Kardonn Posted August 18, 2015 Share Posted August 18, 2015 Been looking into maybe getting myself a Windows based dual Xeon E5 2699 v3 system lately and using it to replace both my current workstation and a couple of my render nodes at the same time. Only worrying part is that I've seen some posts on various forums about some applications only using or 'seeing' 36 threads instead of 72, leaving them running their system at 50% throttle. So just like the title...is anyone here running H14+ on a Windows Pro system with >64 threads? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDude Posted August 21, 2015 Share Posted August 21, 2015 I've got dual e5 2650 v1 in my home rig. Works perfectly so far. This works out to be 32 threads. I remember researching to make sure it works, and didn't see anyone that had mentioned their setup was running @50%, perhaps they didn't allocate their ram in the motherboard correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fathom Posted August 23, 2015 Share Posted August 23, 2015 2x e5-2695 is grabbing all 48 threads just fine under windows. there are occasions tho where i bump into single-threaded sops or sections of dops and drop down to 2% usage. and then i get sad. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kardonn Posted August 25, 2015 Author Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) So I'm pretty safe to pull the trigger then on a 72 thread workstation? I've got 32T right now, no issues there of course, I'm just worried about counts above 60 or 64, there's some number there that stops registering apparently with some applications under Windows...or so I've heard anyway. Edited August 25, 2015 by Kardonn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dulo Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I am using a 64 Core opteron system with 256Gig of ram. Its great for rendering which really scales very well, but but simulation and cooking seldom uses more than 20% of CPU. Rendering most of the time goes up to 98% .. but sops , pops, ... not so much .. ( at least with H14. had no time to play with H15 till now .. ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
symek Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I am using a 64 Core opteron system with 256Gig of ram. Its great for rendering which really scales very well, but but simulation and cooking seldom uses more than 20% of CPU. Rendering most of the time goes up to 98% .. but sops , pops, ... not so much .. ( at least with H14. had no time to play with H15 till now .. ) Is it true also for hscript mode? Sometimes the biggest bottleneck of big simulation is viewport refreshment, which may take more than a cook itself. I've just finished a Pyro sim something like 10 clusters of 768x3 of a smoke. I didn't try to simulate it in an interactive session, but Houdini took me once 15 GB of RAM when I only unpacked by mistake the voxels. Anyways, baking on farm, on 40core machines consumed for the most of a time 100% of CPU. (Perhaps due to clustering? - is Houdini intelligently queuing multiply Pyro objects for solving at the same time? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kardonn Posted August 25, 2015 Author Share Posted August 25, 2015 I am using a 64 Core opteron system with 256Gig of ram. Its great for rendering which really scales very well, but but simulation and cooking seldom uses more than 20% of CPU. Rendering most of the time goes up to 98% .. but sops , pops, ... not so much .. ( at least with H14. had no time to play with H15 till now .. ) Are you under Windows or Linux? If Windows, I'm assuming Windows Server then cause of 4P...wondering if that handles thread counts any differently than Pro. I think I'll pull the trigger on this 36C monster then if you're seeing those kinds of Mantra results under Windows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magichops Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Hi, i have built a dual xeon system 2696 v3 (2699v3) 72 cores on windows7.But unfortunately Houdini 14 indie is just seeing 36 threads instead of 72 . I have asked to the support and waiting for the reply now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kardonn Posted October 29, 2015 Author Share Posted October 29, 2015 (edited) Bad news all, confirming here that a 36C/72T box is only using 36 threads when rendering Mantra jobs. Houdini 14.0.444, Windows 10 Pro. Haven't tried H15 yet or Fedora, might get around to that tomorrow. My guess is it has to do with some Houdini limitation it hits at 64 threads, because I've got a different Quad-CPU 64C/64T system where all 64T light up with Mantra...and then this 72T box ends up only using one of the CPUs. Edit: H15 had the same issue. 36T light up and that's it. Still need to give Linux a shot, but I assume it all would work fine there. Edited October 29, 2015 by Kardonn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted October 29, 2015 Share Posted October 29, 2015 Can you post a screenshot of the CPU monitor? I'm confused as to what may be slower as hyper threading is only meant to give up to ~15% more performance in the real-world afaik. BTW. Over on Red forum there are similar limitations when running DaVinci Resolve http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?137145-New-Dual-Xeon-RESOLVE-Build-October-2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kardonn Posted October 30, 2015 Author Share Posted October 30, 2015 (edited) Can you post a screenshot of the CPU monitor? I'm confused as to what may be slower as hyper threading is only meant to give up to ~15% more performance in the real-world afaik. BTW. Over on Red forum there are similar limitations when running DaVinci Resolve http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?137145-New-Dual-Xeon-RESOLVE-Build-October-2015 Tested with HyperThreading turned off, both CPUs load up 100%. According to benchmarks I lost around 19% speed. I did a head to head Mantra job though before and after HyperThreading, and it's much faster to turn it off and let it properly use both procs of course. 57:16 vs 35:27 Just makes me a bit sad to think it should really be under 30 mins (or my pizza is free). Edited October 30, 2015 by Kardonn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kardonn Posted October 31, 2015 Author Share Posted October 31, 2015 Had SESI confirm today that it's an issue related to Window's ProcessorGroups. From the release of Windows 7 onwards, they now create a ProcGroup for every 64 logical processors that the OS sees. Applications need to be explicitly written to scale across multiple ProcGroups, and Houdini isn't scaling yet. When you boot a box like this one with 72 logical cores, Windows sees that the number is >64, creates ProcGroup0 and ProcGroup1, each containing 36 logical cores I guess so that the numbers aren't skewed (otherwise ProcGroup0 would have 64 cores and ProcGroup1 would have 8 cores in my case). Turning off Hyperthreading turns my box from a 72 logical core box back into a 36 logical core box, and then they're all just contained within ProcGroup0, and Houdini then has no issues. So far, most applications I've tried except for Houdini were more than happy to scale across ProcGroups and use all 72 threads. Bummer. Off to Fedora then for all serious rendering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dome Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 // Bummer. Off to Fedora then for all serious rendering. Do all the 72 threads work under Fedora (or linux in general). I'm about to buy 36C/72T workstation and would like to know. If it works fine, I might go with Fedora or CentOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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