my CPU is killing me, or am i killing it?
 

I'm wondering, when I render on my PC the CPU is doing 100% all the time. when I render on my laptop it is doing 50%. when I render on my PC I'm lucky ti get 20 frames sometimes (other times it will do the render but mostly I have to wake at some silly time and reset the globals and start a new batch render.)
but when I render on my laptop (dual core CPU) it never ever stops in the middle of ANY render.

what is happening? Is there a way I can turn the CPU for the render to 80%?? or something like that so the thing doesn't time out or whatever it does. As it stands I have to render on the laptop which seems a bit silly.

Quadro 4 750XGL (PC)

recently the error messages from MS have changed from the usual boring 'driver problem' to 'you need to buy a new CPU OR a new POWER SUPPLY or a new MOTHERBOARD..? MS have left it rather broad, they may as well said, 'we don't know, buy a new computer.'

Your laptop is dual core so when it says 50% it is using 100% of one processor. Which is what your PC has, one processor.

As far as on your PC you could use ctrl-alt-del to open the process viewer and set the priority of the task lower. However this will impact performance resulting in an even slower render.

It doesn't appear that batch rendering would resolve this issue.

I believe that it is normal for the CPU to operate at 100% when rendering. But don't take my word for it. As far as your other issues with the render crashing it could be a memory issue, not related to the CPU.

Its just the load on the processor, as long as its got decent cooling then I shouldent see a problem, I've left my desktop rendering for about a week running at 100% once with no probs, and I pretty much just use it as a rendering PC now as I've got my laptop.

As for your laptop you could get it to render using both cores (so it will be faster) but I cant remember how to change the settings!

Was the Quadro 4 750XGL (PC) quote your graphics card? If so the graphics card dosent do anything with rendering (unless your hardware rendering of course) its only the processor, RAM etc if your using the Maya Software and Mental Ray rendering engines.

the processor option is found when batch rendering, it pops up a window with number of processors to use, but you can check the 'use all available processors' box... it was nice to have when i had my dual pIII up and running.

as far as rendering goes, it's not really a good idea to do much of anything else while it's batch rendering (or just plain old rendering) just because of the fact that maya's utilizing most of the processor. i usually just walk away or start my batch renders right before i go to bed. i also don't leave maya open while i'm batch rendering. i use the command line option after setting my render globals, saving the file, and closing maya.

Eye, but with the dual core processors I think its in the BIOS to set up how windows looks at the processor, i.e as 2 processors or as one processor.

this is all mighty good stuff and makes me think there is something wrong with the power supply or the CPU or the cooling system. If you guys are rendering all night with no false stops then I or my computer is doing something wrong, and if the laptop is rendering for 20 hours no problem then I would say it is the PC and not me. (it could be though).

how do you turn off Maya and batch render at the same time (this could be an answer but if it stopped how would i know, i mean a false stop) , I'll lend you an ear, what's the secret there?

Hows the laptop Gster, what did you finally get.

yea, it was my graphics card and it does ardware render with a breeze and no false stops.

I don't think that the BIOS has anything to do with how Windows looks at a dual core processor. It's still one processor technically, but with two cores as each of these so called 'processors' still rely on a shared control unit to feed it with data.

But when you actually have two or more processors, like in a SMP system, you need an OS that can send data to the number of processors you have.

The whole thing with the renders stopping sounds more like software than hardware, CPUs don't timeout like internet does, though they do freeze.

Here you go Mirekm, a bit of a tutorial on it.

http://www.jawa9000.com/technical/ba...-rendering.htm

I ended up getting a Dell XPS M1710 with the NVidia Gforce 7900 GTX 512Mb RAM, 2 gig ram, 120 gig HDD, Intel Dual core etc etc, Its really nice and fast.

Architect - Just checked in my BIOS set up and I can switch multi core support on or off which according to the BIOS is for "this field specifiec whether or not the CPU will appear as two logical CPUs. THe performance of some applications will improve with two logical CPUs"

Which I think I read that Maya works better (cant remember where otherwise I would post the link) with the system thinking its one logical CPU.

Cheers

thanks for that, i'll dig deeper

that's one hell of a laptop you got going there, very cool.

excellant tut Eric.

One thing that I'm sure about is that the more cores or processors you have, the faster Maya will run. And thats true for many professional apps as well. Does anyone use a SMP system here?

Anyways about the stuff with the BIOS, I wouldn't know as I don't use a dual core computer. I have to say though, it is a bit strange that such a feature is present considering how dual core processors are implemented. What kind of a situation would require one core to be turned off? Power saving? Really, the more it burns the better.

And dual core processor is still one processor anyway, no matter how you look at it.

Yep I agree with you, seems a bit strange that why would you not want a dual core processor to be dual core?? Maybe for pure number crunching, instead of sharing the load and application it runs both cores for a single app??? Dunno to be honest.

The other thing is that the intel core duo 2 thats in my PC switches off a core to powersave and lowers the clock frequency, if its isnt needed. BUT its there in the BIOS as an option.

Like I said I read somewhere that apparantly, Maya, in a test that this author did ran quicker when it thought the Processor was a single logic, and like I said if I could find the author I would post it.

Also I dont think that anyone was questioning that dual core is dual processor

gster123, regarding the article where the author did a benchmark on Maya thinking that its running on a single logic, I would like to take a look at it if you find the link.

Sounds very unlikely to me that a dual core processor would slow things down since Maya has been heavily optimised for systems with multiple cores and processors.

gster123 - 'Also I dont think that anyone was questioning that dual core is dual processor'

I can't remember why I wrote that...

'The whole thing with the renders stopping sounds more like software than hardware, CPUs don't timeout like internet does, though they do freeze'
(architect)


so you mean it is likely a software conflict??

why does it render the frame it stopped at easily (when I wake up and set the globals again) and move on until it decides to stop agian, it seems random.??

Can one of you guys explain what you mean by the dual core options and where are they (please!) :) what IS the best method to use on a dual core system or a single CPU system. ??

what would cause the CPU to freeeeeezzzzz-A? (my visual expression for the sudden stopping of process :) )

Mirek03, I do think that your rendering problem it is more of software conflict than a hardware fault, maybe caused by incompatible drivers or something. It would also help to further elaborate on your problem.

My interpretation is that when you render an animation, it would happily do so, then stop, requiring you to manually enter all the settings again and resume rendering. Am I right? I am however a bit confused by what you mean by ‘wake up’. Are you referring to the screensaver or something like that?

Also, are you sure that your computer is not overheating? Overheating usually causes crashes and many other numerous forms instability, although your rendering problem doesn’t sound like it.

As for the stuff about the dual core options, you asked why your computer was having a 100% workload while your notebook is having only 50%. I think the other guys were trying to explain why your notebook only had a 50% workload while your computer was at 100%. I don’t know where those options are myself, but the other guys said they are in your BIOS somewhere…

“What IS the best method to use on a dual core system or a single CPU system. ??” – mirek03

What do you mean by that? Which method of rendering is best? Well there isn’t one as one method of rendering should be good on both.

About the CPU freezing, well I was thinking of something else that is completely different from your problem. As for my timeout comment, I can’t remember where I saw it in the thread, but I think that someone mentioned the CPU timing out or something which it will never do. A CPU would keep on doing a task until it finishes.