benchmark: hyper-threading

One day Anselm posted some info, that hyper-threading can slow down some 3dsmax operations, especially FumeFX. I don’t believe him. Who should? 🙂

Let’s make some benchmarks. Target machine:

Intel i7 920 2.67GHz @2.79GHZ (overclocked to 2.79)
12GB RAM
24GB Page File
3dsmax 2011 SP2 x64
VRay 2.10.01

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Scene 1:

Pretty simple VRay scene, you can download it from http://3dspeedmachine.com/

HT OFF: 40min 7,6s
HT ON: 30min 8,5s

Hyper-threading gain: +33%

Scene 2:

Here is a scene from real production (still in progress). It contains many hi-poly objects, ~50 Vray Proxies, ~200 textures (more than 2GB overall) as well as a lot of tree groups, populated with VrayScatter.

HT OFF: 1h 22min 25s
HT ON: 1h 5min 3,7s

Hyper-threading gain: +26%

Scene 3:

FumeFX 2.1a scene. Default simulation mode and rendered with Scanline.

Simulation:
HT OFF: 6h 13min
HT ON: 4h 59min

preset: Dust Light

Hyper-threading gain: +24%
Rendering:
HT OFF: 2h 57min
HT ON: 2h 24min

Hyper-threading gain: +22%

Theoretically, this beast is a little different. Some FumeFX simulation parts aren’t multithreaded, so those operations are done on a single thread, BUT overall dividing isn’t 1/8, but 1/4, so even when Hyper-threading is enabled calculation isn’t left for one half-divided core. And practically, we see that HT helps even in that situation.

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Conclusion:

Hyper-threading is in any ways good Intel Technology, I’m recommending enable it whatever you do.

6 Comments

Anselm says:

2011-12-06 at 15:23

It helps with pflow 😉

deko says:

2012-02-23 at 12:56

Yes, after cloth, pflow is probably the only software wich don’t like our expensive machines :))

Tomatico says:

2013-09-21 at 22:25

thanks deko for this ! in rendering its completely clear that use ht is so much better ! but some process in max don’t use HT so what about them ?? For example Rayfire simulation or heavy script process ! cloth simulation (i dont check mcloth yet ) ! many others ! What do you think for these kinda simulation !??

1. deko says:
  
  2013-09-23 at 11:18
  
  In my opinion – leave HT whatever is possible. It isn’t so bad in practical usage.
  
New User says:

2014-03-16 at 17:07

Can anyone comment on the use of hyper-threading with a render farm? I have been told that Fume FX + Hyper-threading + Multiple Machine Rendering can introduce unwanted artifacts or behaviors in the render? Can anyone confirm?

1. deko says:
  
  2014-03-18 at 00:03
  
  FumeFX with Hyper-Threading can’t make any artifacts. I personally don’t saw that and logically this shouldn’t happens in any ways.
  
  Rendering on multiple machines can make some unwanted behaviors if those machines ar not same: different FumeFX versions, maybe some libraries, different renderer version, etc. Can’t confirm if different hardwares can affect that. It shouldn’t, but practice shows that crazy bugs happens totally unexpected sometimes. It’s always good idea to take care of renderfarms and make every machine to be same configurations.