KeyShot Forum

Technical discussions => General discussion => Topic started by: DriesV on December 04, 2012, 11:29:36 PM

Title: Network rendering & hyper-threading - sensible?
Post by: DriesV on December 04, 2012, 11:29:36 PM
Today I will deploy network rendering (32 core license) in my office.
Simultaneously my old machine will be replaced by a dual Xeon workstation with 16 physical cores.

If I enable hyper-threading, will KeyShot Network Rendering count 32 cores (16 physical + 16 virtual) for this machine?
This would make network rendering useless if I want to speed up a job that I send from my new workstation.

By disabling hyper-threading the total core count would be halved and that way I could add more machines as slaves.
Is rendering performance hampered (much) by disabling hyper-threading?

greetings,
Dries
Title: Re: Network rendering & hyper-threading - sensible?
Post by: PhilippeV8 on December 05, 2012, 04:17:31 AM
That's a good question ...

I was just reading http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading)

QuoteDe door Intel voorspelde prestatiewinst is ongeveer 30%.

So a single core with HTT, which shows as 2 threads, will only be 130%.  While two cores without HTT will give 200%.
Question remains if KS sees a single core with HTT as 2 cores.
Title: Re: Network rendering & hyper-threading - sensible?
Post by: tfinlay on December 05, 2012, 04:40:53 AM
Keyshot does see HT as 2 cores.

How do you turn it off?  That's something I hadn't considered.  We are bumping the 160-core limit
Title: Re: Network rendering & hyper-threading - sensible?
Post by: DriesV on December 05, 2012, 05:52:04 AM
Quote from: tfinlay on December 05, 2012, 04:40:53 AM
Keyshot does see HT as 2 cores.

How do you turn it off?  That's something I hadn't considered.  We are bumping the 160-core limit

HT can usually be toggled off in the system BIOS.

Dries
Title: Re: Network rendering & hyper-threading - sensible?
Post by: DriesV on December 07, 2012, 05:50:41 AM
I just checked how my workstation (dual Xeon E5-2680) performs in KeyShot with and without HT.

without HT: 116fps
with HT: 156fps

That's a +25% drop in performance with HT toggled off!

Dries