low priority and new Xeon chips

[peterguthrie]

On my dual xeon 2687w (v1) system I used to be able to choose low priority in the task manager while max is rendering and then i could get on with other work, or email or whatever.

With my new(ish) dual xeon 2697 v2 system I find i need to turn cores off in the affinity section to do the same.

Any ideas why?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Click in vray use low priority and that should maybe solve it?

[3LP]

I don't think the low priority in Vray will fix it.
I do have the same issue with my i7, and I'm using low priority as default settings for years.
It worked a wile back but now it doesn't anymore, even when I put vray in low and max in low in windows, I have to take core out to be able to browse.
Not sure if this is a Vray issue though...

Stan

[peterguthrie]

I'm pretty much convinced something has changed recently.. but whether it is vray, 3dsmax or windows to blame i'm not so sure about.

any ideas Vlado?

(would be cool if you could @ mention people on forums, you get so used to it with twitter, fb etc these days!)

[vlado]

No, I don't think anything has changed in V-Ray since a long time in that regard... Which OS are you using?

Best regards,
Vlado

[peterguthrie]

win7 x64.

Its hard to pin down but for example I used to be able to use chrome while rendering if i just changed the priority of 3dsmax.exe to 'low', these days I have to free up a couple of cores using affinity

[Morbid Angel]

win7 x64.

Its hard to pin down but for example I used to be able to use chrome while rendering if i just changed the priority of 3dsmax.exe to 'low', these days I have to free up a couple of cores using affinity

This is HT related. For years I run my xeon with ht off and i could do all that as well. Now I enabled ht and such things are much slower and harder like you said. I think having ht puts additiona stress on the cpus and just maxes it out.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

There is program that aids windows managed in a way that it allowed to remember the settings for your processes. So you can select max, untick 1 core (1 ht core) as I think that could do it and never worry again about it as it will be remembered by default.

[alexyork]

This used to be a bad problem for me on different machines, but not for many years, maybe 4. But back when it was an issue I used to use Process Lasso to handle it - it would automatically set selected programs to run at custom levels of priority. Very useful. Not sure what's going on with your setup - this isn't a problem I've faced for ages. It was 10x worse when I used to use mental ray

[3LP]

Like said earlier, I don't think it's Vray related because I do have the same issue with corona...
But, there is definitly something changed in max or windows then in the last 6 months because I did not had that issue before.
For me, taking a core out is not a great solution as when you don't need that core, it just sits there and doesn't help the render.
Would be way better to have it working the same way as before when I was setting it to low, windows was managing the priority to the cpu way better.
Haven't changed max version or windows version though, so I really don't know how to get this back as it was.

Stan

[jacksc02]

Peter,
I think with that many cores on a sing CPU you can afford to turn 1 off
24 physical cores in a single machine is rather bonkers!

[peterguthrie]

Peter,
I think with that many cores on a sing CPU you can afford to turn 1 off
24 physical cores in a single machine is rather bonkers!

valid point.