AMD Threadripper 3990X - Can I render with all 64 cores or do I need to use "Game Mode?"

[kurtgtr]

I recently purchased an AMD Threadripper 3990X with 256 Gig Ram and 2 3090 GPUs. I was having issues when I render where my screens would flicker and then either resume or BSoD. I took it to the retailer and they told me that you have to render in "Game Mode" for it to work. They said that that defeats halve of the cores so it works correctly. BTW, the error I was receiving mostly was "Video_Scheduler_Internal_Error."

I am having a hard time believing that as I had not heard of it before. They may be correct but I will be very disappointed that I spent all this money on a beast when a puppy would have worked as good.

Any advice on this from you nice, smart forum friends?

Thanks for the help!!!

[3d-laboratory]

Did you overclock the 3990x? My 2990wx doesn´t like it to be overclocked. I had also BSODs. With the BIOS default settings it works very good. You could als try "ProcessLasso" and see if it helps.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hey kurtgtr and welcome to the forum

You don't need 'Game Mode' for this CPU. I have this CPU for over a year now with 2x 3090s. It is been a great setup for me.
There is always room for hardware issues at the start, I usually take the first few days to stress test the machine and make sure everything works. It is understandable feeling this way honestly as the machine is very expensive
The error you mentioned relates to your GPUs, I can help you troubleshoot this if you are willing to spend time on it. Otherwise you should return it to the retailer and ask to make it stable, it is their job to make sure the machine works as expected. If they talk about a game mode, ask them to enable it
Anyways, could you please list your specs. Memory, motherboard, power supply..etc
What make are you GPUs?
You can download GPUZ and do some stress testing to monitor temperature, frequency, power draw

Best,
Muhammed

[JonasNöll]

Hi,

I am also using the same CPU and don't run into those issues. Not even sure what this game mode should be, but I am rendering across all cores with no issue.
Only issue is that I am not getting the same benchmark scores as I saw online (slightly less, nothing drastic though) but I guess that's the normal spread on CPU's.

Maybe when rendering your potent setup draws too much power and that's why you are running into thos issues? What kind of PSU do you have? In combination with those 2x 3090s you would probably need a quite beefy PSU.
I have 1200 Watts but I'm only running a RTX 3060 aside the CPU, so the requirements will be much less than yours...

Muhammed_Hamed : What is your Cinebench R23 Score with your CPU? Mine is around 60150. I Didn't do any overclocking and so on, just stock operation.Just would like to compare as I saw scores up to 75000 for that CPU so was just wondering...

[Morbid Angel]

I recently purchased an AMD Threadripper 3990X with 256 Gig Ram and 2 3090 GPUs. I was having issues when I render where my screens would flicker and then either resume or BSoD. I took it to the retailer and they told me that you have to render in "Game Mode" for it to work. They said that that defeats halve of the cores so it works correctly. BTW, the error I was receiving mostly was "Video_Scheduler_Internal_Error."

I am having a hard time believing that as I had not heard of it before. They may be correct but I will be very disappointed that I spent all this money on a beast when a puppy would have worked as good.

Any advice on this from you nice, smart forum friends?

Thanks for the help!!!

I would suggesting removing one of the gpus. Depending on what your power supply is and what your motherboard is, could be a few issues.

Did you install proper motherboard drivers? I built by 3990x with a local pc shop, but they did not install correct mobo drivers (which I assumed they would - and that was a mistake on my part) My system kept bsoding, crashing, freezing etc. I ended up working like that for a year, then had enough and reformated the drive, installed everything clean and - no issues for 6 month now.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Muhammed_Hamed : What is your Cinebench R23 Score with your CPU? Mine is around 60150. I Didn't do any overclocking and so on, just stock operation.Just would like to compare as I saw scores up to 75000 for that CPU so was just wondering...

I get around 65000 in Cinebench, 60000 is also normal
Many things could affect the scores including faster memory kits and better cooling(as the cores will boost higher with PBO)
I have 3600 CL16 memory at 256 GB, these are some of the fastest 32 GB sticks in the market. Usually 32 GB kits are CL18 or higher on latency which is much slower
Faster memory affects the RAW CPU performance for Ryzen architecture, it might not be noticeable on some CPUs with fewer cores. But this will scale with more cores, it can be up to 10% faster for the 3990X compared to slower memory
If you go with 128 GB of memory using 16 GB memory sticks, it is much faster as well. You will be able to find 3600 at CL14 for another 10% speed boost

Best,
Muhammed

[JonasNöll]

Thank you for the reply! I am in fact using 4 x 16 DDR4-3200 Kingston RAM, with the option to upgrade to 128. Do you think it would be better to fully upstock to 128GB and is this maybe affecting performance?

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Thank you for the reply! I am in fact using 4 x 16 DDR4-3200 Kingston RAM, with the option to upgrade to 128. Do you think it would be better to fully upstock to 128GB and is this maybe affecting performance?

4x 16 sticks should already be using quad channel, if you look at your board there should be 2 sticks of RAM on each side of the CPU
Upgrading to 8 sticks will increase performance slightly, but honestly only upgrade if you need that amount of memory.. not for performance
If you wanna achieve better performance you will need faster memory kit, 3600/3200 at CL14.. They are quite expensive
You could also look into overclocking if you have good cooling

Again, I think 60000 score is great! I would say above average, many people have issues getting this CPU to be stable at all

[DougBowker]

I have the same CPU (48 cores) and you certainly will have no issues with rendering with all cores, except that you will need to buy a liquid cooling system. I'd also get a BSOD when rendering multiple frames unless I throttled the CPU frequency down. It wasn't the RAM though, as I had 48GB, then 64GB, and later 128GB I rarely used even the 48GB for most scenes anyway. One thing to be aware of is that more RAM = much more heat on the MB. For day to day work I never have to crank up any of the fan speeds BTW and the system runs quiet and cool (the CPU 51° C right now).

Obviously, it depends on the types of scenes you are animating, but mine are generally very technical and it's not uncommon to have thousands of unique objects, with tens of millions of polys, and literally every single object has some level of reflectivity! As a policy I pretty much never overclock my system, so right now everything is running at the fastest "stock" spec. which is already pretty incredible anyway. Main takeaway: The Threadrippers are a true game changer for rendering, but you absolutely need to have liquid cooling if you're planning on doing more than a frame or two at full speed.

BTW: As mentioned by others: Your dual-GPUs might be part of the problem both re: heat and power draw. I take it you're talking the Nvidia RTX 3090? My 2080 Super not only draws a lot of power it's also major heat generator in its own right. Adding another? I have a super-tower case with a lot of cooling built in, and plenty of open space for air-flow, but a 2nd GPU might just push everything off the edge, if you know what I mean. If it were me, I'd pull one of the cards and see if that helps. Past a certain point the power and heat consequences of the two cards might actually be dragging system performance down.