How Fast Are You - Official Twilight Scene - Bauhaus Lamp

[silu]

after upgrade to twilight_win32_v1_4_5 this is the result!

[Fletch]

that looks correct now, thank you, Silu.
You have a quad core, so it makes sense that it would take 2x longer than the 8 core machine.
It is a good quad core. If you were to look into overclocking it, you may find it could go much faster. I do not know, and it's all at your own risk. The danger with overclocking is temperature control, and stability of system. If only overclocking in small amounts, generally the danger is not great. The benefits are shorter rendering times... time savings can be significant when rendering consistently for longer than 1 hour.

[sshiffermiller]

Happily, I purchased a new Desktop and these are my new results. I'm very excited about this. My laptop scored over a minute and a half. This is a 3x increase in speed... I love it. anyway, my new Gateway FX6840 has an icore7 870 (2.93GH) processor, 8gigs of RAM, and an ATI Radean HD 5750.

EDIT: I sized the image in a way that makes it hard to see, but it took 32 seconds to render.

[Fletch]

32s is a very nice machine.

[sshiffermiller]

Yes, thanks, I'm excited after working on laptops for the past few years.

[derei]

Windows 7 Ultimate

Specs.png (2.32 KiB) Viewed 11481 times

RAM GeIL DDR2 PC2-6400 (800MHz) Latency 4-4-4-12
Video Card XFX 8400GS 256MB (ddr2/800Mhz); - but I guess the video card have to do only with OpenGL/DirectX rendering, right?

tw_speed_test.png (151.7 KiB) Viewed 11489 times

Could I do better? I would like an opinion from an hardware expert, if is one around here... maybe some advices could help me squeeze more juice from it (hopefully not smoke)

[pdwyer]

I would expect you to be about the 1min mark or a little better. My systen is a similar intel quad core but only 2.66ghz and I get between about 59sec and 1:03 mins so I would expect you to beat me. I'm using windows vista 64bit and 8gb memory but this doesn't use much memory. Does your system max out all 4 cores and when done drop <1% to show nothing else was happening?

I'm not sure that the gfx card will effect this.

[Fletch]

I'm no hardware expert, but looking on the site, it would appear to me a core2duo is only 2 cores. but it mentions hyperthreading, so it may have 4 threads.
at the speed shown above, it's clear it's been overclocked.
If it's 4 threads at that speed, it should be somewhere between what you show, and 1m. So, it's not far off. It's possible that it's getting too hot and gearing itself down during rendering... you should try RealTemp to monitor temps while rendering if you are overclocking, just so you know what's happening.

I recommend for best performance a 64bit system, and 4Gb fast RAM. With this setup you will not often "top out" the RAM, nor will you see much "slow down" of your system while rendering. This will allow productivity boost because you can continue working and modeling without missing a beat, while still rendering test shots.

[derei]

it would appear to me a core2duo is only 2 cores. but it mentions hyperthreading, so it may have 4 threads.

If it would have 4 threads, I guess I would see in Task Manager/Performance all four windows for CPU Usage, but I have only two.

at the speed shown above, it's clear it's been overclocked.

It's not. It was a while ago, I boosted it to 3.8GHz, but RAM pulled me down (MB is at 1066MHz, but RAM is only at 800MHz). And the cooling was the default one (box) and didn't worked well on overclocking; after few months it was beeping for CPU overheating while rendering. So I put it down at its default frequency until I will get a better cooling solution.

It's possible that it's getting too hot and gearing itself down during rendering... you should try RealTemp to monitor temps while rendering if you are overclocking, just so you know what's happening.

Indeed is possible, but it doesn't get overheated (not beep). I will start monitoring it, to see what's going on under the hood. If it slows down to protect from burning out, at least I will know and take actions
Thank you very much for your ideas.

[Fletch]

Well, as I suspected, it is a VERY fast time for only a dual core, you should be happy.
Maybe look, if you have room in your case, at one of these. Or upgrade cpu shouldn't cost much to get a quad core these days... if your board will accept it.