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Multitasking while rendering

westernnomadwesternnomad Posts: 90
edited December 2015 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

So I just had a custom-built i7 8-core computer built, temporarily using my old NVidia GTX 560 GPU, (planning for 2 GTX 970's in a few months) and as I'm waiting for a render to finish, I thought it would be nice to watch some Netflix or Dramafever while I wait. I have all 8 CPU's cranking away on a Daz render and none of them will give even a little for entertainment purposes. How do I convince this awesome new machine of mine to be more awesome and share a cpu or two for other purposes?

Post edited by westernnomad on

Comments

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,982

    Go to Task Manager, right-click on DAz Studio, select 'Set Affinity' and unclick a CPU or two to stop DS from using them.  Assumes Win 7+ .. :)

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232
    westernnomad said:

    I thought it would be nice to watch some Netflix or Dramafever while I wait.

    This is just about the worst "something else" you could try to get your computer to do while it's also rendering. Both tasks are power-intensive and demand as much as they can grab of your system's resources. And they don't do it in occasional bursts, like just about any other program, they do it continuously until the process is finished.

    I have no problem web browsing and checking my mail while D|S is running at full throttle, but I'd never try anything like streaming video or playing a music track — it will bring your system to its knees and slow everything down to the point of unusability.

    There's also a small but measurable chance that your system will crash because it's run out of resources; you will lose all progress in the render and any unsaved changes to your scene.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    SpottedKitty said:
     but I'd never try anything like streaming video or playing a music track — it will bring your system to its knees and slow everything down to the point of unusability.

    One of the advantages of having a true hardware sound card...laugh

  • westernnomadwesternnomad Posts: 90

    Here we go for a test run to see who's right...

    Verdict is in! With an i7 with 8 logical cpus, I allocated 6 logical cpus to Daz. 

    I am running dramafever.com, watching an episode of Yi San in High Definition while rendering a scene with 6 raytraced light sources while writing this message. It's cruising along just fine. Daz is, as usual, using 100% of the 6 cores and Google Chrome browser using less than 50% of each of the 2 cores that I freed.

    Nothing wrong with SimonJM's advice!

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634

    I can just Surf the web, listen to MP3's max quailty and render 3DL or Iray on my i7 3770 quad core with a punny GT610 which I don't use for rendering.

  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,239
    Szark said:

    I can just Surf the web, listen to MP3's max quailty and render 3DL or Iray on my i7 3770 quad core with a punny GT610 which I don't use for rendering.

    So in English <grin> does that mean IYO it's a good idea or a bad one?  I tend to hold with the notion that if you have a big scene you want it done right asap, you don't want to take any chances on some conflict, somewhere.

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