I am having huge performance issues while using TG2 locally as well as system wide. Even if I am not rendering, every attempt I make to change value in TG2 is delayed by atleast 5 seconds. My other actions outside of TG2 are also affected by this. All these problems are gone as soon as I exit TG2.
Here are my system specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
4GB DDR2 800MHz Ram
Nvidia GeForce 470
Windows 7 64-bit (fresh install)
Any ideas?
Dhaval
sometimes i get poor performance if the preview is using a lot of system resources or with a lot of fractals;
does this happen with only one special project, or even if nothing is loaded in tg2?
It doesnt happen with TG2 default project but it starts as soon as I have something in the scene even if that is one simple default fractal.
I've noticed this on heavy scenes (60+? nodes or/and large image-maps or models, memory hoggers!), mostly seems to stop when I "Pause" the preview window but you may have some background non TG stuff running as well, virus scans etc.
Richard
Yes, try pausing the preview window. I can see a 4 second CPU spike with a single change to the default scene. Remember that almost all changes you make cause recalculations throughout the program and the preview tries to update as fast as possible.
Using the sliders is worse, since you wind up sending incrementing or decrementing values through the scene calculations. I would like to see the program only update when the field you are entering in is left.
To see this in action:
Start the Task Manager and display the performance graphs. Then start tg2 with the default scene. Click on the plus sign next to the "Heightfield shader 01"and then "Heightfield generate 01".
By default, the preview is not paused. Click in the "Feature scale" field, which should be defaulted to 2000, and add or delete a zero. You should see a spike in cpu activity. Now pause the preview and try the same thing (add or delete a zero.)
With the preview un-paused, try using the "Feature scale" slider. You will probably see a longer duration cpu spike.
Quote from: jaf on November 20, 2010, 01:20:42 PM
...
Using the sliders is worse, since you wind up sending incrementing or decrementing values through the scene calculations. I would like to see the program only update when the field you are entering in is left.
...
I absolutely NEVER use the sliders. Probably a hangover from the old days when it could often cause a crash but it still slows the whole process down cpu wise.
:)
Richard
You can pause every preview by rightclick. Does the performance still go down if you pause all previews?
I have not noticed this on my old P4HT system. The preview slows down only when the atmosphere quality is increased above the default of 16. I turn off the atmosphere preview for shading and object placement.
Quick renders (640 x 400) will show the shadows from clouds and objects better.
i haven't noticed any performance issues with TG2 itself, but i have noticed a performance issues mainly with my internet browser, as well with some other programs, and this has been with small renders and large ones.
in the past i have been able to browse the net and watch streaming movies with netflix, without any sort of performance issues when i render.
sys specs: intelQ6600/G skill 4gigs 800mhzDDR2 ram/nvidia8800gt/win7 64-bit
Quote from: zaai999 on November 22, 2010, 09:44:15 AM
i haven't noticed any performance issues with TG2 itself, but i have noticed a performance issues mainly with my internet browser, as well with some other programs, and this has been with small renders and large ones.
in the past i have been able to browse the net and watch streaming movies with netflix, without any sort of performance issues when i render.
sys specs: intelQ6600/G skill 4gigs 800mhzDDR2 ram/nvidia8800gt/win7 64-bit
Same thing happens to me too. If I am rendering, my internet slows down to make it look like its a dial up connection. Also the overall performance of the whole system degrades. TG2 doesnt seem to like Windows 7 x64.
I'm guessing these "performance issues" cropped up pretty much exactly when TG2 changed to be multi-threaded. Previously it would only use a single core and all your other programs would seem to run normally since they would be allocated to other cores. Now when you are rendering, TG2 will use everything you can throw at it unless you tell it not to. So if you have a quad-core system unless you specify to only use two or three cores it is going to use all four. Then when you run other programs at the same time those programs all fight for resources and cpu time which is when you notice the performance issues.
If you want to avoid this, then simply set TG2 to use less cores than you have available. You will render slower of course but that is the drawback to doing other things :D
This is of course only when you are rendering, I don't think there should be any problems when you are simply building your scene in the UI since that portion is not multi-threaded.
maybe (maybe not) I can help with the windows end. what's your pagefile settings (they should be roughly 1 1/2 time your physical memory), windows isn't that good at managing your pagefile so set it to a static size (so for 4gb pyhsical, that pagefile should be 6gb), also go to black vipers site, and lookup the services that you can disable or get the tweaked services settings (a downloadable reg file), this will configure your system so that the minimal amount of services are running.
in your processes, on a fresh build, your account should have around 20 odd (or less) processes running SVhost.exe being the most resource hungry, try disabling any antivirus (on access scanning) as it'll scan each file read/write.
if possible try putting your pagefile on a secondary drive away from the system drive, this will help load times as you'll use two SATA channels (one for file access, one for page file access) which should help performance.
*edit*
run MSConfig at run, select the Boot tab and "advanced options", tick the box that says "Number of Cores", god knows why, but windows desktop initially will only use the 1st core to boot windows, then it'll kick the other cores in as needed, this tweak tells windows to use ALL your cpu core from the off, and will speed booting abit :).
like I say it may help, may not ;)
Your problem looks like another thing Dhaval , but for troubleshooting did you tried to allocate only 1 CPU for TG2 from the task manager ?
Some times when i render i allocate 3 CPU's from there to have a smooth time in other tasks (for a Quad system of course).
Quote from: Kadri on November 22, 2010, 09:36:04 PM
Your problem looks like another thing Dhaval , but for troubleshooting did you tried to allocate only 1 CPU for TG2 from the task manager ?
Some times when i render i allocate 3 CPU's from there to have a smooth time in other tasks (for a Quad system of course).
yes I assigned only one core to TG2 and it seem to work better. I also increased page file size like riche said and it seems to be working much better then before but it still lags a bit......I guess its time for an upgrade....
Quoterun MSConfig at run, select the Boot tab and "advanced options", tick the box that says "Number of Cores"
Good advice, but my advanced options are grayed out, so inaccessible... any idea why that would be?
Quote from: Dune on November 23, 2010, 02:55:16 AM
Quoterun MSConfig at run, select the Boot tab and "advanced options", tick the box that says "Number of Cores"
Good advice, but my advanced options are grayed out, so inaccessible... any idea why that would be?
Do you tried it with Administrator rights (if you have Vista or windows 7) ?
I have XP SP2 and administrator rights
you may want to update to SP3, it'll plug some security hole and give better compatibility for hardware and security certificates, and may even resolve your grayed out advanced options, in XP MSCONFIG you need to select BOOT.INI and ADVANCED OPTIONS and the tick "/NUMPROC=" and then select the number of CPU's you want to use.
I'm trying the find a reg frag to do this but it's proving abit illusive, even with procmon, but as soon as I find it I'll post it up
I can definately recommend a few other tips as well for XP, bootvis.exe (MS) will drastically reduce your boot times, as it loads all your drivers side by side and not one at a time.
Auslogic defrag has the option to Optimize your files when defragging, i.e. it'll put the most used files on the fastest part of the disc plater, do this one before bootvis though.
black vipers reg tweaks are a must for XP, just to squeeze every bit of performance out of your rig. (I know BV again).
and if you can find get your hands on XP performance edition (you already have a license for XP so your not breaking the law here), it's tweaked for performance, and has really low over heads, giving more for rendering
Good advices from Riche! And SP3 would be good for you if you have nothing problematic with this update.
Did you first checked the box that says 'Selective startup' Dune ? I am not sure maybe after this you have to reboot or so.
Just guessing !
I did a search , but couldn't find anything (directly) related to your problem.
the reason why there's not that much documentation on this is that MS didn't really want people to do this, as with the first dual cores (that weren't really, they were just single cores that squeezed and extra instruction into each process, i.e hyperthreaded) it could cause problems.
But because there are now true dual and quad cores (AMD), (Some of the early intel quad's are duals that again are hyperthreaded) this is no longer a problem.
And it's really underground tweaks and techs that know about this setting as the layman doesn't really go poking round in the places I go, as I support and team of 3d render'ers in our web design department ... woa is me :(
I had SP3 XP on my Pentium 4 HT, worked fine. Windows 7 has been so much better. I recommend buying it. Vista was good to me, but I had to hand configure it so it was not so 'self interested'.
It's not really a big deal, guys, but I certainly appreciate the info. I have low overhead anyway because I have two versions of XP running on 2 partitions, one without web connection, so without zonealarm, virus scanners and all that necessary stuff. That's where my TG2 runs.
I'll go to windows 7 as soon as my pc is old enough to be 'dumped'.