Originally posted by wchamlet
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.
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.
You are right on maya you can define how many prcessors it will use, my confusion was on the animation part, Maya will use 2 processor as define in the configuration to render the animated scenes better than 1 right?
So now my question is two cpu's of 1.x ghz have better performance than one 2.x ghz.
if so then 1 fast cpu will have better performance on maya than 2 slow ones....right?
thanks again!!!
If you can Imagine, Draw it, if you Draw it, Animate it, then it becomes a Masterpiece.....