1 machine slower than the others

[trajic]

Hey chaps, quick question, what should I check and how should I check it if 1 of my slaves is rendering much slower than the others? 5 machines running with:
same OS, same memory, mobo, cpu, HD, case, and cooling system.

4 out of the 5 render the same frames at equal times, but the 5th renders 35% slower. Is that faulty hardware? Should I check the temperature of the CPU, and if so, with what software besides Bios? I am thinking it could be a heating issue, but not sure. I have not had any crashes nor overheating warnings though.

the 5 machines consist of: x2 5600's, 2 gigs of corsair, everything is the same.

Banging my head on this one.

Thanks for any ideas.

[DaForce]

Check the cpu usage of the slow machine when its rendering. See if its at 100% for the 3dsmax.exe process or if something else is eating up the power.

I would be suprised if it were heat, as long as the cpu fan is working and its not full of dust it should be fine. Plus you would need the bios option enabled that slows the cpu when it get too hot, and by default thats not enabled AFAIK.
I would think it might something odd in windows.

[trajic]

Ok, I checked into that here is what I found.

that machine is only utilizing 49/50 % each time a task is assigned. The other machines use 99/100 % which sounds normal. This machine also is missing textures after it renders even though it is using the same INI files as the other machines. temperatures are running around 55 C on all machines. Could the fact that it is not using 100 % be why it is missing maps? I would assume that is why it is slower. I did see in the task manager that there are two instances of max running for that messed up machine. One is 3ds max run by that computer name, and the other says running by SYSTEM, the other machines are only running one instance of max with that individual computer name. The messed up machine is using 50 % for each instance running. I do not know why both are being used since the spawner is the only program running.

[DaForce]

Very weird.
I think the 2 max's have something to do with it.

Find out which one should be there and kill off the other. i.e. check the other machines and see if theirs is run by the "system" or the "computer name" and end task appropriately on the problem machine. See if that helps.

[trajic]

Tried killing the one that said "SYSTEM" since the other machines were only running MAX with the computer names associated with them. It killed it, but restarted it seconds later while I was using ti to DR. Should I just reformat that machine? or reinstall max ya think?

[DaForce]

Hmmm weird, your guess is as good as mine at this point.
Sounds like its setup funny somewhere. Maybe a reinstall wouldnt hurt (of max that is.. not windows)

[CCS]

I'm assuming you're talking about DR. If so, check that you are not running spawner as a service *and* as an app as well. I've accidentally done that before.

[trajic]

Strange happenings, I could not uninstall max because every time I tired to shut down the instance of Max running as a "SYSTEM" it restarted immediately and would not let me uninstall cause it said "3d.max is already running. So I reformatted, reinstalled max and vray, now when I run the spawner it starts, opens and closes as usual, but when I send it a job it actually it closes and never changes to the spawner, just shows untitled max file, log shows it as not being able to connect to the DR. Just opens and closes, and in the task manager, it actually is starting and stopping Max, not just the spawner.

I'm lost now, but thanks for the other suggestions

[vlado]

If this is the first install of 3dsmax on that machine, try running a regular backburner job on it first. Apparently, the first time this is done, some setup is being done which is later on required for 3dsmax to open in slave mode for DR.

Best regards,
Vlado

[trajic]

Wow that did it, works great! Thanks guys