Hmmm, odd, the Xeon render in the last test has a lot less noise than the Quad Core.
One thing I don’t think has been mentioned is that the LC passes should be set to 8 for the Xeons to get full speed out of the LC.
Yes, i made sure it was set to 8.
Do you think if my bios had auto shut down the pc, as it did (because the heatsinks were not fitted correctly and it was getting too hot), it could have damaged the cpus ? Im kind of thinking no, cause the benchmark results are still showing 2x..apart from the 3dsmax stuff.
I find the benchmark results compared to the 3dsmax render times very strange.
Xeon 5355’s are suitable for max rendering ? Not just for networking stuff..
Weird. So everything except max/vray is looking ok.
cpus are not designed for any specific service. Your cpu’s are fine for rendering.
As RErender said the 2 bruteforce renders are significantly different. But even still the xeon should have been closer.
Perhaps try a scanline scene. Maybe one of the sample scenes that comes with max. THere must be something causing this. Maybe its just vray.
The architectural test I did further back in the thread was scanline only:
http://www.tech-report.net/articles.x/11443/6
My quad core rendered in 226 seconds.
My dual xeons rendered the scene in 16minutes 41 seconds.
oooh right.
mmm maybe its max?
I would be suprised if it were the cpu’s… i really would
Are you sure you have Multi-Threading turned on the the 3ds Max Preferences under the Rendering tab?
not much help
but that test.max file renders in 80 seconds on my dual quadcore 3.2ghz
supermicro system xp64, max2008 vray 1.5sp1
id say somethings definitely whack
reseat the ram, try using 4gb ram instead of 8
maybe reseat cpus swap em around maybe?
make sure youa re using 1.30 of the drivers
ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/CDR-X7\_1.30\_for\_Intel\_X7\_platform
this new quadcore system ran 15900 in 3dmark vs 12500 for the 3.0g dual cores
Jacob: thanks for letting me know about the times. The cpu’s, motherboard and ram have all been rma’ed for testing. Not sure what will happen there. I hope they do find something.
Out of curiosity, which motherboad have you got ? The same one ?
I did install those drivers…well, just the chipset ones…although, not a lot seemed to happen, it just installed the inf files and then didnt do anything. Even after I rebooted, not a lot happened, no new hardware found or anything.
Thumpa: The multithreading was enabled in the render dialogue 
no the qaud is different
but the dual systems are fast as well
definitely quicker than the quad coreduos we have in the renderfarm
Jacob…which Supermicro motherboard have you got for your Xeons ?
wow looks bad
I would suggest a few things, like try rendering in another packedge, maybe maya or something. Try rendering in vray standalone, see if it makes difference.
I have only got 3dsmax..vray stand alone ? is that even available yet ?
Jacob, I really would appreciate you telling me which motherboard you have…
standalone has been out for long time, of course in beta form.
Just to close this thread and in case anyone is interested.. I got a new board back, 8gig of memory, and a supermicro super server case. I found an article that explained how the snoop feature on some boards (in bios) causes major performance issues. I found this in the bios and turned it off, and hey presto, my xeon system is finally performing how it should…faster than the qx6700…at last 
Thanks for all the advice..
wow really!! amazing.
So it was a stupid bios feature all along.. ha… good to hear its all fixed
Cheers..I know, one setting and it changes so much. It is a feature that is supposed to increase performance, but for me it was totally the opposite. Maybe its better for different types of applications. Surprised it is on by default.
That feeling of, “crap, ive wasted so much money”, has gone
And that is certanly a good feeling to be getting rid of.
What a stupid feature.. crazy.
Enjoy the “free” speed increase
@steveiouk
Good you worked it out!
…so how mucht faster is it now compairing to the Quad core?
Preisler
Its about 1.8 times faster (ish). With the quad core and dual system together, it zips through renders so much faster.
Thanks for the info!
Preisler