xeon 8 core slowdown

[pinpan71]

i did a quick benchmark with the "laser" scene and both the 2xquad xeon (2,0 ghz, 1min27sec) and the core2quad (2,4ghz, 2min15sec) performed as expected.

with a really heavy scene with lots of proxies the xeon is still bad. i will try a faster 800mhz ram.
i now think that the ram is the real issue. i tried all kinds of bios settings, but nothing changed.

[stevesideas]

Im glad you found out what the issue was. I had 667mhz speed, it wasnt on the supermicro recommended list either, I wonder if that was the problem ?

[gilpo]

i did a quick benchmark with the "laser" scene and both the 2xquad xeon (2,0 ghz, 1min27sec) and the core2quad (2,4ghz, 2min15sec) performed as expected.

with a really heavy scene with lots of proxies the xeon is still bad. i will try a faster 800mhz ram.
i now think that the ram is the real issue. i tried all kinds of bios settings, but nothing changed.

With lots of proxies, network speed and hard drive speed also come into play as these files have to be read frequently. Going to a gigabit network shaved 2 min off a 15 minute render for us. We also changed the drive that stores our proxies to a 3 disk RAID-5 array and that helped as well. As we add drives to the array, it will get faster.

I'm not sure if any of this would apply to you, but it might give you some ideas.

[gilpo]

Im glad you found out what the issue was. I had 667mhz speed, it wasnt on the supermicro recommended list either, I wonder if that was the problem ?

Bad ram can cause a multitude of problems. Whenever I have problems with a system, ram is always my first suspect now.

We have had bad luck with both Corsair and Crucial lately. I've had to send a stick back about every month this year from one of them. I will say that both companies' support and warranties are good, but its just a pain to lose a system for a couple weeks for a ram swap. So far, all our Kingston chips have been trouble free. I also highly recommend getting what is on the motherboard manufacturers approved list. It seems that the no-frills varieties (no heatsink, no lights, standard speeds, etc) seem to last longer for us. Maybe because their timings haven't been pushed so hard. Who knows.

Let me know if you find anything else our or need more help. I'll be glad to offer what help I can.

[DIGITAL_FACTORY]

...most up to date drivers, most up to date bios.

Not always the best course of action...

Some of our Q6600 came with an older BIOS version and where outperforming the ones with newer BIOS by up to 25%. We downgraded all machines to the same, older BIOS and haven't had a problem since.

[Da_elf]

after aaaaaalmost 3 years of having my boxx i started getting problems. looked like the video card had gone but when i changed it, it was still not working. when i called tech support at boxx the had me check the ram. that seemed to be the problem.

[stevesideas]

When you say problems do you mean cpu slowdown/under performance or some other type of problem ?

[EricCamper]

[QUOTE=steveiouk;363464]I have a xeon system 5355 with 4gb memory and a quad core6700 system with 8gb memory, you are saying the quad core will be a lot faster.

Aren't both those systems quad core? The 5355 is cause that's what I have. Or did I misinterpret. I do know that you definetly need 8 gigs or better to power the dual quads

[vlado]

There are several things to try in this case:

(*) Try to render without texture maps;
(*) Try to render without the proxies;
(*) Try to render with the proxies, but with larget dynamic memory limit.

Best regards,
Vlado