3dsmax/vray interface speed is so slow and very frustrating!

[gandhics]

It could be a lot of things as Lele mentioned.

Slate UI performance has some update on 2021.1 or 2. So, if you have 4k monitor, Slate UI drawing speed is a lot better.

There is also generic notification handling improvement in 2021. So, that might help, too.

Then, closing rollouts in material browser like scene material or change to text helps;.

Then, yes, vray new swatch is slower.

If you don't like new default physical materials and fills with whatever material you want.
Either you can switch to VRay preset or modify this material library file.
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021\en-US\defaults\MAX\FactoryDefaults\medit.mat"

For show material by default on issue. you can change default with this. It need 2021.1
setIniSetting (getMAXIniFile() ) "Materials" "DefaultMaterialViewportMode" "0"

IN the end, the key to solve issue is knowing there the problems are. So, if any one can isolate issue or generate simple scene file.
That would be helpful to solve the issue.

[squintnic]

For the 2990 try Core Prio. But leave the threads setting at 32 (which is what they recommend).

Thanks Joe - I will try this today not seen it before.
Lele - I am retiring this WS for a 3950x as my main machine. Ill be leaving it to CPU render in the basement on deadline until it dies.I dont know what NUMAs are except they make Phoenix slow as well.

Im on max 2019 still as I dont see a reason to upgrade yet if the materials and general operation is slow. I didnt have these issues on Max 2017 running a Dual 22 core Xeon.

[squintnic]

It could be a lot of things as Lele mentioned.

Slate UI performance has some update on 2021.1 or 2. So, if you have 4k monitor, Slate UI drawing speed is a lot better.

There is also generic notification handling improvement in 2021. So, that might help, too.

Then, closing rollouts in material browser like scene material or change to text helps;.

Then, yes, vray new swatch is slower.

If you don't like new default physical materials and fills with whatever material you want.
Either you can switch to VRay preset or modify this material library file.
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021\en-US\defaults\MAX\FactoryDefaults\medit.mat"

For show material by default on issue. you can change default with this. It need 2021.1
setIniSetting (getMAXIniFile() ) "Materials" "DefaultMaterialViewportMode" "0"

IN the end, the key to solve issue is knowing there the problems are. So, if any one can isolate issue or generate simple scene file.
That would be helpful to solve the issue.

Im on 2019 still and have reverted to the old material editor in Vray which is better but still way too slow compared to other software. I dont have 4K monitors due to the UI being messed up in 2019 with them. I will get 4K when the UI supports it fully,

[squintnic]

Joelaff wow reading the coreprio page it really seems like the 2990wx was a terribly designed and implemented chip! What a piece of AMD shite lol....
Anyone know if the 3990x has similar isses being reported? Have some specced as render nodes but will go with the slower Intels if its gonna be the same.

[^Lele^]

Lele - I am retiring this WS for a 3950x as my main machine. Ill be leaving it to CPU render in the basement on deadline until it dies.I dont know what NUMAs are except they make Phoenix slow as well.

NUMA
It's very OK a method, f.e., for virtual machines: each has a piece of the CPU and a piece of the Memory, the one *physically* closest to the CPU being used.
Renderers, and other memory intensive applications like Phoenix, will make no such evaluation, and will want to use all the CPU and all the memory locations at all times.
The more memory-intensive the application is (imagine Phoenix pushing and pulling those cells in and out of memory, or V-Ray dealing with proxies and textures loaded and unloaded while rendering), the worse the penalty for accessing physically far locations will be.

It could be that if you set up the machine as a dual VM with single CPU and single NUMA node it would perform really well with Deadline as two nodes.
Worth giving it a whirl, given it's truly a beast of a processor, and it'd be a pity to let it go to waste.

I'm grossly simplifying here, btw, don't shoot me.

[Karol.Osinski]

another poor performing 2990wx - i blame my CPU for my mat editor isses as well, basically good for NOTHING except pure rendering.
anyone know if 3990x is also awful outside of pure CPU render?

My collegue works on 2990wx and I am on i9 7900x. His renders are about 2x faster but I noticed but his viewport often works like sh*t. Opening Maya hypershade...oh man... I tried to convince my boss to wait few months with for 3970x..we eventally got 3970x for another machine and it works MUCH BETTER also rendering wise.

[Dmitriytn]

With a 2990 I had a 'good fun' for a couple of month, once started working from home and started to use it every day 8-16 hours.
I did several of fresh windows updates, bought and returned couple of sets of memory specifically designed for 2990wx and which been listed in QVL of mobo, and CPU.
Tried different bios, different amount of memory. (64gb works a little better then full 128gb)
I've spoken to multiple of guys in discord, facebook, and others. Sometimes felt that I'm the only one who's having problems with it. At some point I really could prep the scene for render on an old i7 5930k, then on this 32 core motherf*cker.
Obviously I do have coreprio setup, got AMD ryzen master etc.
And after all this I gave up, I've cut 4 cores from rendering for VRay using Environment Variables, and it's sort of helped a tiny bit. But Corona still turnes it into pumpkin magically.

But to be fair it's rendering real good, we've got 10 machines at work as a rendernode, and they just perfect for rendering purpose only...... once you solve memory issue lol.

[Joelaff]

I really have very few issues with the 2990w here. Phoenix is a little faster on other machines, but VaRy runs great. Max is no slower than any other machine. I like to simulate Phoenix on another machine anyway (Ryzen 9 iirc).

Oh, the other thing that runs slow is Max hair and fur, but if you reduce the setting in the environment plugin (voxel size or count or something) down to 3 it is again as fast or faster than anything else other than the new threadripper.

We do use coreprio. And comparing 2021 only. That alone was a big UI speedup, but Max is still crazy sluggish on any hardware.

[squintnic]

NUMA
It's very OK a method, f.e., for virtual machines: each has a piece of the CPU and a piece of the Memory, the one *physically* closest to the CPU being used.
Renderers, and other memory intensive applications like Phoenix, will make no such evaluation, and will want to use all the CPU and all the memory locations at all times.
The more memory-intensive the application is (imagine Phoenix pushing and pulling those cells in and out of memory, or V-Ray dealing with proxies and textures loaded and unloaded while rendering), the worse the penalty for accessing physically far locations will be.

It could be that if you set up the machine as a dual VM with single CPU and single NUMA node it would perform really well with Deadline as two nodes.
Worth giving it a whirl, given it's truly a beast of a processor, and it'd be a pity to let it go to waste.

I'm grossly simplifying here, btw, don't shoot me.

thanks for the suggestion, once i get deadline back up and the new machines ill look into that. sick of spending money on cloud farms

[stevesideas]

I've downloaded this: https://bitsum.com/portfolio/coreprio/

Apparently, there can be performance improvements once you enable the options. Numa related, so hopefully, this will help. I may also need to disable NUMA in the bios. I'll report back.

I forgot to mention that I'm using a 2990wx threadripper CPU.

[^Lele^]

Please do report!
If there truly was a certain, simple way of mitigating it, you'd get the eternal gratitude of countless users!*

*Slightly exaggerated for the sake of drama...

EDIT: reading on coreprio's data page is sobering, and somewhat comforting to the issue at hand.

What is the issue?

Nobody knows. Or at least nobody has communicated such. Whether it is core thrashing, a memory channel bottleneck inherent to the NUMA allocation strategy, we don’t know. No theories have panned out that point to a definitive cause, leading to the speculation it may simply be some bug or quirk deep in the Windows scheduler.

What is the ‘fix’?

The ‘fix’ is bizarrely imprecise. For affected processes, a call to SetProcessAffinityMask, without even changing the affinity (e.g. all CPUs to all CPUs), resolves the performance issue – at least most of the time. Our best guess is that the preferred NUMA node for the process is removed, causing the Windows scheduler to change behavior, as evidenced by the thread ideal processor selections, and more importantly the massive change in performance.

[wxyz]

Ensure, where possible, that you're using the processor without NUMA active.
That's great for some things, but truly not very good for interactivity of any sort (gaming, too, f.e.).
Granted, you may see half of your ram available, that way, but perhaps it'll be enough to do those interactive, single-core action tasks.
I have a 1900X and it runs smooth as butter with NUMA deactivated, while it's all hiccupy with it on.

How do I do this?

[^Lele^]

I use RyzenMaster to do so, but it can be done via boot options in windows.

[Crayox13]

Sorry to barge in here, but lately I feel my PC has gotten really sluggish. Render wise it's ok but to work on it is really frustrating. Not sure if this started after some Windows update or if I'm just using large textures lately. I have 1950x so should I try some of the suggestions like that Coreprio? Don't want to screw up my only work PC, and not sure if it's only for 2xxx procesors.

Like some of the weird things I've noticed is that my Chrome opens like 4 times longer than normal....and other weird things. I've scanned the PC with Emisoft Emergency kit, and other things, they found nothing. Sometimes I feel like everything I do Windows says "please wait while we let the bosses know what you did".

[glorybound]

I have to reboot Windows daily, otherwise, everything crawls. I am assuming it was a Windows update because nothing else has changed.