Mental ray with Pro/engineer - best config ?

[sebastien_seb]

Hello everybody,

I am a Pro/engineer wildfire 5 user and I've bought Photolux Arx extension powered with Mental Ray.

I am looking for the best configuration for my computer to increase my photolux application. My goal is to accelerate computation time, I'd like to know if I must give priority to processor or graphic card ?

Intuitively, I think during a photolux computation, computer uses processor rather than graphic card. Graphic card is usually used during realtime 3D, is that right ?

I've asked this question to PTC engineers and my CAD resellers and I'd never obtain the same answers. Sometimes they advice me good graphic card, sometimes graphic card isn't very important to increase mental ray calculation times...


Last questions, do you know if ARX photolux can use Hyper-threading, and can you advice me configuration (processor,etc...) ?

Many thanks !

Sebastien

[Remydrh]

Your question is similar to one asked earlier.

Look here: http://forum.mentalimages.com/showthread.php?p=30113

This might give you a start.

[steve]

To my knowledge, the Photolux ARX extension of Pro/E is using a mental ray version that supports rendering on CPU only. That means, using the fastest CPU models will help, and any additional CPU or a higher number of CPU Cores will help especially, since mental ray will take advantage of that. The mental ray rendering performance scales very well with the number of CPUs or Cores.

Hyper-threading may be enabled on your machine, and mental ray will use it as an additional Core, but it is known to gain only little in terms of performance.

An important aspect is 64bit vs. 32bit platforms: 64bit is preferable since overcomes memory handling restrictions of older 32bit systems. Having sufficiently large amount of memory in your rendering machine is a big plus also for performance.

[Tron]

Hello everybody,

I am a Pro/engineer wildfire 5 user and I've bought Photolux Arx extension powered with Mental Ray.

I am looking for the best configuration for my computer to increase my photolux application. My goal is to accelerate computation time, I'd like to know if I must give priority to processor or graphic card ?

Intuitively, I think during a photolux computation, computer uses processor rather than graphic card. Graphic card is usually used during realtime 3D, is that right ?

I've asked this question to PTC engineers and my CAD resellers and I'd never obtain the same answers. Sometimes they advice me good graphic card, sometimes graphic card isn't very important to increase mental ray calculation times...


Last questions, do you know if ARX photolux can use Hyper-threading, and can you advice me configuration (processor,etc...) ?

Many thanks !

Sebastien

Hey Iceman, get rid of pro/e and pick up 3ds max 2011 design. Especially because you are using it for a motorcycle render. Funny that I'd find you in this forum, eh.

[sebastien_seb]

Hello everybody,

many thanks for your replies. I am testing this configuration :
- windows 7 64 bits
- Cpu core I7 950
- ati firepro v3800 (low cost professional graphic card)

It works good. During computation all cores work and mental ray doesn't use Gpu. This configuration is reliable, i reduce significantly my computation time.