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My new mac is not fast at all!!!!

T

the vj

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 23, 2006
654
0
I do 3D animation in my Quad G5 with 4GB of Ram. I have been working on a project that takes 7 hours to render.

I just got a new Mac Pro 2.8 with 2GB of Ram. I installed ONLY lightwave and run the same render... the result: the same 7 hours as the G5!!!

What is going on?

I just transfered the same scene and $3000 later I get the same thing.

Do not tell me is ram, how come 8 processors of 2.8 are as fast as 4 of 2.5 from 4 years ago?
 
the vj said:
I do 3D animation in my Quad G5 with 4GB of Ram. I have been working on a project that takes 7 hours to render.

I just got a new Mac Pro 2.8 with 2GB of Ram. I installed ONLY lightwave and run the same render... the result: the same 7 hours as the G5!!!

What is going on?

I just transfered the same scene and $3000 later I get the same thing.

Do not tell me is ram, how come 8 processors of 2.8 are as fast as 4 of 2.5 from 4 years ago?
Click to expand...

Is LightWave multi core aware?
 
Yes, is using the 8 cores, it says 8 threats.

Wow, what a disapointment! I was expecting al least half the time. And I am using the latest version of Lightwave 9.3.1
 
Which version of Lightwave? If it's an early version it will only use one of your 8 cores so that may be the reason...
 
the vj said:
Yes, is using the 8 cores, it says 8 threats.

Wow, what a disapointment! I was expecting al least half the time. And I am using the latest version of Lightwave 9.3.1
Click to expand...

Maybe it is something to do with less RAM then? A cheap way of finding out is by taking 1GB out to see if the render takes longer.

2GB is arguably pretty much border line minimum these days. I know rendering is more CPU than RAM intensive but more ram couldn't hurt.

I plan on getting a minimum of 4GB when I get a MacPro next year.

I don't use lightwave myself I'm just trying to look at things objectively for you.
 
No man, ram is BS excuses. Never in life a computer can run at that speed because of ram, if that is the case I would have to add 4 more GB to the G5 to get the double of speed.

I mean, we are talking 8 processors against 4, not to mention bus speed and even OS. My G5 is using Tiger.

The only thing I did was installing LW plain, and get the scene.
 
the vj said:
No man, ram is BS excuses. Never in life a computer can run at that speed because of ram, if that is the case I would have to add 4 more GB to the G5 to get the double of speed.

I mean, we are talking 8 processors against 4, not to mention bus speed and even OS. My G5 is using Tiger.

The only thing I did was installing LW plain, and get the scene.
Click to expand...

It's actually 2 CPUs vs 2 one just has more cores. If Lightwave is not multicore aware or has a limit of awareness (say 4 for example) then you would get similar results as the Quad G5. It's not the Mac is the software.
 
Are you using a universal version of lightwave?
I agree that it's the software. A lot of software isn't multi-core compatable.

I used Final Cut Pro on my old iMac, then bought a Mac Pro and used the same software, what a huuuuge difference, but that's only because the software could keep up with the hardware.
 
Something's not right there. I suggest you go over to the LW - Mac forums on Newtek's website. The main coder of the OSX version of LW, Chilton, would be interested to hear about this I'm sure. But I'm also sure he would point out the Ram differences just like some here have as that's not a proper comparison.
 
Take a look at this Lightwave benchmark page - http://www.blanos.com/benchmark/ - choose OS X in the OS field, any CPU, any # of CPUs, any # of cores, Radiosity Box scene, and any version.

You get several Mac Pro and G5 PowerMac results - although it's not clear what the exact CPU specs are for the Mac Pro, all the Mac Pro results blow away the PowerMac's.

Perhaps you're heavily using some part of Lightwave that's as not multiprocessor aware - I don't know the program myself, but try different scenes, don't base your impression on one.
 
the vj said:
No man, ram is BS excuses. Never in life a computer can run at that speed because of ram, if that is the case I would have to add 4 more GB to the G5 to get the double of speed.

I mean, we are talking 8 processors against 4, not to mention bus speed and even OS. My G5 is using Tiger.

The only thing I did was installing LW plain, and get the scene.
Click to expand...

Maybe it trully is your RAM, cause it needs to leave all the rendered stuff etc somewhere, normally your RAM, but when it's not enough it will use your hard drive, which is slower, that explains it (for me).
 
Is it an old version of Lightwave? IE. Pre Intel?

If so then it will be running in Rosetta on your new Mac. Rosetta is an on the fly emulation technology allowing Power PC software to run on Intel Macintoshes, and comes built in with every Intel Mac.

If so, get yourself a modern copy of Lightwave.
 
The OP says he's using the latest version.

the vj said:
... And I am using the latest version of Lightwave 9.3.1
Click to expand...

Edit: Actually, just had a thought. Did you migrate your apps and account from your old PowerMac or did you install LW directly? If you migrated, you'd get the PPC version transferred (although I think there's a good chance it wouldn't work at all if you did that).
 
the vj said:
No man, ram is BS excuses. Never in life a computer can run at that speed because of ram, if that is the case I would have to add 4 more GB to the G5 to get the double of speed.

I mean, we are talking 8 processors against 4, not to mention bus speed and even OS. My G5 is using Tiger.

The only thing I did was installing LW plain, and get the scene.
Click to expand...

Open "Activity Monitor" and check out what it says while you are rendering, especially CPU usage (should be as close as possible to 800%) and Disc Activity (should be very little, less than 100 reads/writes per second).
 
Ok.......

Now is working fine!!! 2 hours!!!

I downloaded the LW demo. Somewhat I got the installer I had of the same version of the demo I downloaded but in the activity monitor said Power PC ¿?

So, I downloaded the demo again directly and is working fast. The processors are half way average.

Strange but is fine now. I wonder why the same installer would react different, probably the Newtek web site took information from my computer to send me the Power PC version when I got the LW from my G5, who knows. :)

Now I just added every single most consuming anti aliasing and filters and is working like the wind...

The only complain I have now is the fan noise from the Mac Pro... is noisy! the G5 does not make any noise at all. I use to have the computers in my room but it seems I would have to take this baby to the other room next door.
 
Nah... I added everything I could think of to the animation and is taking 4 hours! Nice!

This will help me so much, specially because I am working with the Philips WOWvx 3D screens and that takes a lot of 3D rendering.
 
You really should add more RAM to your MP though... I always recommend 1GB per core (like you had with your G5). Right now, you're at 256MB per core. That's a significant difference when trying to render out.
 
Agreed, MORE RAM, 2 GB is a joke with Leopard & Newer Software requirements, I bet LW uses 1-2GB itself, I know Leopard is a ram hungry OS.
I would (and do) run at least 8GB.
 
So, what you've proved is that a RAM crippled Mac Pro, running emulation of code not-native to the Xeon processors, is STILL as fast as a G5 running it's own native code?

That is pretty impressive (good) results for the Mac Pro :)

The fact that it gets to be almost 4x faster while still being RAM crippled is even more amazing.

I wonder what would happen if he had 8 gigs of RAM to play with?

I love love LOVE my Macbook Pro, but I the Mac Pro is just so seductive.
 
mperkins37 said:
Agreed, MORE RAM, 2 GB is a joke with Leopard & Newer Software requirements, I bet LW uses 1-2GB itself, I know Leopard is a ram hungry OS.
I would (and do) run at least 8GB.
Click to expand...

LW uses around 450MB activity monitor said. Actually everything takes about 800 MB in ram and there is a bit more of 1GB free.

Now, in my experience using macs you will need to way a few good years to get the performance speed.

The difference was LW PPC working on intel, it was not ram based. Mac OSX doesn't work that way, it takes the ram it needs for the application and that is it.

With the quad G5 I have the same performance with one application or 20 until I run out of ram, but the performance is the same.

With the G5 and panther I had Light Wave, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Livetype, Photoshop, Toaster and Safary, Msn, Yahoo Msn, etc, all that working and rendering at same time for 4 continuos days and the only thing affected was video ram. When I plugged a second monitor and hour later everything crashed.

But of course I am going to give some ram, if possible take it to 6GB. I am rendering HD here. But first a 1GB video card, a guy here is selling his very cheap because no one wants to buy it, he bought the wrong one.

Well, my G5 is gonna have plenty of power for Logic Pro at least as long Apple doesn't ditch PPC.
 
bigbossbmb said:
You really should add more RAM to your MP though... I always recommend 1GB per core (like you had with your G5). Right now, you're at 256MB per core. That's a significant difference when trying to render out.
Click to expand...

Not everyone necessarily has enough money for minimum of 8GB of ram after buying a $3000 computer.

I don't really agree with the statement either. RAM is great, but it doesn't push the computer like some people think it does (ie. god-like).
 
the vj said:
No man, ram is BS excuses. Never in life a computer can run at that speed because of ram, if that is the case I would have to add 4 more GB to the G5 to get the double of speed.

I mean, we are talking 8 processors against 4, not to mention bus speed and even OS. My G5 is using Tiger.

The only thing I did was installing LW plain, and get the scene.
Click to expand...


It's not a "BS excuse", you just have a completely wrong expectation.

More cores do not necessarily mean more speed. Why? Because of a thing called process and thread synchronization. Access to all physical resources like RAM and hard disks must be synchronized in an SMP system, which, in fact, means serialization: Each core waits for its turn to write to the RAM. So usually only operations that can be performed in the cache of a CPU core actually run concurrently at the very same time.

Therefor doubling the cores almost never means doubling the speed - many times the opposite happens because of the administrative overhead.

There are also many tasks that don't scale well or benefit from parallelization at all. Games, for example, are traditionally not multi-threaded, because it doesn't make much sense for the classical "game loop" design approach; one ultra-fast CPU does them more good than eight concurrent slower CPU cores.

I would assume that your rendering software would benefit a lot from additional RAM, no matter how many CPU cores your system has. I mean all that data must be placed somewhere, doesn't it?

Then there really is the problem whether that software and its implementation can benefit from so many cores.

What did His Steveness say so nicely about why Apple is working on Grand Central? His statement was something like this: "Nobody knows how to program these multi-core machines. Two cores, okay, no problem. Four cores, maybe. But eight cores? Forget it!"
 
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