TG2 Mac and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

echrei · December 22, 2009, 04:23:49 PM

I don't believe so, I had antivirus turned off. I'll test again once some actual renders have finished. I'll also see if the size of the subdiv cache on Windows produces different results. On Mac OS, setting it to 1200 gave the best times, so I had it set the same on Windows.

Oshyan · December 22, 2009, 07:24:00 PM

Cache size should generally be 100MB per thread, to keep it essentially the same per-thread as the defaults. One difference unaccounted for may be the number of threads with the old vs. new tests. What system are you running? How many CPUs and cores? How many threads did you use and have you set a custom number of threads in the preferences?

- Oshyan

echrei · December 23, 2009, 01:49:38 AM

I'm using the machine in my sig, a 2.6GHz MacBook Pro. It's set to using 2 threads as it should be. I haven't set a custom number of threads. I found that upping the cache size from 400 to 1200 took 4 minutes off the render time for that benchmark.

I'll run some benchmarks tomorrow with Terragen 2.0 and 2.1 on Mac OS 10.6 and Windows 7 x64 and different cache sizes for comparison. That benchmark takes about 30 minutes to render, so all the different benchmarks will take a long time to do. If you have a good scene for benchmark, with water, clouds, and some objects for example, that might take less time to render, feel free to e-mail it my way.

Kadri · December 23, 2009, 07:49:08 AM

Maybe this?

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5777.0

Kadri.

echrei · December 23, 2009, 06:01:18 PM

Quote from: Kadri on December 23, 2009, 07:49:08 AM
Maybe this?

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5777.0

Kadri.

Thanks, but that's what I'm currently using.

Kadri · December 23, 2009, 06:07:22 PM

Ooops ! Trust me i read all of this topic but...lapse of memory can do this

Kadri.

echrei · December 24, 2009, 01:59:08 AM

All these benchmarks are going to take awhile, at least 8 hours of computing time, and I'm rebooting between each run.

echrei · December 27, 2009, 04:26:11 AM

Okay, here are the benchmarks. As you can see, bigger caches made it faster for the most part. Also, Terragen 2.1 does indeed seem to be slower for both Mac and Windows. With these tests, Windows is still faster for both 2.0 and 2.1. Computer specs are in my signature.

Code Select

Mac OS 10.6:
Cache	Terragen 2.0	Terragen 2.1
200MB	26:46			28:17
400MB	26:10			27:37
800MB	25:50			27:06
1200MB 	25:39			27:14

Windows 7:
Cache	Terragen 2.0	Terragen 2.1
200MB	26:18			27:43	
400MB	25:05			26:33	
800MB	24:34			25:33	
1200MB	24:27			25:28

Oshyan · December 30, 2009, 10:30:52 PM

Thanks for the full table - very useful info. Of course Raytrace Objects is not used in this test scene, so results are directly comparable, but not taking full advantage of the 2.1 update. It would be interesting to see if raytraced objects makes a difference in this case. The cache results are also interesting, although in general it does not seem to make a huge difference with practical values, given the need for 100MB cache per thread and 4+ threads being the norm these days.

Anyway, I'll do some testing of my own and see what I find...

- Oshyan

efflux · March 29, 2010, 10:53:22 PM

I just got a second hand Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz with OSX 10.6. I have no Windows system now (PCs are Linux) and the Macbook is for audio but I'll eventually try TG2 again. You may notice I haven't been around here much lately. I got sick of render times but presumably now I'll have something semi decent.

Oshyan · April 01, 2010, 01:23:21 AM

Quote from: efflux on March 29, 2010, 10:53:22 PM
I just got a second hand Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz with OSX 10.6. I have no Windows system now (PCs are Linux) and the Macbook is for audio but I'll eventually try TG2 again. You may notice I haven't been around here much lately. I got sick of render times but presumably now I'll have something semi decent.

Looking forward to seeing you back around again.

- Oshyan

efflux · May 09, 2010, 06:31:03 PM

Hi Oshyan.

I haven't got very far yet. The Macbook I got had a fault that I didn't initially find. Ebay purchase but the seller has replaced it so no major problem. I have now got the SSD drive (which I had put in the other one) back in the new one. TG2 will be tested soon.

This Macbook was got for a number of reasons connected with audio production. One is that it's more or less silent. The SSD helps this a little and although this Macbook is not running at full SATA II speed the SSD is amazing. Only the full read speed is slightly limited by the SATA limit so generally it rockets. If you have the full SATA II speed then SSD is a no brainer. Although quite expensive it is the best upgrade you could ever make. Don't get slow SSD though. It needs to be decent and also depends on the OS as far as garbage tidying on the SSD is concerned. You need to look into this. I won't describe it all here.

Oshyan · May 11, 2010, 01:09:04 AM

Yeah I've definitely looked into SSDs before. Not going to have a big impact on TG2 rendering, so not worth the price for me at the moment, but I'm looking forward to them becoming more affordable.

- Oshyan

efflux · June 03, 2010, 04:39:12 PM

TG2 renders around three times faster on my Macbook compared to my old PC. However, the Macbook screen is very poor compared to my Eizo. I can use the Eizo with the Macbook but it doesn't do full resolution. I can use it to check colours though.

Does this men I'll be churning out TG2 renders? I don't know. I'm into music now but most likely I will return to TG2 eventually.

efflux · June 03, 2010, 05:05:23 PM

Sorry. Accidental post.