[Lyle Patton]

[Thomas Leong] “But it is a head-scratcher”

I know, right? I’m utterly baffled.

I can tinker with multiprocessing settings and/or CPU settings and possibly decrease render times but neither course of action ultimately explains the underlying discrepancy between the two systems.

Yes. I double checked the rendering settings on both machines to make sure they were in fact creating “identical” files. And they are.

I’ll also run some tests with different AE projects to see if the anomalous behavior is consistent.

May also post over on Adobe’s forum and see if I get any insights there.

Thanks again for everyone’s suggestions.

[Lyle Patton]

Thanks for your suggestions.

I’m using a good after-market cooler in a full size tower with plenty of fans. Temps when rendering are getting up to 50 degrees centigrade–nothing out of the ordinary.

However this render doesn’t do anything like push the CPUs to 100%. All 12 threads are engaged but the system doesn’t typically exceed 15 to 20 percent CPU usage.

For comparison, I ran Prime95 stress testing. This ran all CPUs at 100% and temperatures quickly rose to 80 degrees centigrade.

I always believed that the low CPU utilization was simply a testimony to the power of the CPU. Back in the day, this was one of the most powerful consumer-grade CPUs available. Is there some way to “force” it to work harder?

.

[Lyle Patton]

Thanks for your response. I’ve replied to the questions you ask below.

“Caching…”

The respective render times listed in the post represent “fresh” renders with wiped disk and media caches and data base caches.

Please share your memory & multiprocessing settings.

Desktop:
32 GB RAM total. 26 GB available to Adobe. “Reduce cache size…” NOT checked.
Multiprocessing is not enabled.
Laptop:
8 GB RAM total. 6 GB available to Adobe. “Reduce cache size…” NOT checked.
Multiprocessing is not enabled.

[Lyle Patton]

Thanks for your response. I’ve replied to the questions you ask below.

Does it have footage? where is it located? -> Try changing it.

The footage consists of high resolution PSD files. It is stored on the RAID 0 Array which is also the render destination drive. When I moved the source footage off that drive and rendered instead from the SSD and the secondary 7200 RPM drive (two different tests) there was about a 15% decrease in render times but nothing like the performance exhibited by the laptop.

Does it uses effects? Do any of them use GPU for acceleration? -> Try disabling it.

It uses three effects—primarily Trapcode Particular but also Fill and Ramp. Particular version 2.1.2 is installed on both systems. I don’t think this version of Particular supports GPU processing. GPU processing for Ray Tracing was enabled on the Desktop. I turned it off and re-tested the render but there was no change in performance. The laptop video card doesn’t support OpenGL or CUDA.

Are both on the same version of AE cs6? -> check and upgrade.

Yes—it is the same on both: ver. 11.0.4.2

Are you outputting to a local or remote drive? -> Try changing it.

I’m outputting to a local drive. My initial post indicated it was the second 7200 RMP drive. That was wrong. I’m actually outputting to the same RAID 0 Array that also holds the footage. Leaving the source footage on the RAID array, I tried outputting to the second 7200 drive and then to the OS SSD drive. Neither had a significant impact on render time.

Also you may try trashing the preferences, try rendering it in a previous version, try disabling multiprocessing (if on).

Multiprocessing is not on on either system.