Is AMD potentially risky? (Threadripper)

[Diorn]

1 hour ago, marty said:

@Diorn it would be great to see how OpenCL CPU performs on the 7900x too.  

Sure i could do it. For this i need to just put HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICETYPE=CPU in the env file and turn on OpenCL on all the nodes that support it?(mainsolver and any microsolvers)

Edited September 6, 2017 by Diorn

[Guest tar]

1 hour ago, Diorn said:

Sure i could do it. For this i need to just put HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICETYPE=CPU in the env file and turn on OpenCL on all the nodes that support it?(mainsolver and any microsolvers)

Yep. You can check that the CPU is being used for OpenCL via the Help Menu, About Houdini. Scroll down and there is an OpenCL section. You can also use hgpuinfo -c in the terminal if you are on MacOs or Linux once you source the houdini_setup.

[Diorn]

1 hour ago, marty said:

Yep. You can check that the CPU is being used for OpenCL via the Help Menu, About Houdini. Scroll down and there is an OpenCL section. You can also use hgpuinfo -c in the terminal if you are on MacOs or Linux once you source the houdini_setup.

OpenCL Exception: Could not create OpenCL device of type (HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICETYPE): CPU on platform vendor (HOUDINI_OCL_VENDOR): Intel(R) Corporation. The built-in CPU driver may not support your CPU (-2)

i get this error, am I doing something wrong?

[Guest tar]

1 minute ago, Diorn said:

OpenCL Exception: Could not create OpenCL device of type (HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICETYPE): CPU on platform vendor (HOUDINI_OCL_VENDOR): Intel(R) Corporation. The built-in CPU driver may not support your CPU (-2)

i get this error, am I doing something wrong?

Can you send that error into SideFx - it should have worked out of the box. You can also run in the console

hgpuinfo -l 

to show all available OpenCL devices.  

[Diorn]

33 minutes ago, marty said:

Can you send that error into SideFx - it should have worked out of the box. You can also run in the console

hgpuinfo -l 

to show all available OpenCL devices.  

hgpuinfo -l 

is listing me my 2 graphics cards, no CPU though

 

Edited September 6, 2017 by Diorn

[Guest tar]

6 minutes ago, Diorn said:

hgpuinfo -l 

is listing me my 2 graphics cards, no CPU though

 

major bummer - oh well at least the CPU is fast enough anyways.

[Diorn]

18 minutes ago, marty said:

major bummer - oh well at least the CPU is fast enough anyways.

sure is, but i'll try oCL again at a later date, could be teething issues. Thanks for your guidance in any case

 

[DaJuice]

That 7900x is looking really good Diorn. What kind of temps are you seeing with that overclock on your 360?

 

I've updated my original post with the boolean sphere scene to include an external link, since downloading of attachments seems wonky at the moment.

Here are some numbers with a revised overclock. The relevant specs:

Threadripper 1950x @4.00GHz

32GB HyperX Predator (4x8GB) @ 3,200MHz | 16-18-18-36

2x Nvidia 1070 FE (relevant to OpenCL scenes I would assume)

 

Boolean Sphere: 15:02

Grain: 1:45

Pyro: 6:09

Fluid: 0:33

Cinebench: 3411

Cinebench Single Core: 164

 

Couple of side notes:

It seems like the latest beta BIOS (1.52) for the MSI board fixed the Core Performance Boost crashes. With CPB enabled I observed the core frequencies bouncing between 3.4GHz and 4.00GHz in HWiNFO during the boolean sphere scene, averaging around 3.7GHz, with a completion time of 16:12.

Regarding OpenCL, I'm finding that GPU OpenCL is faster for me than CPU. For the purposes of these benchmarks it might be better to disable OpenCL or to make sure it's running on the CPU to take the video cards out of the equation.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2017 by DaJuice

[Guest tar]

16 minutes ago, DaJuice said:

Regarding OpenCL, I'm finding that GPU OpenCL is faster for me than CPU. For the purposes of these benchmarks it might be better to disable OpenCL or to make sure it's running on the CPU to take the video cards out of the equation.

It should be faster on most modern GPUs but they can't access the CPU ram and therefore a generally limited to smaller sims.  I'm hoping for Gtx 980 speed on the TR/7900x.

[VFXArabia]

Really awesome entry thanx guys,
I created some benchmark scenes when I bought a dual xeon system to compare it with my old 6800 and found some interesting numbers, you can find them here:

https://www.vfxarabia.co/single-post/2017/09/10/Houdini-Benchmark-Cores-vs-Clockspeed-updated

I made it into a live google sheet, so I would really appreciate it if you help me and the community to extend it by posting your test results and I will update it asap.

Thanx

Edited September 16, 2017 by VFXArabia
updated link address

[Diorn]

On 9/8/2017 at 9:15 AM, DaJuice said:

That 7900x is looking really good Diorn. What kind of temps are you seeing with that overclock on your 360?

 

 

Hi guys, was away during the weekend.

The cores individual temps cycle between 43 and 81 degrees celssius when running the bool sphere, the AIO has a fairly gressive fan curve now, going to 100% for the fans when temps go over 60-70 degrees. I'm also running a power blanced mode in windows that only pushes the cores to max clock when softwares demand it, the rest of the time they iddle at 1.2-1.8 ghz for max power and temp efficiency. I've read that i can change the fans that come with this AIO for some high end ones and that will boost the systems cooling capability, good to know if i really want to crank things up in the future.

Odd thing is now that i ran the Bool test again i get a different score, 16:06. I ran it a couple of times(same with all the benchmarks) with the same result last time but now something is different. Ah well. Updated the spreadsheet accordingly. I'll be back with an update if i found out what's up.

There's some effort still left for me to put in to get the best possible balance for temps and clock speed but right now it's stable and fine like this. Added your OC benchmark updates to the spreadsheet. How are your temps running? I understood from some OC articles that 4ghz is pretty much the most you can squeeze before temps and power draw  start to get crazy.

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jQFxPdOBcWbYtJJkVafr4VYojhkV5MqInZmEsT_zmZA

 

@VFXArabia I'll try out your tests as soon as as possible

 

 

Edited September 11, 2017 by Diorn

[VFXArabia]

9 hours ago, Diorn said:

Hi guys, was away during the weekend.

The cores individual temps cycle between 43 and 81 degrees celssius when running the bool sphere, the AIO has a fairly gressive fan curve now, going to 100% for the fans when temps go over 60-70 degrees. I'm also running a power blanced mode in windows that only pushes the cores to max clock when softwares demand it, the rest of the time they iddle at 1.2-1.8 ghz for max power and temp efficiency. I've read that i can change the fans that come with this AIO for some high end ones and that will boos the systems cooling capability, good to know if i really want to crank things up in the future.

Odd thing is now that i ran the Bool test again i get a different score, 16:06. I ran it a couple of times(same with all the benchmarks) with the same result last time but now something is different. Ah well. Updated the spreadsheet accordingly. I'll be back with an update if i found out what's up.

There's some effort still left for me to put in to get the best possible balance for temps and clock speed but right now it's stable and fine like this. Added your OC benchmark updates to the spreadsheet. How are your temps running? I understood from some OC articles that 4ghz is pretty much the most you can squeeze before temps and power draw  start to get crazy.

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jQFxPdOBcWbYtJJkVafr4VYojhkV5MqInZmEsT_zmZA

 

@VFXArabia I'll try out your tests as soon as as possible

 

 

Thanx, I like the effort you are doing with your sheet also.
What's different about my method is that I'm trying to test multiple resolution, the results differs alot.

[Guest tar]

the 7900x looks excellent but am concerned under continuous load that the heat will be too much.  An overnight Pyro sim or Mantra would be a good starting point to see if the cooling works well and the performance stays up.

[Diorn]

3 hours ago, marty said:

the 7900x looks excellent but am concerned under continuous load that the heat will be too much.  An overnight Pyro sim or Mantra would be a good starting point to see if the cooling works well and the performance stays up.

I have an upcomming freelance gig with lots of dust-smoke so i'll update my findings. From OC results for this AIO and the 7900x i'm pretty confident it's going to be stable though. I really weighed in as much info i could gather about how far i could take it realistically because at stock speed it's not up to par with an OC TR or else i would of just went with a TR and stick to OC ing it.

4 hours ago, VFXArabia said:

Thanx, I like the effort you are doing with your sheet also.
What's different about my method is that I'm trying to test multiple resolution, the results differs alot.

Yup, i am sure you're tests are relevant. I'm all about leaving the necessary info to anyone else looking to do an upgrade. I know i wish i had less headaches about the final decision. Actually cancelled a TR order and the mobo for it at the last minute . Not really seeking to be right at this point because they both do a good job but i am interested to find out about the particulars, most online reviews don't actually deal with the needs of professional day to day use so we depend on each other to find out these things, just as learning more skill-wise. 

 

@VFXArabia  managed to run through the tests, added the results to the spreadsheet, you can pick them up from there. also i used the testing method you specified:

Quote

- I used Houdini Performance monitor were you hit record and go to the last frame, when the sim is done we just grab how many seconds it took. This way the viewport wont be updating while simming and this will make it a purely cpu test.

 

Edited September 11, 2017 by Diorn
added VFX Arabia test results

[malexander]

I think it's worth noting that any new CPU architecture is inherently risky. AMD's offering has NUMA issues and Intel's heat issues (due to poor packaging of the heat spreader). If you have any issues, I'd suggest dialing back any overclocks. Rendering a sim or sequence isn't any faster if it crashes midway through.

[DaJuice]

 

On 9/7/2017 at 11:33 PM, marty said:

It should be faster on most modern GPUs but they can't access the CPU ram and therefore a generally limited to smaller sims.

Ah that makes sense. Also Marty and Diorn, if you are getting unexpectedly short completion times for the boolean sphere scene, check and make sure that all 45 frames have actually been rendered to the output folder. With some of my unstable overclocks, I was seeing 100% in the Render Scheduler but the sequence had stopped short.

 

On 9/10/2017 at 0:17 PM, VFXArabia said:

I made it into a live google sheet, so I would really appreciate it if you help me and the community to extend it by posting your test results and I will update it asap.

Cool, I will give these a whirl.

 

23 hours ago, Diorn said:

How are your temps running? I understood from some OC articles that 4ghz is pretty much the most you can squeeze before temps and power draw  start to get crazy.

I believe around 82C is the max I've seen from playing around with various overclocks. This is with a Corsair H115i (280mm radiator). The coldplate on those is a bit inadequate for the size of the IHS on Threadripper, but at the time there weren't any coolers available designed specifically for TR. Now there's the Enermax Liqtech TR4 and the Noctua stuff, and more to come I would assume.

IMO to go beyond 4GHz on TR you'd really want custom water cooling, and the power draw will be ugly.

 

If anyone feels like adding another benchmark to the mix, here is one that's purely Mantra. Reflection/refraction + displacement + SSS + volume rendering + instancing = good times.  Probably not the kind of thing Mantra excels at. It's an older 15.5 scene so it may give you a load warning, just ignore it. Hit 'Render to MPlay' and note the completion time in the Render Scheduler or in the MPlay window.

tabasco.zip (33MB)

 

I got:

3.4GHz (CPB enabled): 18:06  ~62C

3.8Ghz: 16:35 ~79C

I attempted 3.9 and 4GHz as well, but they weren't stable when rendering this scene.

Edited September 12, 2017 by DaJuice

[Diorn]

@DaJuice Actually i was getting longer times than the first run this time for the Bool sphere. No ideea why yet. To add to the mistery, today it's back udner 16 at 15:57.

About the cooling. The fact that there were no waterblocks on AIO kits large enough to properly fit the TR format and i was a bit in a hurry also put me off to going that route. Of course one can only guess at this point how much or if it would make a difference but already you have options for this at least in custom land:

 https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-supremacy-evo-threadripper-edition-nickel
EK waterblocks and gear is probably the way to go for a custom rig but i didn't want to jump into it yet myself. Will try their radiator fans at some point as they are very strong and could offer a noticeable boost on temp readings. Also worth noting this company was offering some AIO kits of great performance but they are not available now. I was reading they are preparing an improved version that will come out soon, so you might want to keep an eye out for that.

If i feel more adventurous in the future and i absolutely want to get the most out of the intel I could consider to delid it, a bit extreme but it will unlock  temps enough to go over 4.5ghz, was seeing a 7900x (with no delidding) reach 4.8 ghz but it was not stable enough for benchmarking.

Sure i can do the Tabasco Mantra benchmark for statistic's sake but i can already bet TR will beat the 7900x  in this department  

Edited September 12, 2017 by Diorn

[VFXArabia]

@Diorn Awesome, thanx man I already updated my sheet.
Just double checking this test was done with all cores 10*4.4 right?

[Diorn]

2 minutes ago, VFXArabia said:

@Diorn Awesome, thanx man I already updated my sheet.
Just double checking this test was done with all cores 10*4.4 right?

No problem, yes, same configuration as the rest of the tests

[VFXArabia]

On 9/12/2017 at 10:57 AM, DaJuice said:

Cool, I will give these a whirl.

@DaJuice Thanx man, cant wait