Windows vs. Linux - which renders faster?
Moderators: jesterKing, stiv
Windows vs. Linux - which renders faster?
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.
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
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
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
Martin
Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon
- John Lennon
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.leinad13 wrote:Faster under linux me, that was before the Intel Build, i think now that the Intel Build under windows is the fastest.
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).
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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 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
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.
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.
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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.
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A speed increase indeed
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
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
