering in fast time get a 16 core machine, oh ahm try this

AUTODESK PROJECT NEON

http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/neon/

 

its a work in progress but u can use a 16 core machine to render your files

but it doesnt work with self made materials made by yourself with your own picture files

just the autocad i think

but hey

my machine render files in 45 minutes

 

and PROJECT NEON MACHINES

in 5 minutes

[Raudel Solis]

Ok, I thought you were talking about the advice that I gave you and I really couldn't understand why you were complaining. By purchasing the machine that I recommended, you cut your render times by 60%. That's a pretty huge improvement, and well worth the investment in my opinion. If someone else told you that you could render everything in under a minute, then I would like to talk to that person because that advice is unbelievable to me and he/she should not be giving people false and misleading information like that. I've been doing this for a quite a few years now, and there is no way anyone can make a blanket statement like that. Every render is different, so you can't just say, "buy a quad core machine and you can render everything in 1 minute or less". That is just blatantly false. I've done a lot of rendering, even built a render farm at work, and I've never been able to render anything in under one minute. Unless I was rendering a very small, low resolution test render. You're just not going to get presentation quality in under a minute, no matter how incredible your machine is. That person is either vastly uninformed, or they're rendering out low quality, low resolution images.

 

The machine you have is good and you should be happy with your render times. But if you still feel they're taking too long, you should start looking at your models and try to figure out ways to lighten them up and optimize your scenes. The machine can only go so fast. After that, it's up to you to build efficient models and cut out anything that might slow down the render.

THIS THREAD WAS NOT ABOUT RECOMENDATIONS

IT WAS ABOUT IMPROVING OUR CURRENTLY OWNED SYSTEMS

 

QUOTE: ?? WHY Does rendering in autocad keep my processor solid at 1.73 ghz when its max it 2.80+ghz?

[Raudel Solis]

ahm if you want to not be in much pain having your machine being utilized by rendering then set up a network render

example

 

WORK STATION ----->DISPATCH------> MAINFRAME COMPUTER / SERVER --------->HARD DRIVES/ WORK STATION

 

that way you can be working on computer while server renders

 

google autodesk network render

[Cad64]

THIS THREAD WAS NOT ABOUT RECOMENDATIONS

IT WAS ABOUT IMPROVING OUR CURRENTLY OWNED SYSTEMS

 

QUOTE: ?? WHY Does rendering in autocad keep my processor solid at 1.73 ghz when its max it 2.80+ghz?

 

I am well aware of what this thread is about, and I don't believe I was speaking to you when I wrote that, now was I?

 

I do not work for Autodesk and I was not involved in building their software. If you want the answer to that question, MAYBE YOU SHOULD CONTACT AUTODESK.