Sawyer

I feel kind of lame asking this but what is up with dual processors? Is it just like it sounds with 2 cpu's doing the work of one? Is there anything needed to get Max running on a dual system or does it just naturally take to it?

__________________
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?

quizzy

Yes, its one computer with 2 cpu's.
And not only MAX works with it but programs like: Photoshop, After effects, etc... work with it too, its not actually twice the speed but its more like 1.8 times faster...

__________________
Michiel Quist

http://www.3idee.nl

Sawyer

Thanks quizzy that is waht I wanted to know.

__________________
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?

Christopher Nichols

Not that you want TOO technical and answer but... in order to take advantage of dual processors, the progam has to be written for it. That is refered to as multi-threaded. Most programs are not multi-treaded, such as word, etc... why? because you never use more then 5% of your CPU power to write in word. Photoshop is not multi-threaded either, unless it is a recent thing I'm not aware of. Rendering engine are. You need a lot of processor power to render. Rendering is one of the most intense thing a computer does. Even more then computer games. Good rendering engines are completely multi-threaded and use two processors to do everything from shadow building to rendering. For the most part, you will probably only take direct advantage of dual processors if you do a lot of rendering, and I would agree with quizzy... about 1.8 times faster, depending on what rendering engine you are using. An added bonus to a multi-proc computer is a more stable computer which is really good at multi-tasking. Unless you are rendering, you can easily do lots of things on your computer all at once. That is because your OS is multi-threaded. Keep in mind that you simply can't add a second processor to a dual processor motherboard without re-installing you operating system.

__________________
Christopher P Nichols

matt_vinoir

photoshop is still as slow as anything on my dual. whereas i log pretty fast render times on viz 4 so it can't be bused already!

Maybe it isn't. do yuo have to do any asigning to it

quizzy

well matt, open your task manager see what both processors are doing, and perform some have rescaling on a picture in photoshop, I mean very heavy, so make a picture 640x480x72dpi into a picture of 640x480x1200dpi and see what the 2 processors are doing. Its depends on what kind of action you are doing in photoshop, not all filters are multi-threaded...

__________________
Michiel Quist

http://www.3idee.nl

plastic

photoshop only uses the second cpu when calculating filters.
still, dual cpu's make a system much smoother, when you switch tasks, open windows etc. because windows is multi threaded.
3dsmax uses the second cpu for rendering (its almost double as fast)
the screen performance won't really change. a fast P4 has a much better screen performance than a dual-p3 which might be faster for rendering, even when using openGL (3d acceleration is heavily CPU dependent).

__________________
Marc Lorenz
http://plugins.angstraum.at

My 3d gallery at Flickr

quizzy

chris,

at startup of photoshop, it says something like reading multi processor .... well something like this, so i guess its multi proc enabled..

__________________
Michiel Quist

http://www.3idee.nl

nisus

hi matt,

a few tips on ps:
- set your scratch disk to another disk than your startup disk
- set memory usage to about 80-85% instead of it's standard 50%

you can enter the general settings by pressing ctrl+K

rgds

nisus

__________________
www.ams.be / www.nisusarts.com

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=nisusCGA&p=r

Greg Hess

Remember the advantage of dual processors is not just in multithreaded applications. When running a multiprocessor OS, you can set the affinity of various applications and programs on cpu 1 or 2.

Example: You could be running Viz4 on CPU 1 and Photoshop on CPU 2. Thus allowing yourself to do texture work or post work in Photoshop, while Viz 4 calculates the radiosity on CPU1, basically giving you the functionality of two machines in one.

This is extremely useful if you only own a single system, as it allows you full usability of the computer while rendering, calculating radiosity, or doing any computationaly advanced tasks which take an extended period of time. Just set the application to realtime on CPU #2 (take it off cpu 1) then use the machine as normal. The realtime app will suck up 100% of CPU #2 while cpu#1 handles all other apps and programs.

Seems to make the renders take less time when you don't have to sit around waiting for it to finish .

[ August 20, 2002, 07:40 PM: Message edited by: Greg Hess ]