Silly Question...

Silly Question...

Postby irishrailguy » Mon Sep 29, 2014 12:38 am

So yeah, this is a pretty basic question regarding information I really should know by now...

But, I'm rendering items in Max with a new lighting setup, which is horrendously slow (for example, one cab scene is now over an hour into a render and I'm not even half way there :shock: ). Those I know who are also using a similar setup seem to be able to do this in near enough ten minutes, so I want to know what the secret to a fast render. I have a good system (I think) which has an i7-2700k o/c'd to 4.2Ghz, a GTX580 and 8Gb of Corsair Vengeance Jet Black RAM (DDR3 1600Mhz). So taking into account what I learned in my computer architecture lectures last year, along with the assumption that all the main components in my system are fairly decent parts, I'd have to assume Max can't do too many of it's light-traced calculations with 8Gb of RAM. So is the RAM the issue here? I do seem to have a large CPU usage by Max (around 80-90%) but the RAM is also pretty much maxed out.

So what's the amount of RAM other people have for arduous tasks like light-traced renders? I'm open to getting more (max can be 16Gb without ditching the current pair of sticks and buying some fresh ones).

Thanks folks!

Kevin
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Re: Silly Question...

Postby Tankski » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:03 am

Slow renders can also be caused by much larger sample spaces for light traces, which I'd guess is also related to memory through the assumption that more samples means more memory required. If it requires more memory than you have the system will start swapping it from RAM to your disk(s) and that will slow things down considerably. What I'd suggest you do is lower the samples and use the Surface Blur tool in Photoshop to try remove some of the noise.

Also make sure that you're not running Photoshop with Max simultaneously, as they're both RAM hogs.
Last edited by Tankski on Sun Oct 05, 2014 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Silly Question...

Postby irishrailguy » Sat Oct 04, 2014 11:53 pm

Thanks for the suggestions David, halving the samples seems to be the best compromise. I can get a full render done in just under an hour and the result is relatively smooth, but I do think that 8Gb isn't really suitable for a developer's PC. I'll get another 8 and see how that works out, but it's good to know that others don't have Max and PS open at the same time, PS especially has a really high demand when working with large .psd's.

Thanks,

Kevin
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