Rendering on Q6600+3ds max 9 help!

[smudgee]

L_Abulafia , thanks for that , yeah i suspect that a lot of of the OP's 8 secounds is is taken up by an initial single threaded calculation. Carrarar does this too when calculating GI & physics/hair etc. Nice machine u got there . (jealous).
Im pretty sure even the scanline renderer is multi threaded , alll others would be , no doubt in that .
Sorry to keep on about this, i just feel a sympathy for anyone who got a quad and isnt getting what they should out of it. Quads get whined about so much by gamers whos games arent multithreaded that they get a bad image.
From the bencmarks that I have been reading for a long time, quads excel at 3d rendering just about better than anything else.
Render time /waitng is so frustrating for me and the reason that i dont do more 3d work , drives me crazy , i long for the day when it can all be done as fast as 2d animation /after effects for example.

Originally Posted by L_Abulafia

Hum, in fact there is indeed a "multithreading" check box in max (at least in max 2008 but I'm pretty sure it was here before too). By default multithreading is enabled though (you can check that in (customize -> preferences -> rendering -> multi threating (bottom left of the dialog)

thanks for clarification. I haven't seen that one.:)

[L_Abulafia]

@ smudgee : I confirm, the scanline is also multi-threaded and on a quad you get a really nice speed out of it (but still slower than mental ray without GI, mr is really amazing). Quads are indeed excellent when it comes to 3D rendering (there is a nice benchmark for Vue and results really show the "linear" progression : with the same processor, same clock speed, a quad is about 1.8 times faster).
I'm not much of a gamer even if I do enjoy looking as screenshots but I'm pretty sure games will soon all be multi-threaded too (8 cores processors are just around the corner now and multi-threading will become a must for all software sooner or later)
I know the software industry is often a bit slow at catching up with the hardware part (64 bits OS are a proof of that : I've been running XP64 for over 2 years now but for some people - and manufacturers (see drivers) it's still considered to be more a "gadget (well, with 8 GB memory, I assure you it's not, it's a blessing
@ Phil999 : you're welcome. Max is a very complex application and it's very hard to know everything about it :)

[smudgee]

ta Abul, nice to know .
All those interested in quad core cpu's , might not have noticed that AMD released their new quad family last week (after much delay) ~"The Phenom".
The good n bad news i sbasically......

The cpu's can drop into most AM2 motherboards , (bios upgrade may be needed, i forget)
Clock for clock i think they are still slower than intel quads.
Not as much overclocking headroom. as intel quads.
Fastest one available at the mo is 2.4 ghz.

SOme of this may change with the next stepping /revision, who knows.

But....The rest of .intels next bunch of quads will be out early next year ..penyryn architecture , all based on 45 nm tech i think, with 1600 FSB.(Only the extreme edition is currently available..yes the $1000 dollar one).


Anyway i think its all good news that more affordable multi core cpus are becoming available , ..bring it on , I welcome it , and oppose any that whine statements like " whats the point i dont fully utilize dual core yet ", ,and things like "you dont need more than 2gig ram".

[kevin]

i got the same CPU .. this is an awesome cpu with such low price .. infact .. scanline cant use all 4 cores to the fullest but it does use all the 4 cores for sure.