topic Re: max number of cpu cores in Installation & update

max number of cpu cores

alemanda — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 17:39:23 GMT

Hi,
I recently updated my system to a dual xeon 14 cores. So Totally I have 28 cores.
When I launch a rendering I see that not all the 28 cores work together ... it seems that only 14 or 16 work.
Is there a limit in the number of cores used by Archicad?

Re: max number of cpu cores

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 04:27:14 GMT

Not sure about max number of cores used by ArchiCAD but if it is not using all the cores you could possibly run multiple sessions at the same time and break up the rendering into areas. Only thing I can see with the specs in your signature is that you don't realty have enough RAM to effectively use all cores, rule of thumb from reading many rendering forums is for at least 2Gb of free RAM after the OS has loaded per core.

Scott

Re: max number of cpu cores

alemanda — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 08:33:01 GMT

Thanks for your reply ...
after your reply I made a test.
Single instace of AC19.
I launched two renderings at the same time (actually the second one started few seconds the first one) ... and my machine uses all the cores
So It seems that there is a limit of cores per rendering ...

The "strange" thing is that I have 32GB of Ram. Running one rendering only the cpu usage is at 57% and it means that the machine uses 32 cores (considering HyperThreading I have 56 cores running). The question is: is there an optimal ratio of 1-GB per core?

Re: max number of cpu cores

alemanda — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 08:48:06 GMT

other test.
I downloaded a demo of Maxwell Render.
I launched the default render of a demo scene and it runs with all the 56 cores available ...
So I'm almost sure that there's a limit in cinerender ...

Re: max number of cpu cores

Steve Jepson — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 22:57:04 GMT

Don't confuse your CUDA cores (GPU) with the CPU cores. Maxwell will render with GPU, CineRender in ArchiCAD does not. You probably knew that. Just posting info for others. That card has 384 CUDA cores.

Re: max number of cpu cores

alemanda — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 05:35:22 GMT

Steve Maxwell uses CPU or GPU depending on your choice. I tested using CPU.
My video card is not the best for GPU computing I know ...

Re: max number of cpu cores

Steve Jepson — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 16:20:01 GMT

alemanda wrote:
Steve Maxwell uses CPU or GPU depending on your choice. I tested using CPU.
My video card is not the best for GPU computing I know ...

Do you get better results using GPU? Try one of the Maxwell bench mark models. And let us know which way is faster to reach the same level.

It would be useful to know hoe many CUDA cores it takes using GPU to make a difference in using CPU with plenty of memory.

What nvidia card is it going to take in order to be a better value than just getting a faster CPU and more memory? Also, I wonder what the effect a GPU card has on Studio and Fire previews ?

Also I am not so sure the GPU or CPU option in Maxwell is anything new. The nvidia cards have had settings for this a long time. You configure the card for use per the programs you use on your computer. You can do that in Maxwell now but I think you could already do that with the card settings menu ??

Re: max number of cpu cores

alemanda — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 17:02:54 GMT

Steve,
it seems that the engine works a bit differently using GPU or CPU. You get slightly different results. Some features are not available for GPU computing.
I tested my PC with the latest release of Maxwell (demo) and it is very fast. I just launched the Guggenheim museum scene as it is and in 5 minutes it reached 12 SL
Also the denoiser (new feature of Maxwell) makes a great job!

anyway I prefer using CINERENDER (mainly because the light objects are better coded for archicad) and I discontinued Maxwell subscription when I was at release 2.x

Re: max number of cpu cores

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 19:30:40 GMT

Cinerender generally uses the maximum number of physical cores available in a system. Therefore I don't think there is any limit set. website
I have to agree with sboydturner, that perhaps RAM is your limitation. I personally use a 12 core Xeon and I don't think I'll need an upgrade anytime soon. blog

Re: max number of cpu cores

alemanda — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 08:38:58 GMT

just an update about the above matter.
I'm performing some tests with AC21 and it seems that there is not the "limitation" I got with AC19.
Same PC configuration: AC21 uses all the logical cores (28x2=56) while AC19 uses only 32

Re: max number of cpu cores

Steve Jepson — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 08:06:15 GMT

Why is there no ArchiCAD/CineRender Benchmark model ? - so we can do some testing.
I have a new big dog computer now and I want to see how it actually compares.

Re: max number of cpu cores

mikas — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:34:34 GMT

Might be a fun idea. It would just need to be an PLA with included materials and objects, and we all could use it.

I have mostly used cinebench, from Maxon, the company behind cinerender. I think it's rendering motor is based on Cinema 4D R15, and ArchiCAD uses a more recent motor nowadays. Still, it has given quite reliable results comparing different machines - at least according to my observations.

OpenGL bench is not so good in this particular software, according to what I have read elsewhere.

I've got an ~800 figure with my ancient (but upgraded) Mac Pro 2009 now. You might want to give it a try.

Re: max number of cpu cores

Steve Jepson — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 16:50:10 GMT

Thanks. For testing with Maxwell I use this https://www.maxwellrender.com/benchwell/benchmarks/v4

One comparison test I can make for my self is to render a scene in CineRender, and then and because I have the Maxwell plug-in I then select Maxwell as the rendering engine and compare those results. I will be using GPU or CPU with Maxwell and I can see what difference that makes. Even that is not really a good test because I don't think it is possible to set up the rendering engines to do exactly the same thing. Also some card configurations will be better for one rendering engine than the other. Very difficult to compare apples to oranges.

This is why we need lots of tests so people can improve their settings to find what it optimal for their unique hardware/software set ups.

My biggest problem is optimizing the card for use with ArchiCAD. The NVIDIA set up gives a brief description about what the settings mean but I don't know if they are relative to ArchiCAD.