Recommendations on CPU selection? -- building a rig dedicated for MB3D rendering

[Chillheimer]

You can achieve faster rendertimes with less noise by leaving those values untouched and insted double or x4 the resolution and downsize the image then, anti aliasing.

[Minacious]

Instructions on how to do that exactly. I've just been putting them at 1440 then lowering the values to 0.01 and waiting for twenty minutes or so. I am not familiar with anything like this, obviously. Thanks in advance.

[Chillheimer]

Instructions on how to do that exactly.

-Ok set the image width to what you want the end-result to be.
say 1920*1080 (you will have to untick "keep aspect" to do that).
-prestt scale arrow up 2 times. It should say 7680*4320 now.
-to the left there"s "viewing" Change this to 1:4. This will shrink the large image back to 1920*1080 and smooth out the rough pixels that you are dealing with.
-press calculate and enjoy

and leave the raystep multiplier unchanged ant standard 0.5 I've spend a lot of time with mandelbulb and rarely touche it..

[Transistor1]

Main calc time: 0:49.6
HS calc time:    0:19.7
AO calc time:    0:01.4
Reflects time:   1:32.5

SYSTEM
CPU: Intel Core2 Quad Q9650 ( Yorkfield ) 4 cores / 4 threads 3 GHz
 L1 Data:  4x32 Kbytes 8-way
 L1 Inst.:  4x32 Kbytes 8-way
 L2        :  2x6144 Kbytes 24-way
RAM: 8GB DDR2 667 MHz

OS: WINDOWS 7 64 bit
 

[Glitchraptor]

Specs:

 Windows 7 64-bit,
 Intel Core i3-3120M CPU @  2.50 GHz ; 4 cores
 4 GB Ram


Main calc 0:54.1
HS calc 0:25.2
AO calc 0:01.8
Reflections 2:02.6

[xahhax]

iMac 5K 2015
Main calc 0:15.5
HS calc 0:6.6
AO calc 0:00.9
Reflections 0:31.7

[surrealista1]

AMD A-8 5600k APU
64 bits

Ubuntu 14.04
ram memory 4gb

Main calculation time 0.55.3
HS calc time 0.23.6
AO calculation time 0.02.0
4 threads

[Weber]

Main calc time: 29.8
HS calc time: 12.6
AO calc time: 01.2
Reflects time: 1:01.5

Intel 15-2500k @3.30 Ghz
Windows 7 64 bit
8GB Corsair Ram

[xahhax]

Mac Pro 2013 12 core Xeon 2697-v2
Main: 0:07:4
HS: 0:03.2
AO: 0:00.8
Reflect: 0:14.5

[Patryk Kizny]

What is the total limit of cores used by MB3D? Would it scale nicely up to 72 cores including HT?

[hobold]

Some versions of Windows limit the number of concurrent threads. Even server versions of Windows have mild trouble using more than 64 concurrent threads - this is an API limitation that requires extra programmer effort to deal with.

Linux has no such limits. Some years back the Linux kernel even got special performance tuning for supercomputers with 500+ threads.

[lycium]

Patryk are you planning on getting those cheap Xeon Phis? I've been tempted to get one but have no idea how it "actually works" - like, I've heard they replace the CPU? And also, those cheap boards are passively cooled, no idea how that will play out in a normal PC case...

[Patryk Kizny]

Patryk are you planning on getting those cheap Xeon Phis? I've been tempted to get one but have no idea how it "actually works" - like, I've heard they replace the CPU? And also, those cheap boards are passively cooled, no idea how that will play out in a normal PC case...

Considering 2x Xeon E5-2696 v3

[lycium]

Pretty heavy firepower

One thing to bear in mind about multi-socket computers is that they have NUMA architecture: the memory is physically attached to a processor, so if processor B needs to access processor A's memory, it's quite a lot slower. For this reason, software has to be carefully written to be NUMA aware to get full benefit of multi CPU systems; this is similar to how multi GPU needs quite some extra consideration, and can sometimes not scale well.

PS. You know I wanted to get in touch about my custom OpenCL fractal path tracer, but unfortunately you weren't interested

[thargor6]

What is the total limit of cores used by MB3D? Would it scale nicely up to 72 cores including HT?

Currently, the limit is 64 threads, should be not that much effort to increase the limit, but needs at least a recompile, maybe even change of some internal structure(s).