Distributed Rendering - Backburner - PC not using all cores

[Intenzity]

Hello,

Unfortunately this may be a simple answer but I really couldn't find it in the searches.

Architect4 is my main rendering machine.
Architect3 is a workstation but I also use it for DR.

Additional Info:

Windows XP 64bit
Vray 1.5sp4
3ds Max Design 2010

So when I send a job to Architect4, everything works as it should, it starts rendering and Architect3 starts rendering. Both computers use 100% of the cpu. Somewhere down the line Architect3 drops to only using 50% of the cpu. In my high resolution renders this may happen after 1hr or 5hrs, doesn't seem to be at a specific point. Has anyone experienced that, or am I missing something?

Thanks!

- A

[vlado]

Does it happen on any scene? Or just this one? Is there any displacement, proxies, fur involved?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Intenzity]

Hi Vlado,

So far its happened in two scenes. Both of which had vray displacement and proxies. I figured that when it got to the those areas, it became more of a memory process than cpu usage, but after it was done with those areas, the cpu usage on my second machine with DR stayed at 50%. The primary machine has had no problems though.

There was a third scene that had no proxies or displacement but that was an overnight render and I don't know if it experienced that problem. I have another scene going soon that has displacement. I'll keep an eye on it. I also disabled screensavers just in case that had some voodoo involved with the cpu...hehe.

Thanks.

- A

[Intenzity]

Just to update, I rendered two other scenes with proxies and displacement and it rendered fine. I'm rendering a 6th scene now and it did the same thing again. The main render machine is fine rendering at 100%. The DR machine dropped to only 50% after about two hours. The only difference between the settings on these scenes is for the ones that worked, I had the dynamic memory limit at 1400MB where the scenes that didn't work I had it at 1300MB. Did 100MB make that much of a difference to limit the cpu or are they unrelated?

Architect4 - main render machine - has 4GB of Ram
Architect3 - DR machine - has 3GB of Ram

In the end if my problem is really unique, I could always just render from Max itself with DR instead of doing it through backburner.

Thanks.

- A

[WimOos]

We have recently switched to max2011 from max2009 and have experienced the same problems. Some computers use 100%, other will use less. I have narrowed it down to the bitmap proxie/pager in max. When that is disabled every computer uses 100%. I have read somewhere that your the bitmap pager works better with service pack 2, which our render farm does not have, as we have decided not to bother upgrading windows on them. I have not tested if this, but disabling the bitmap pager gave the whole farm 100% rendering power again. You just have to remember disabling it in every scene.