Terragen 3 Benchmark released

[Oshyan]

After helpful feedback from the community on an earlier draft, we're ready to release the final version of our new Terragen 3 Benchmark. This scene has been specifically developed to test render times in Terragen 3 and is compromised in large part of presets that ship with TG3 itself. Thanks go to Volker Haroon, Ulco Glimmerveen, and Jack Marsh for their contributions.

The new benchmark has been designed to test a wide variety of TG3 functions, including GI, volumetric cloud shading, water, displaceable objects, populations, water, and more. It has also been tuned to provide a good range of render times across a variety of modern systems, with newer, faster hardware turning in times of 5 minutes or below, while older machines may take 45 minutes or more. This allows for statistically reliable results on faster systems, without making render times overly long on slower machines. We hope it will prove to be a useful tool for the community!

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Hop on over to our Terragen 3 Benchmark page to download the scene and submit your render time, then check out the full list of results:
http://planetside.co.uk/products/tg3-benchmark

- Oshyan

[archonforest]

I managed to upload wrong data
Is there a way to correct it?

[jaf]

I was able to edit my data when I realized I made a couple of mistakes, but the data entry form was still "active" (after submitting my data, I went to the view results spreadsheet and saw my mistakes.)  Somewhere there was an "edit" link, but now I can't find it.

[Oshyan]

Yes, you can edit your submissions.

- Oshyan

[archonforest]

Can't see any way to do it...

[jaf]

Don't see it either.  I can view my data in the spreadsheet and I can see the little black triangles where I was able to edit it yesterday, but can't find a way to edit it today (maybe going through the form again using the same identification data?)  I'm logged in because I see my name near the upper-right hand corner of the screen.

[Oshyan]

It looks like you can only edit it from the Confirmation screen, or if you requested to have a copy of your submission emailed to you (there's a link to edit in the email). So just email us at support AT planetside.co.uk with the changes you need and we'll take care of it.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

added mine.

Curious if anyone here is using one of the new macs? Would like to see what the times are from the various configurations.

[Oshyan]

No test results from a new MacPro yet, but they're standard PC hardware at this point, just a single 6 core CPU. So should be about 6 minutes, similar to JBT27 on the current list.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Still want to see.

Hey, can you explain how PS uses this data you are collecting? In general its pretty interesting, but how do you, and perhaps even other soft makers  use this data?
Does it just show you how different set ups work with TG, or are you able to use it to make improvements to TG?

[Oshyan]

We don't make a ton of direct use of it, but it *is* fairly helpful to know how the render engine performs across a range of hardware, and especially how it "scales" (efficiency as you add more resources, especially processing cores/threads). There is still room for improvement in our render threading with higher numbers of threads (above 12 I'd say), although we've made big improvements over the years already. Other than that it's more a tool for the community, to get an idea of how their hardware should be performing (by comparing it to other similar hardware), or to get ideas for what hardware to buy if they're thinking of a new machine that will be used a lot for Terragen (simple: buy the best-performing CPU on the chart ).

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Thanks,

Would you also like to propose an explanation for me to why my time could be 2 seconds better than Jo's (for example) who posted two times, one of which was a comparable system to what I have? Two seconds is nothing, So I am guessing that that has to do with perhaps he had some other soft running when rendering? Just curious why People running the same system as me would have any variation... I am guessing that is completely normal between any product?

I was glad to see all this really. If I don't render water, I think my time is good enough to not have to worry for a little while that my desktop needs to be replaced.
Though who wouldn't want one of those 5 min times! That would be nice 

[Oshyan]

There is always a small amount of variation, even on subsequent tests on the exact same machine. A 2 second difference is extremely small, statistically speaking. But this is indeed one of the reasons why you don't want a benchmark that is *too quick* to render. Variations of a few seconds are to be expected, even on the same machine, let alone on different machines of similar hardware, and of course on different hardware entirely. But imagine if the total benchmark render time was only 10 seconds. In that case a 2-3 second difference is 20-30%! Which, statistically speaking, is a huge difference. The problem in that scenario is that 2-3 second variations in render times are normal, so these variations have a bigger impact on shorter render times, making them less accurate for comparative purposes.

- Oshyan

[pokoy]

This one went even slightly faster than the original preliminary benchmark file from 2 weeks ago. Judging by the submissions, it seems I have the fastest machine here 

I'll do another test on my older render machines and will try to get both of my co-workers to run the benchmark on their new Mac Pro machines (they have different ones), wonder how they'll perform.

[Oshyan]

Indeed pokoy, the benchmark was tweaked a little to render slightly faster and also to be within the capabilities of the Free version. It still shows a nice spread of results so far, and I'm pleased to see that nobody has had to crack the 1hr time yet. Your result definitely shows that having lots of threads/cores is still quite beneficial, even over faster (in raw clock speed) machines with fewer cores. So that's quite good to know. Unfortunately those dual machines are quite expensive, but for maximum space performance in the smallest space and power profile, a dual CPU machine is clearly best. I'd love to see what the new 16 core E5-2697 v3 would do in a dual config. Of course each CPU is $2800, hehe. And just wait until the 16 and 18 core models coming later this year...

- Oshyan