Terragen 3 Benchmark released

[bobbystahr]

We're due for a *new* benchmark soon that willl be more reflective of Terragen 4 performance...

- Oshyan

noted...I learned a bunch of stuff just exploring the first one and anticipate a similar reacation....

[luvsmuzik]

I was just rereading this to see and yep there was the answer. Perhaps cost of upgrading system and increase use of laptops and other gadgets has also dwindled appearance of users of this forum. I think I am on the newsletter list somewhere, are you still doing that?

[archonforest]

Someone can explain the below to me?

a 4 core I7 on 3.4Ghz that gives 13.6Ghz finish the test render in 08:15 sec

an 8 core Xeon on 2.4Ghz that gives 38.4Ghz finish the test render in 08:58 sec?

WTH?   How is this possible? The Xeon is older for sure but Ghz is Ghz.....

[bobbystahr]

Someone can explain the below to me?

a 4 core I7 on 3.4Ghz that gives 13.6Ghz finish the test render in 08:15 sec

an 8 core Xeon on 2.4Ghz that gives 38.4Ghz finish the test render in 08:58 sec?

WTH?   How is this possible? The Xeon is older for sure but Ghz is Ghz.....

not sure as I'm always bit confused always but I thought cores were sharing the Ghz not multiplying it

[Kadri]

...  How is this possible? The Xeon is older for sure but Ghz is Ghz.....

Nope. That was in the past when the Ghz race was still on with AMD and Intel.
Now it is not so easy by just looking at the Ghz which one will be faster in which program (depends).

[Oshyan]

luvsmuzik, yes we're still doing newsletters. Another one coming up soon. And as far as cost of computer hardware, it's all actually cheaper than it ever has been, and performance has not increased much in the past few years so you can have even a relatively fast system that might still be several years old. This is helpful both for buying a "new" system (you can purchase some older hardware that still performs well but is cheaper), and for keeping our existing systems around for longer. My i7-2700k is 4-5 years old now, but it still gives decent performance.

The Xeon that got that render time is quite old, I believe it's the E5530. You can see its performance relative to the i7-2700k that Dune benchmarked with here:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=1244&cmp%5B%5D=868
It's about 1/2 the speed (on the Passmark CPU test, at least), and there were 2 of those CPUs in the machine, so indeed the result is as you would expect.
The short conclusion is that no, indeed, Ghz is not Ghz, you cannot determine raw performance just by looking at that number. That is *only* true when you are considering CPUs *in the same generation*. The i7-2700k was released 2 full years after the E5530. The 2700k is the Sandy Bridge architecture while the E5330 is the Nehalem architecture. You can see some more benchmarks on how performance varies even at similar clock speeds across generations of CPU architectures:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-core-i74770k-i54560k-tested/6
And all that is not to mention the big differences between clock speed, cores, and performance between AMD and Intel!

- Oshyan

[archonforest]

Wow that is insane. Guess the i7 doing more calculation per second than my Xeon. Well I have to live with that
...or just get 2 6 cores xeon in the box

[Oshyan]

This is what I'm thinking of getting... Lots of great deals on eBay for used workstations and servers!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z820-Workstation-8C-Xeon-E5-2680-2-7GHz-32GB-2TB-Quadro-4000-w-Win-10-Pro-CD/172381735185?_trksid=p2047675.c100009.m1982&_trkparms=aid%3D888007%26algo%3DDISC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3Da7f71989227e41d9b6273b2ea5c659a0%26pid%3D100009%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D2%26sd%3D391641888981&autorefresh=true

- Oshyan

[KyL]

To my taste an i7 is a much better compromise as a workstation. Even if in the long run a Xeon will render faster because it has more thread, it is nowhere as fast an i7 for every day use. An i7 just works faster and you can clearly feel it on everyday use, it feels more responsive.
I have a workstation very similar to this at work and even though it has 4 times more threads that my home computer and more Ghz power, it is just a merely 30% faster.... But as a rendering machine it is probably worth it!

But personally I rather like to spend on a fast CPU/fast RAM/ fast hard drives!

[archonforest]

This is what I'm thinking of getting... Lots of great deals on eBay for used workstations and servers!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z820-Workstation-8C-Xeon-E5-2680-2-7GHz-32GB-2TB-Quadro-4000-w-Win-10-Pro-CD/172381735185?_trksid=p2047675.c100009.m1982&_trkparms=aid%3D888007%26algo%3DDISC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3Da7f71989227e41d9b6273b2ea5c659a0%26pid%3D100009%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D2%26sd%3D391641888981&autorefresh=true

- Oshyan

Interesting. Why did u choose this rig? The CPU only slightly faster than my older Xeon(per CPUBoss). Or u will have 2 of this cpu?

[Oshyan]

2 of those CPUs, yes. Look on the current Terragen 3 benchmark list, you'll see variations of this CPU right at the top... 2670, 2680, 2690 (what I ended up getting was dual 2690s, 300Mhz per-core faster, and 128GB of RAM ).

- Oshyan

[archonforest]

2 of those CPUs, yes. Look on the current Terragen 3 benchmark list, you'll see variations of this CPU right at the top... 2670, 2680, 2690 (what I ended up getting was dual 2690s, 300Mhz per-core faster, and 128GB of RAM ).

- Oshyan

Wow that is cool.

[nito80]

Hi and hello,

I'm relatively new to Terragen, but already in love with it. But recently I stumbled upon some strange behaviour I'd like to ask about. I'm using a HP Z820 with dual 2690s, Quadro6000 and 128GB RAM (the same as user Oshyan mentioned in this thread) but have some issues with render speed and cpu/core usage.

In short, with any given scene, the machine renders faster, if I lower the core detection override in the preferences. So if I'm going with all 32 cores of the machine, a simple scene would render in HD at about 12 minutes (process in task manager at 100%). If I lower the cores to 8 (process in task manager at 25%) the same scene strangely renders within 3 - 4 minutes (seems to be the sweet spot). Also, the terrain preview (not RTP) is significantly faster with lower core usage.

I have no real explanation for this other than that threading in Terragen may be confused with 32 cores. Since user Oshyan mentioned the same workstation, I'd be very much interested if this could be an issue with my Z820 or something else.

Oh, I forgot: using Terragen4, Win7 Pro (fresh install)

Thanks,
Norman

[Matt]

Oshyan had a similar issue and he told me that he needed to change one of the NVIDIA Quadro settings. In particular, "Threaded Optimization" needs to be turned OFF. After making changes you should restart Terragen.

Here is some advice given by another software vendor which might be helpful:

https://artecgroup.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203385381-How-to-optimize-the-performance-of-your-NVIDIA-Quadro

Matt

[Oshyan]

I actually found, eventually, that the setting(s) you need to change are *not* exposed for individual adjustment in the drivers. What you need to do is switch your overall graphics driver profile to "3D App - Game Development" and that sets the correct options *internally*. That should give you full performance with all threads.

- Oshyan