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NUCLEO and Hyper Threading? Steve Forde?
Hi,
The manual says nucleo can do a slight performance upgrade with hyper threading?. But you have to enable hyper threading it says.
My pc supports hyper threading, but the performance was not better at all. I could asume I haven’t enabled hyper treading, how do I enable it?And are there other things I should check?
Grtz
Noiz -
6 Replies
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What are the specs for your system?
If it is just a single CPU with HT technology, the performance gains are pretty minor (compared with multiple CPU’s). Also – rendering to movies (as opposed to Image Sequences or Previews) may take longer using Nucleo with just a single CPU and HT.
Let me know more about the system you are using, and the type of project (resolution, effects and render settings), and I will try to shed some light on it.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
Hi,
I will give you the specs, but i’ll throw in some other questions as well.
pentium 4, 3.4ghz, sata raid, and 4gig ram ddr2 (motherboard: https://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8ANXP-D.htm ) winXP AE6.5
It will probably be the the fact that I rendered a movie instead of an image sequence. (dv pal, dv render settings and i used trapcode:lux coincidently)
But here is my other question, (this is all before I tried nucleo, this is also the reason why I tried it)
I had 1 gig of ram, made a test project (the same, with lux), and it rendered for about 10minutes.
Then I bought 3 gig of ram so now I have 4. Then I rendered my test project with great expactations, but it took him 12min this time!!!! I am shocked.Could it be the fact that I have 2 x 3 ram slots and inserted 2x (1 stick of 1 gig, 2 sticks of 512mb all ddr2) and that the ram sticks all need to be the same?
If I check properties under my computer, it says that there is only 3.20gb of Ram, is this normal?
I read about the 3gb switch in xp, something with the boot.ini file. Should I use it? And if so, do you know a site where they explain it in plain English HOW to do it? I am just not nerdy enough to understand the microsoft manual about it. 😀
Thanx for your time.
Grtz
My English is not 100%, if something is not clear. tell me
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I am going to insert my comments into parts of your message for clarity…
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“pentium 4, 3.4ghz, sata raid, and 4gig ram ddr2 (motherboard: https://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8ANXP-D.htm ) winXP AE6.5″
I just checked online, and yes this is only a single CPU with HT, as well as PCI-Express. Nucleo should be telling you when AE starts that it does not meet minimum system requirements. Its just a warning, because things might actually slow down, which Nucleo cannot control on this system. Nucleo will however, still run as if the system was a dual-processor machine.
“It will probably be the the fact that I rendered a movie instead of an image sequence. (dv pal, dv render settings and i used trapcode:lux coincidently)”
Ya – rendering Movies with Nucleo is really only beneficial on a true multi-cpu or multi-core workstation. There just isn’t the CPU to do things quickly on only a single CPU with HT.
However, I do want to point out that Nucleo will also not provide much speed gain with Trapcode Lux, no matter what system you are on. This is because Lux (as opposed to Shine, Particular, Starglow, 3D Stroke and Echospace) is already multi processor aware. There is a minor speed gain on say a Quad, but definitely not on a single CPU with HT. That said, if Lux was used with say another plugin like Particular, then nucleo will provide a tremendous gain, as the use of Particular will essentially “slow” Lux down.
Check out: https://www.gridironxfactor.com/products/nucleo_benchmarks_tc_lux.asp for benchmarks on Lux as well as the other Trapcode plugins.
“But here is my other question, (this is all before I tried nucleo, this is also the reason why I tried it)
I had 1 gig of ram, made a test project (the same, with lux), and it rendered for about 10minutes.
Then I bought 3 gig of ram so now I have 4. Then I rendered my test project with great expactations, but it took him 12min this time!!!! I am shocked.Could it be the fact that I have 2 x 3 ram slots and inserted 2x (1 stick of 1 gig, 2 sticks of 512mb all ddr2) and that the ram sticks all need to be the same?”
All RAM being equal should not be a problem. DDR2 does not require parity to run (unless on Mac), but it is generally a good idea to make sure that each stick is in the same slot in the first bank of slots, as its equal “partner” in the second bank of slots. Therefore, if you have the 1 GB stick in the first slot of bank 1, make sure the other 1 GB stick is in the first slot of bank 2…and so on.
However, – I found this on your motherboard’s site:
“*Note: Through GIGABYTE innovation of supporting 6 DIMMS memory on Intel chipset motherboard. However, due to chipset limitations there will be a frequency downgrade of memory modules when 6 DIMMs are fully loaded.”
This means that the speed of the RAM is downgraded (I don’t know by how much) when all the RAM slots are full. This could have a major impact with AE (especially with Lux). This could be the primary reason for your slowdown. I don’t know for sure – but if you placed 4 1GB sticks, you would not need all slots, and not hit this limitation, according to your PC manufacturer. I have not tried this, so unfortunately I’m just listening to your manufacturer.
“If I check properties under my computer, it says that there is only 3.20gb of Ram, is this normal?”
Unfortunately, Yes. You have a motherboard with PCI-Express. This will create what is called the RAM “Black Hole”. What’s happening is your motherboard BIOS is taking 800MB of RAM of your 4GB away from windows to use as a buffer for the PCI-Express card bus. This can be modified in the BIOS – but I don’t recommend it. This will happen regardless of having any PCI-Express devices or not. This is why windows only says it has 3.2GB of RAM.
“I read about the 3gb switch in xp, something with the boot.ini file. Should I use it? And if so, do you know a site where they explain it in plain English HOW to do it? I am just not nerdy enough to understand the microsoft manual about it. :D”
I don’t recommend doing this at all. Its really not meant for win XP, but more windows XP server. Its only there because the two operating systems share the same core foundation. It can be more of a hassle than its worth in terms of performance. Also, if AE could see all 3GB of RAM, your performance would probably be even worse, as the OS would not have much left (much less than 200MB due to other applications and services), and everything would grind to a halt.
Hope this helps…
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
Hi Steve,
I just wanted to thank you once more for your excellent posts on these subjects. I can only hope that you’ll stick around the COW in the future.
Cheers,
Bar3nd
Forum COWmunity leader for:
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS
MAGIC BULLET SUITE
INDIE FILM & DOCUMENTARY -
Thanks Barend. Will be here as much as time permits. In research mode for a new product right now, so on the net alot. However, I hit travel season soon (couple of weeks..) and may not be around as much.
I really like the COW though – its a great research tool for software design, and really allows me to learn what’s important and what’s not.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
Thanx,
I did balance out my ram over my slots, so thats not it. I
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