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Hi
I am experiencing a strange varition in render times depending on which computer I use. I own two quadcore machines and a dualcore laptop. My quadcores render with identical times using Fprime, however if I render with Kray one is over 3times faster than the other! My much slower dualcore laptop renders faster than one of my quadcore machines. I am finding it very baffling and can only guess that one quadcore has a strange setup which means it is not optimised for Kray use. If any one knows anything about this or can offer any information It would be much appreciated!

That is strange. Are you using exactly the same scene?

What are other computer specifications?

I am rendering an animation. I have tried rendering the same frame on all machines, one zaps through in 3 mins 30 and the other takes 12.20. My dual core laptop take 7mins 40!

Specs of machines are:


Slow quad core one: 4 x2.4ghz 4GB ram 32 bit win xp ATI FIRE GL 7200 graphics rendertime 12.20

Fast quad core: 4 x 2.4Ghz overclocked to 3.2Ghz 6Gb Ram 64 bit win XP ATI Radeon 3800 Graphics rendertime 3.30

Laptop: 2 x 2 Ghz 1.5Gb Ramwin XP 32bit. rendertime 7.40

Hmm I can't see anything strange from your PC spec.

Could you share scene so I can test it on my quad?

It is almost as if it is only using one core. Is there a way ofchecking if all 4 threads are working??

Multithreading settings? Detection?

is that a command for the tailer commands?

solidwave wrote:is that a command for the tailer commands?

I think Kray uses the LW settings so you might want to check in the render globals.

Florian

Threads are showing as 4 and multithreading in Render globals is also set on 4.

I tried increasing octree depth on the slow Quad core. It was at the default 20, I increased it to 30 this brought the render time down from 12mins to 7mins 30!
This is better, although it should be more like 4mins 30.

I then tried increasing the octree to 35 but Lightwave crashed at setup. It is completely baffling, I can not understand why there should be such a difference.

Check the slow machine is definitely idling before you start the render (the %cpu use in the Task Manager). If it doesn't show close to zero, then you have something else running that is eating up your processor's time. Could be a rogue service or process or something.

Task manager shows 0% at idle.

I am now very confused, I tried rebooting and now with the octree at 30 it takes 13minutes to render a frame and I have not changed any settings??!! it really seems to be very random.

Is this only happening in one particular scene or are you noticing slowdowns in all your scenes?

Can you try rendering benchmark scene from here: http://www.kraytracing.com/forum/viewto ... =3894#3894

it seems to be a problem with this scene. I rendered the benchmark and got the following results:

Slow Quadcore: 3min 55
Fast Quad: 3min 03
Dualcore laptop: 10min 55

Fortuantely this shows that both of my Quadcores are running as they should do, however it is very odd that the same scene can render with such a variation in rendertimes on two fairly similar machines.

Indeed, you should send me a scene and I will test it.

Your scene renders in 3min 12sec on my quad.

Can you do one more thing please:
add logfile 'kray_log.txt' from the header commands list and render. Then send me the log file so I can check where is slowdown happening.