Simply Maya User Community - View Single Post - Dual processors vs SINGLE processor wich is better?

So you guys are saying that XP doesn't multi-thread apps on its own? If that's the case, then I'd never buy a DP desktop PC. Seems rather pointless.

OS X is completely multi-threaded, and utilized both processors all the time. There is never an instance when you are only utilizing one processor. Although not all programs are multi-threaded in OS X, but the ones that are, Maya, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, etc... really benefit from the second processor in realtime, as well as rendering. But everything that is running in OS X is configured by the OS to run across both processors. But it helps more if apps are specifically written for it.

Let me get this straight...when rendering animation (that's my final goal here) i dont need dual processors? why? we still have to go thru the batch render program or im wrong?

and if this is true, Maya uses only 2 cpus when render in a scene?
(No movement involved)

I'm confuse now...

Originally Posted by

Two processors make rendering faster. And no you don't have to use the batch renderer to utilize both processors, as long as they are in the same machine. Just tell Maya how many processors you want it to use when rendering, and that's it. Pretty simple. At least that's how it is on my DP unit using Maya for OS X. I don't know how it works on PC's, but I'm sure it's the same.

However, there are limits to using two processors for rendering, at least on a Mac. For some raytracing scenes, you would need to make a batch render of your scene and flag each processor to render different frames (odd/even). That way there isn't a bottleneck of trying to process/access too much info at once. I don't remember the script, but it's on Alias old forums, if they still exist.