MAC PRO 8 PROCESSORS

[juli51_forum]

HI, I wanted to ask if Kray would take profit of the 8 processors of the new MAC PRO with 8 Processors.

Thanks a lot.

[Haven1000]

Short answer: Yes

Kray can utilise 128 individual processors/ cores, LW is limited at the moment to 8 in LW9 and 16 in LW9.2

If you use Kray in OSX with a 8-core you will have to run it on LW9 (under Rosetta) which is not a Universal Binary therefore there will a performance hit.

But you can use the Windows version of LW/Kray in Boot camp to fully utilise the processor performance of all the cores.

I'm currently using LW9 Mac Kray with a 8-core and I think there is a 30-40% hit on processor performance running under the Rosetta layer

[juli51_forum]

I'm also running Kray 1.7 & LW 9.0 under rosseta mode, but on a MAC pro dual core (4 trheads). Do you mean Kray 1.7 would increase performance 30%-40% on a mac with 8 cores althoug LW still running under rosseta mode? this would be great if the case.

[Haven1000]

Do you mean Kray 1.7 would increase performance 30%-40% on a mac with 8 cores althoug LW still running under rosseta mode?

No what I meant was running LW9 PPC under Rosetta would see a reduction in performance by about 30-40%, possibly more, although it is difficult to gauge as you can't run LW9.X and Kray natively on a Mac OSX booted Intel machine.

If you are using a Quad 3.0Ghz core Mac Pro you'd probably see close to a 100% increase in render performance with a 8-core.

(BTW all these figures are guesstimates but should be in the right ballpark from the research and minor test which I've done)

[juli51_forum]

Ok,.. all that means if I run my LW 9.0 & kray 1.7 on a MAC PRO 8 CORE instead in my actually MAC PRO 4 CORE , it will increase 100% , also will double the speed, and will be twice faster?

[Haven1000]

Ok,.. all that means if I run my LW 9.0 & kray 1.7 on a MAC PRO 8 CORE instead in my actually MAC PRO 4 CORE , it will increase 100% , also will double the speed, and will be twice faster?

Yes if your machine is a 3Ghz. If it is a 2Ghz or 2.66Ghz a 8-core will be even faster.

[juli51_forum]

Thanks a lot,... it's great to know

[Haven1000]

Some 8-core benchmarks for you with a current scene that I'm working on.

The scene is an internal animation with a floor area around 1000sqm, lots of glass, 80+ lights, hundreds of instances. Gi is loaded from file for all frames @ 720x404.

All tests done with LW9.0 and Kray 1.7OB2

G5 2x2Ghz, 2.5Gb ram, Mac OS 10.4.9: frame time - 1h 40min
Mac Pro 8x3Ghz, 5Gb ram, Mac OS 10.4.9 (under rosetta): frame time - 25min
Mac Pro 8x3Ghz, 2Gb ram, Win XP SP2: frame time - 9min

Makes for interesting reading

So looking forward to a Universal Binary of Kray.

[juli51_forum]

Great should work as fast as you said... boht kray and LW...