Windows vs. Linux - which renders faster?

rhinoguy · Post by **rhinoguy** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 9:32 pm

Has anyone compared the rendering times of Windows XP vs. Linux? I am a Windows user, but I am thinking of setting up a Linux partition and running Blender on it.

qaz99 · Post by **qaz99** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 10:38 pm

i'm not sure which one renders faster but i find the multitasking in linux does really work so i can just browse the web or listen to music while waiting for my render to finish

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 10:40 pm

I don't think it really matters, although I can't be sure because I've never used Linux.
But I don't think it will be worth all that fuss for Blender only, but I think I'm going to have a Win XP/ Linux double installation on my next comp, just to check Linux out though.

IoN_PuLse · Post by **IoN_PuLse** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 6:01 am

Faster under Linux. No stupid services stealing CPU time =)

At least that's been my experience.

sedgetone · Post by **sedgetone** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 10:34 am

In my experience Linux is faster... but not necessarily straight after an install. It all depends on the distribution you use and on how much time you spend on tuning the system i.e. turning off services that you don't need, recompiling the kernel with just the options you use.

I've been a UNIX admin for 7 years now so I know what I'm doing (mostly) with the system configuration. Newbies to Linux might not find it so straight forward.

Sedgetone

leinad13 · Post by **leinad13** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 5:59 pm

Faster under linux me, that was before the Intel Build, i think now that the Intel Build under windows is the fastest.

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 6:12 pm

Beware though, overuse of optimization has shown some artefacts in some rendering using the intel compiler. It seems to be quite random, but if I were you, I'd render a sample beforehand just to be sure before starting rendering a lenghty animation.

Martin

Mel_Q · Post by **Mel_Q** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 6:15 pm

leinad13 wrote:Faster under linux me, that was before the Intel Build, i think now that the Intel Build under windows is the fastest.

That build- (or using the -ffastmath switch in GCC) gives me shadow errors and refraction errors in the ray tracer. I'm working on a demo web page to elaborate.

I don't know if this would happen in linux with -ffastmath, but I did narrow it down to that in windows (cygwin).

Linux was definately faster at rendering- but for me, the time I saved went to switch between different OS's (to use apps I'm already familiar with).

JA-forreal · Post by **JA-forreal** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 6:39 pm

theeth wrote:Beware though, overuse of optimization has shown some artefacts in some rendering using the intel compiler. It seems to be quite random, but if I were you, I'd render a sample beforehand just to be sure before starting rendering a lenghty animation.

Martin

Yeah it is fast but it ruined a test rigged character that I put through it. It is still in beta for test only anyway right?

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 7:21 pm

JA-forreal wrote:Yeah it is fast but it ruined a test rigged character that I put through it. It is still in beta for test only anyway right?

It's unofficial and unsupported for obvious reasons of instability.

Martin

ideasman · Post by **ideasman** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 5:23 am

In linux you can render images without XWindows and turn off any unneccessary services- If nothing else this will free some memory, but Im sure it would also free CPU time for blender.

If you were to build a blender render farm Id say linux would be the way to go since you could have a minimal install and save on RAM, disk space.

tachyonwill · Post by **tachyonwill** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:15 pm

Has anyone tried using the intel compilers for linux? http://www.intel.com/software/products/ ... s_c_linux& I would have tried myself but the download is a bit big for my dial-up modem.

E2CMonkeyboy · Post by **E2CMonkeyboy** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 8:25 am

I was able to compile the cinelerra sources (video editor) using GCC after much headaches and had even more using the Intel compiler download (which is a huge one - thank goodness to cable modems) and did a test "render" of video utilizing both versions and found the Intel compiler to be 40% faster with similar optimizations. The executable size was also 50% bigger - but with 512M of memory what is another 5% utilization for 40% speed improvement.

I also downloaded the brazilian sites blender compiled with the Intel compiler and am using that now - but there aren't many downloadable complex scenes in bledner available to really test it out (all of mine are WAY too simple).

The only thing with the Intel compiler is that Includes are a nightmare - I'm new to programming in the Linux environment and found that difficult enough but find the Intel's methon of "replacement" Includes made it infinitely more complex to have a succesful compile. Mileage I'm sure will vary with experience.

-Monkey

east2003 · Post by **east2003** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:03 am

What is Windows XP?

EAST

ebrain · Post by **ebrain** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 5:37 pm

I know that if U compile Blender with very special parameters, U can speed up U'r render processes 35% faster (Blender build 2.26, Linux MDK 9.2 VS Windows XP Home)

Bye

Blender.org

Windows vs. Linux - which renders faster?

Windows vs. Linux - which renders faster?

A speed increase indeed