Networking rendering and winXP 64

[Clifton Santiago]

I have asked a related question before, but I wanted some more clarification for myself and my IT support.

We are currently building up a network rendering farm consisting of older dual-proc workstations as well as new workstations and render nodes that are dual dual-core opterons. We are considering installing Win XP 64 on the new machines. The old machines obviously will remain 32 bit.

The question is, does anyone have this kind of mixed setup, and how does it perform, particularly in relation to Max, Vray, and Backburner? Also, if a max file was created on a 64 bit system, can it be edited on an old 32 bit workstation?

[RErender]

We have a mixed farm, 22 xp64 boxes and about 40 xp & win2k boxes. No problems rendering in the mixed environment. Files created on 64 bit workstations open fine on the 32 bit boxes and visa versa.

Only issue we have run into is a few files with old nurbs surfaces would not open on the 64 bit boxes. These objects we created as far back as max 3-4 so I don't know if nurbs objects created in 5-6 would be an issue too. Interestingly nurbs objects created in Max 7 on a 32 bit box open fine on the 64 bit boxes...

[Dynedain]

I am running XP64 on my workstation, my servers and rendernodes are all Win2k, the other 3d workstation is plain 32bit XP...

We have had no problems whatsoever involving 3dstudio and networkrendering that is attributable to XP64.

Repeat. No problems. Any problems we have had have not been because of XP64.

[panthon]

Can 3dsmax 7 or 8 with VRAY use more than 3Gb per process assigned to it with XP64? We are considering assembling a 64 bit machine with 3 or 4 GB RAM and windows 64 bit. Will this system benefit from the total amount of ram in spite of having a 32 bit max version? In other words, a 32 bit app -3dsmax- running on 64 bit windows will benefit from 4 Gb of RAM? Or is it limited somehow by the the inner 32bit nature?

[Da_elf]

im running a dual opteron on one system and a dual xeon on the other and it all runs perfectly

[RErender]

Yes, you will be using all 4GB

[panthon]

Yes, you will be using all 4GB

That´s good to know!

[panthon]

Well, we have our new machine with windows 64bit and 4Gb RAM. We are testing it using backburner with a full loaded scene with several xRef scenes. It uses 3.6 Gb of ram when dynamic memory limited to 2500 is used and CRASHES when static memory is ON. We don´t seem to be able to go beyond 4Gb with this machine, no matter how heavy the scene is. We think windows starts using virtual memory before running out of physical RAM. Any experience about using max for netrendering on windows Xp 64?

[RErender]

4GB is the limit for 32bit proccesses, what you need is a 64 bit Max and/or 64bit Vray standalone.

Here is some interesting info http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654 the Virtual address space per 32-bit process data is interesting, you might try the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch in your boot ini to see if that gives you a little more overhead.

[panthon]

We are going to test it right now. Thanks for your help, rerender
BtW, how can we get the vray for 64bit edition? Is there a beta or something?

EDIT.

No visible difference. It crashes at 3.8, 3.9 GB with or without the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE...

[Da_elf]

well. its because your out of ram. time to put into effect all your ram saving tricks. you would never have made it that high up on normal xp. once max releases 64bit version then things will really change. wheee cant wait

[panthon]

In fact it wasn´t a real scene. Actually we tried to make it crash
But i´m personally dissapointed. With 2Gb of physical ram, windows reached 3.2 Gb before max crash. With 4 GB of ram, vray crashes at 3.8. It isnt what i was expecting, but maybe a 5.X Gb limit...
I see we will have to wait, but i really thought this was THE time. We´ve been waiting for so loooooong.....

[natty]

I think you must remember all the other Apps and windows stuff thats running in the background ...

[RErender]

Yeah we still have memory limits

But you might also test how much quicker a 3.2GB file renders with 4GB instead of 2GB should be a prettty good difference.