Terrible Machine Performance - HELP!!

[3ddesign]

Our IT department just bought three so-called workstations. They are Quad-Core AMD Opterons with Processor 2358 SE 2.4 GHz. They have 16 GB RAM. Problem is they are rendering almost twice as slow as our Intel Core 2 Extremes CPU Q6850 3.0 GHz with 4 GB RAM. Both are running on NT x64 SP 2. The scene is 1.2 million faces, vray sun, minimal textures.

I'm just wondering if there's a setting somewhere called "check this box for maximum performance" or other equally stupid setting that I'm missing.

Thanks.

Craig

[MoonDoggie]

Make sure all of your processors are running at 100% when rendering on the new machines. Open Task-manager to view this.

[3ddesign]

Thanks. All 8 processors running between 92 and 100 percent.

[stevesideas]

Have you checked your bios for any special features that need to be enabled.

There was a feature on my supermicro x7dwa-n called snoop. If it was on it caused my system to perform terribly. You might want to see if your mobo has the same feature. If not, try going through the bios settings in advanced to see if they do anything. One by one. Or at least do a search online to see if anyone else has had the same problem.

Other than that, it could be overheating and the motherboard thottling back on the cpu clocks. Bad memory ?

Edit: They may be running at 100% but that doesnt mean they are performing as they should.

Edit2: Have you checked any benchmark comparisons to see how they should be performing ?

[RErender]

are they single quad cores? If so, that's probably about what to expect from them.

[vlado]

Best to run a few benchmarks first, not necessarily with V-Ray, and see if the slowdown is consistent.

Best regards,
Vlado

[3ddesign]

Best to run a few benchmarks first, not necessarily with V-Ray, and see if the slowdown is consistent.

Best regards,
Vlado

Vlado,

My search for benchmark tests resulted in dozens. Do you have any in particular that you like to use?

Craig

[vlado]

No, not really. Just do several of them and compare with other results from similar machines.

Best regards,
Vlado