arkona Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 I did new test for both versions. Imager was the only running program. v7 0:04:31 v8 0:09:09 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Hi Arkona, If you carefully inspect the images, is the quality the same, or are there differences? And you have the Imager Preferences: # Processors set to Use All Processors for both v7 and v8, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsOne Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Isn't it important to list how many cores are performing the test? i should also note that my test was v7 not v8. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 Hi Paul, It is assumed that all cores are being used, and you can tell how many cores are available based on the generation of the Mac, or the specific processor being used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted December 5, 2014 Author Share Posted December 5, 2014 that's what the specs for these apple mac pro v5,1 are... it makes no sense to replace this kind of EEC RAM with faster one (and afaik it is not possible), it's part of the machine design of that time- the bottleneck would be the controllers on board, as it was the fastest at that time. however, i have never had the feeling that this would be a 'bottleneck'. even when working with 5k multilayer 32 bit photoshop files (which can take up to 30-40 gigabytes of RAM), i never have to wait for the machine... No it's not. It should really be using 1333mhz Memory... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro Since it is showing 800mhz and not 1333mhz, you have a problem with your memory, whether you realize it or not. You are leaving a good bit of performance off the table by the much slower RAM speed. I suspect 1 of 2 things happened. Either the system was upgraded using the wrong memory, or at least 1 of the memory sticks is failing or mismatched, causing them all to run at only 800mhz. If the wrong memory, I trust the OWC group tremendously with their products: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1333-memory Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 justin, thanks for bringing this to my attention! i'm using 5 mac pro's of different types here, and after setting up the machines some years ago, i never double checked the RAM speed with the system profiler anymore and this got me confused. as a matter of fact, 800 mhz was the memory speed in older mac pros's! indeed, i have 10600R 1333 mhz memory installed in all my slots, but apparently, the system is reporting it in a wrong way. i did some further tests and as i said before, all seems good here. then i found a thread on apple's forums about this issue, where it results unclear if this is because the mac pro memory manager is not reporting correctly or if it is a compatibility problem with certain brands of memory. that said, i also read that technically, the mac does never 'downclock' any RAM - it would simply report that i can't be used with that model. also, i never had any issues. all my other render applications (lightwave, maxwell, vray) work at the highest and expected speed. also, if i compare my maxwell benchwell values with other similar mac pros' in the database, they are perfectly in range. in conclusion, the FZ RZ speed should not be affected in any way by this. however, this story got my attention and i will further investigate to know more about that! cheers and thanks again for the comments. markus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisA Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 Markus, It seems that if you limit a 12 core Mac Pro with this test file to 6 cores get much better results. Give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 i did also try 6 cores but didn't get near anything reasonable... at this point i guess it's a compiling issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisA Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I am experimenting with different computers: On a Mac Pro 2 x 2.93 GHz-6 Core Intel Xeon 6 processor=12:22:35 8 processor=12:24:37 12 processor=12:39:34 24 processor=1(hrs):46:28 On a Mac mini quad i7 processors=12:19:28 On a Mac mini (late 2014) dual 2.6GHTs i5 processors (4 cores)=2(hrs):15:48 Will try with less cores on Mac mini and also see how powerbook does . FMB possibly post some different projects so we can compare speed with different standards (no radiosity/ final gather etc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 I think there's some strange threading issues going on here... at least on the OSX side. Mac Pro 2 x 3.46 Ghz 6-core Intel Xeons v7 Test - # cpu setting in Imager preferences - test time 6 - cpu - 00:19:51 12-cpu - 00:12:31 16-cpu - 00:12:41 24-cpu - 00:13:19 So setting my Mac Pro at 12 cpus, thereby disabling hyper threading gives the best results. I remember years ago, FormZ having issues with Hyper threading in OSX, but I thought that had been resolved. My next step will be to test in Windows 7, which by looking at the other results, may have much higher performance. If that's the case, we'll need to find out what's happening in OSX to make is so much slower. I feel like I should be rendering much fast than this, and that there is a threading problem in FormZ. If I compare to my other renderer, Maxwell, results, I'm consistently at the highest on OSX, often faster than the same spec Windows machine as well. Hopefully Autodessys can chime in here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisA Posted December 7, 2014 Share Posted December 7, 2014 Tech your fmz test file for 7 does not download in Safari or Firefox? They do not find file? ftp://ftp.formz.com/pub/formz/formz/fz8/Forum_Files/Render%20Time%20Test_v7.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisA Posted December 7, 2014 Share Posted December 7, 2014 These are results for v7: 12:24 Xeon Mac Pro 2 x 2.93 GHz-6 Core (24 processors) OSX 10.10.1 v7 19:25 Xeon Mac Pro 2 x 2.93 GHz-6 Core (6 processors) OSX 10.10.1 v7 vs Results v8 1(hrs):46:28 Xeon Mac Pro 2 x 2.93 GHz-6 Core (24 processors) OSX 10.10.1 v8 12:22:35 Xeon Mac Pro 2 x 2.93 GHz-6 Core (6 processors) OSX 10.10.1 v8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Hi Justin, Dennis, and Markus, Yes, in general, the RenderZone rendering is optimized for Actual cores, not Virtual cores. Therefore, if you have a 12 core computer "with hyper threading" that makes it appear as 24 cores, you will get better results with the 12 core setting on OS X. (The Virtual cores are handled better on Windows, where they can be more fully utilized.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkona Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Both Imager versions are set to use all processors. The quality of the images are almost the same (v7 5440x3520, v8 5100x3300). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Hi Dennis, That v7 file was removed and included in the main download archive, that was updated to include that file. You can download that again from here: ftp://ftp.formz.com/pub/formz/formz/fz8/Forum_Files/Performance%20Test%20files.zip Hi Arkona, That's strange, the image resolutions are different? Please download from the link above and try the tests once more. Does that give you different results? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkona Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 I did test with new files. v7 0:09:02 v8 0:09:05 Both images 5100x3300 looking almost the same, some differences in shadows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Hi Arkona, Ok, that makes a bit more sense (although we are still surprised why formZ 8 is not faster on your computer). At least the values are now in the right ballpark! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMclean Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Imager seems to have broken again... When I originally went to do the test Renderzone was not an option. I reinstalled formZ 8, then ran imager, reregistered the programs and all went well. Saw Renderzone was available, then started to run the test but much like Markus' comment (I also have the Mid2010 12 core} gave up after about and hour and had to Quit and get back to work before completing so I Force Quit. Just went back to try and do the test now and find I am back at my original state of not having Renderzone as an option. Nuking the preferences didn't do the trick so I guess I'll have to reinstall and try again. Thanks, Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 8, 2014 Share Posted December 8, 2014 Hi Doug, If you make sure you have Read / Write Preferences to the formZ Folder and enclosed items, and Repair Permissions, does that help? And with OS X, it is recommended that you set the Imager: Preferences: # Processors to the actual number of cores (and not the virtual cores). Does setting it to 12 (or even 6) help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted December 12, 2014 Share Posted December 12, 2014 maybe it would be interesting to have a modeling only benchmark to see how FZ performs with modeling tasks like booleans etc on the different machines. maybe this can be achieved by a script? as most modeling operations are single threaded, this would also avoid the issues with the unoptimized RZ engine on 6 core machines, mac pro's etc. cheers markus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AHTOH Posted December 15, 2014 Share Posted December 15, 2014 Hello Tech. I downloaded FormZ as you wrote yet RenderZone option does not show in imager. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 15, 2014 Share Posted December 15, 2014 Hi Anton, Sorry you are having trouble. Try this: Go to the Finder: Go Menu, hold down the Option key, choose Library: Preferences: autodessys: -- and delete the formZ 8 Imager folder. Next, go to Applications: Utilities: Disk Utility, choose your Hard Drive, and Repair Disk Permissions. Does that help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AHTOH Posted December 16, 2014 Share Posted December 16, 2014 Hi Anton, Sorry you are having trouble. Try this: Go to the Finder: Go Menu, hold down the Option key, choose Library: Preferences: autodessys: -- and delete the formZ 8 Imager folder. Next, go to Applications: Utilities: Disk Utility, choose your Hard Drive, and Repair Disk Permissions. Does that help? Did all you wrote still: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 Hi Anton, If you go to the Imager: Extensions Menu: Extensions Manager, is the RenderZone Plugin listed, and does it have a red checkmark to its left? Also, if you Quit the Imager, go to Applications: Utilities, run the Console, click the Clear button, then launch the Imager, can you copy and paste the contents of the Console and email it to us so we can see what that indicates? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AHTOH Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Hi Anton, If you go to the Imager: Extensions Menu: Extensions Manager, is the RenderZone Plugin listed, and does it have a red checkmark to its left? Also, if you Quit the Imager, go to Applications: Utilities, run the Console, click the Clear button, then launch the Imager, can you copy and paste the contents of the Console and email it to us so we can see what that indicates? Yes I have Render Zone on in Extensions Manager: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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