Getting the most out of my new quadcore PC spec?

[ArchitekOGP]

Hi everyone, I did used to be on the forum a while ago under a different name and long story short im back. I have a new PC and have also got Terragen 2 and looking forward to doing more work with this great piece of software. Anyway I have checked out the "Render setting recommendations" post however that is old now and from what I understand Terragen now supports multicores? I figured my settings might work better with different variables now although I do totally understand different scenes require different settings.

So if I post my spec and the average scene elements could I geta brief/detailed guide as to what settings I should look for. Im willing to leave the render on over night I just dont want to over do certain settings that arnt nessecary.

My spec:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Intel Core i7 CPU  870 @ 2.93GHz
8GB Ram
GeForce GT 430 video card (If that matters)

Average render:
No populations and hight widescreen resolution sometimes A3. Im using the software for artist purposes and not animation.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, if I could get pointed in a direction that would help then I would be greatful.

[DVA99]

Hi and welcome back,

Your specs looks good to me.

There are a lot of information about render settings (old and new) in this forum and at terragen.org. I recommend that you look through this forum for "render settings".

The below threads should help you a bit:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6156.0

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10853.0

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1742.0

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6442.0

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10109.0

The old threads about render settings still applies (at least for me).

I allow TG2 to use only 4 cores which you can define in "Edit - Preferences - Startup" and that works fine for me.

[ArchitekOGP]

Thanks for the reply, I will look into those links. One question, I did a test render last night and im really happy with the speeds. However when I look at the CPU gadget it says only 53% is being used so im guessing it is only using 2 of the cores? I did go into the settins and set it to overide how many CPU used to 4 before hamd. So once im rendering shouldnt I be able to use 90 - 100% of my CPU? This was without having other prgrams running etc.

[DVA99]

Quad is four cores = 8 threads.

I have about the same CPU as you (I7 965) and I let TG2 only play with 4 cores = 50% of the CPU.

That way I can do other things with my pc like running two instances of TG2 at the same time, playing games etc 

But if you want to give TG2 the whole CPU, it's up to you. But don't expect to do more than just look at the screen when TG2 renders.

The only time I would find it useful to give TG2 all the cores is when I'm rendering over night. *Hmm never tried that.

There's also a lot of topics about this in the forum. Use the search function and see what applies to you.

cheers