CPU showing 25% usage

[playford]

I'm not sure if this is a problem but when I am rendering my task manager is only showing 1 processor working at 100% and the others aren't registring at all but in the render window 4 buckets are showing. I have a Dual P4 Xeon rinning XP 32.

Thanks
Mark

[Da_elf]

do you have displacement?

[playford]

Nope, I'm only using bump maps for this image!!

[DanielBrew]

Have you got multi-threading turned on?

[playford]

Hi Daniel,

I have got multi threaded selected. I thought it was as I'm rendering with 4 buckets.

[DaForce]

At what point are you seeing this.. is it by any chance during the LC calculation stage? if so make sure you have passes set to 4.

It could just be a bug in windows thats not showing your cpu usage properly althought unlikely.

To test do a simple quick render.. and note the time, then go into the task manager, right click on the 3dsmax.exe process and choose set affinity and then untick all but 1 cpu, then do the render again. If its much slower then windows just isnt displaying your cpu usage properly for some reason.

[playford]

Thanks for the replies everyone,

After rebooting the problem is solved, turns out my IT department did a windows update overnight and I didn't get a reboot message. After rebooting the render times are cut in half and all CPU's show 100%.

Thanks for your help.

Mark