Nehalem 8 core Mac Pro hyperthreading and AE CS4 Multiprocessing

[Brian Charles]

Are you certain the older MacPro is a Nehalem? According to Apple’s specs the Nehalem doesn’t come in the configuration you describe.

I have a 2.8 Dual Quad Core Xeon with 16 GB of RAM and have worked on single Quad Core Nehalem’s but with very little RAM. For some processes the Nehalem is quicker with *render multiple frames* disabled.

I wonder whether the difference in speed its how your RAM is configured, Apple advises optimal performance is achieved by installing RAM in a specific order. From Apple’s site:

“For optimal memory bandwidth, all three memory channels shouldbe used, and memory should be balanced across the three channels”

“Note: Populating slot 4 slightly drops maximum memory bandwidth, but depending on the applications used, overall system performance maybenefit from the larger amount of memory.”

manuals.info.apple.com/…/Mac_Pro_Early2009_Memory_DIMM_DIY.pdf

[Kevin Camp]

the newer mac has more cores and less ram than the older mac. that can result in lower performance.

the older mac has 8 cores with 16gb of ram, so 2gb of ram per core, which is about the minimum for good performance.

your new mac has 16 cores with 12gb of ram, so about 750mb of ram per core… not so good. in the multiprocessing settings try leaving at least 1-2gb of ram for other apps, then leave around 10-12 cpus for other apps. this should get you in the 2gb per core ballpark on the new mac.

i actually have the same two macs at work, but the ram amounts are reversed, and i get nearly the same performance on both, so you should be able to ge3t better performance on the newer mac.

for a better explanation of ram, multiprocessing and the mp settings in ae, check out this link:

https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2009/12/performance-tip-dont-starve-yo.html

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Anthony Giola]

To Be exact you are bottlenecking on your memory and cpus. too much CPU and not enough ram. try lowering the amount of ram per core in ae mp settings, if that doesnt work then increase the amount of ram per core. One of the two should work.

[Brion Thompson]

Hi everybody!
I have successfully solved my performance problems with multiprocessing in After Effects CS5 on a Mac Pro by turning off hyperthreading.

I just started a new job as an After Effects artist for a company that does a lot of green screen work. To my pleasant surprise my boss set me up with a top of the line Mac Pro workstation, a 12 core 2.93GHz with 32GB of RAM and dual 24″ displays.

I was completely disappointed by the render performance with multiprocessing enabled. In some cases it was just stopping altogether. Even with RAM and processor cores dedicated to other applications I couldn’t even surf the web with a render in progress. Trying to use the multiprocessing brought the whole system to its knees. I did some research, adjusted settings in the multiprocessing preferences and tried over and over again to get the performance I knew this thing was capable of.

After some more research I finally found some information on how to disable hyperthreading on the processors.

I installed the bare bones xcode off the OS X install DVD with all the extra stuff turned off. After the install was complete I found the processor pref pane, double clicked on it to install it into my preferences and unchecked the hyperthreading checkbox.

After a quick restart I set up my multiprocessing preferences in After Effects.
Out of 32GB RAM total.
4GB Ram of other applications.
2CPUs reserved for other applications.
2GB RAM allocation per background CPU.

My next test render finished a project that took 31 minutes previously, in 1 minute 40 seconds. My RAM previews are very zippy as well. I know I was having a hard time finding any information on this. So I hope this comes in handy to somebody else out there.

[Dustin Ward]

I have nearly the same specs:
Processor: 2 x 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
Memory: 64 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB / NVIDIA Quadro 4000 2048 MB
Operating System: OSX 10.8.2
Software: Adobe CS6 Version 11.0.0.378

You wrote:
I installed the bare bones xcode off the OS X install DVD with all the extra stuff turned off. After the install was complete I found the processor pref pane, double clicked on it to install it into my preferences and unchecked the hyperthreading checkbox.

Are you saying that you needed to completely reinstall the OS? Please explain in more detail, or if anyones else has any input toward this matter, please reply. Is there anyone that would say this is a bad idea for any reason?