Quad core: slow

sketch3d.de

... upgraded from a mediocre Geforce card to an ultracool whizbang QuadroFX complain about zero performance gain.

sure, comparing speed of a GeForce w/ an Quadro FX in the same price range will show a better performance for the GF. The advantage of the Quadros is the quailty of the driver especially if a full and stable OpenGL support is required.

anyway, SU is currently CPU driven sothat the fastest dual core CPU is probably the best choice for a performance optimized system and probably the best bang-for-the-buck compared w/ quad core systems.

iirc for getting the user the impression that a system double its speed the system performance needs to be roughly quadrupled

rewriting SU for a multi-threading of modeling operations is probably a difficult task compared with slicing a render output in mutiple chunks, may need some expenditure/time.

Norbert

Anssi

@unknownuser said:

@remus said:

Thats a pretty weighty test file, surprisingly my system just about handled it, there was a second or two delay when orbiting, and i didnt dare to turn on shadows or xray, but you could work with the model if you needed to.

yeah, i guess if you have tons of patience it would be workable but seriously, i couldn't handle it.. i can rotate it ok, draw lines decently, etc.. the problem starts showing itself once you try drawing some stuff..

ex - it takes me 6 seconds to draw a sphere in a blank window.. with this drawing, it took me 27 seconds.. going off of that, it would take a full days work to draw something that would take 2hrs.. i'll pass.. (and i didn't have to rotate the model in order to draw the sphere - doing that would take even longer)

i would seriously look into some renderers to deal with all these plants instead of trying to draw them all in sketchup.. plus, the final output will look way better anyway..

The filesize went to half after purging. Still it is enormous. And as expected, it's the 3D plants that make it slow. Erase them (or replace with something simple), and it flies.

I did not try drawing in it. Before I did anything with it, zooming to extents took 7 seconds, and "purging all" took 40 seconds on my humble non-HT 2.8 GHz P4 laptop.

Anssi

toxicvoxel

While this file is obviously fairly heavy I do not have a problem working in it.(But then maybe it's because I wasted the money on the graphics card...)

But you won't believe me unless you see it for yourself.Quadro FX4600

BEAR IN MIND I WAS RECORDING THE AVI IN THE BACKGROUND WHILE THIS WAS GOING ON.

Now try doing that on your single core Pentium with a gaming card!

toxicvoxel

I believe that the Sketchup-multicore-performance-loss reports are an urban myth not based on actual experience.

Yes SU does not support multi-threading. But most often Sketchup will be used in conjunction with multiple other applications open at the same time and here multi-core machines show a significant advantage over single core machines where the second/third/fourth cores can be used by the other applications while SU does not have to share a single (albeit slightly faster) processor with other applications and even the activities of the OS. The newer Dual/Quad (SANTA ROSA or newer) cores also integrate dynamic accelleration technology that overclocks the first core for single threaded applications:

@unknownuser said:

WIKIPEDIA
The [Centrino] Santa Rosa platform comes with dynamic acceleration technology. It allows single threaded applications to execute faster. When a single threaded application is running the CPU can turn off one of the CPU cores and overclock the active core. In this way the CPU maintains the same Thermal Profile as it would when both cores are active. Santa Rosa performs well as a mobile gaming platform due to its ability to switch between single threaded and multithreaded tasks.[2]. Other power savings come from an Enhanced Sleep state where both the CPU cores and the chipset will power down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino#Santa_Rosa_platform_.282007.29

I use a dual core laptop (HP compaq 8710W 2.2GH proc. with 2G ram) that blows the socks off my old Pentium 3.4 machine with the same RAM. More recently I bought a 2.4 GH Quad core machine that is a lot faster than the laptop using Sketchup and SO quick switching between AutCAD, Excel, Painter and CorelDRAW etc. - all of which I now leave open most of the time while working with SU.

Therefor I believe that the real bottleneck is the graphics card. Previously I used an NVIDEA Geforce 6600. The laptop has a Quadro FX1600 and the QuadCore a Quadro FX4600.

BUY the best one you can afford and dont believe those knocking multiple cores.

jeff hammond

@toxicvoxel said:

While this file is obviously fairly heavy I do not have a problem working in it.(But then maybe it's because I wasted the money on the graphics card...)

But you won't believe me unless you see it for yourself.[attachment=0:2vhf26pl]quadrofx4700-5.zip[/attachment:2vhf26pl]

BEAR IN MIND I WAS RECORDING THE AVI IN THE BACKGROUND WHILE THIS WAS GOING ON.

Now try doing that on your single core Pentium with a gaming card!

come on man, that's a little misleading don't you think?.. at the very least you can mention that you made the movie with shaded face style turned on (instead of shaded with textures)... i'm starting to think that you don't care that you're recommending spending $1600 (or whatever the price of that thing) for very little sketchup enhancement.. you just want to justify in your mind that it was money well spent (amongst other reasons i imagine).. i can make that same video with my lowly geforce..

(and this is actually some round about good advice to the OP.. working in that mode does speed things up considerably)

toxicvoxel

Jeff,

Did I recommend spending $1600? I do not think so.
I'm sorry that you feel that I am trying to 'mislead' anyone by working with shaded mode. Is it not clear to anyone looking at the video that that is the case, and would that not be the most 'efficient' way of working with large models? (- which is what I thought you were advocating.) By 'very least' should I understand that you mean that there are other things which I am not disclosing?

And off-course you could make a movie on your video-card. With the multicore this operation would not affect Sketchup performance which is being processed on another core, which would not be the case on a single processor where both operations would be competing for processing on a single unit - a point I thought I made in my original post.

Despite your suggestion that I have alterior motives, (which is quite offensive actually) I can asure you that my intention on this thread was to help the gentleman identify why he was having difficulty working on the model with the QC. Was my advice not valid and consistent throughout and is it not supported by the video I posted? Did you yourself not request my feedback on this model in your earlier posting?

I think you should rather consider your own underlying motive in posting your last message instead of publicly casting doubt on someone who has offered a valid point of view based on actual experience in context with the original request.

I am sorry if my own experience does not support the popular myth propagated on this forum.

jeff hammond

@toxicvoxel said:

Jeff,

Did I recommend spending $1600? I do not think so.

maybe not - i might be assuming that based off of certain things you said-

***"I suggest to you that waiting for HQ to rewrite the SU code rather than spending money on a good graphics card may not be realistic advice to the initial inquiry"

"to which I have made my recommendation for a better graphics card based on my actual experience"

"While this file is obviously fairly heavy I do not have a problem working in it.(But then maybe it's because I wasted the money on the graphics card...) But you won't believe me unless you see it for yourself.
quadrofx4700-5.zip
Quadro FX4600"***

@unknownuser said:

I'm sorry that you feel that I am trying to 'mislead' anyone by working with shaded mode. Is it not clear to anyone looking at the video that that is the case, and would that not be the most 'efficient' way of working with large models? (- which is what I thought you were advocating.)

well no, it's not obvious.. there's only one tiny segment where you can actually tell.. while rotating in shaded with texture mode, the textures still disappear.. it's just that you have to wait for them to reappear before drawing anything else... with non texture mode, you don't have to wait..

@unknownuser said:

By 'very least' should I understand that you mean that there are other things which I am not disclosing?

i was just implying something deeper but it's a cheap stab so i take it back..

@unknownuser said:

And off-course you could make a movie on your video-card. With the multicore this operation would not affect Sketchup performance which is being processed on another core, which would not be the case on a single processor where both operations would be competing for processing on a single unit - a point I thought I made in my original post.

i didn't mean actually record the movie while i was also working on the file.. i meant that my computer handled the file the same as your movie shows.. i'll rephrase that to 'i could record a movie of my monitor using my handycam and it will show the same performance'

being able to record a movie while working on a file IS a testament to multicores..

@unknownuser said:

Despite your suggestion that I have alterior motives, (which is quite offensive actually) I can asure you that my intention on this thread was to help the gentleman identify why he was having difficulty working on the model with the QC. Was my advice not valid and consistent throughout and is it not supported by the video I posted? Did you yourself not request my feedback on this model in your earlier posting?

well, three people replied that their computers were having a rough time working with the file and you stepped in and said you had no problems at all.. i highly (highly) doubt any of the others were working with the model in the same manner as you but you've implied that your quadro has saved the day.. i think if you were really trying to help the OP, you would've recommend he do this as well because that is really what allowed the performance boost.. (which would coincide with earlier suggestions relating to working in a more organized fashion)...

the original poster's problem specifically mentioned his old single core computer out performed his new quad when using sketchup.. it said nothing about multitasking etc and i seriously believe he doesn't care about that in this case.. he wants to work on this file with a theoretic 4x speed boost and was wondering why that wasn't happening.. the advice to get a very fast chip and/or work more efficiently are the very real solutions and a new graphics card is not.. if you don't want to believe that then i'm ok with it.. (and yes, i think it would be dumb for him to run out and get another box to run sketchup with.. that would speed his drawing up though and he could do it cheaper than buying a quadro.. another thing you don't want to believe and sure it sounds silly atm but the next version of su will probably deal with this exact problem.. if you knew the next release was less than 6months away, would this advice still sound so silly to you?

@unknownuser said:

I think you should rather consider your own underlying motive in posting your last message instead of publicly casting doubt on someone who has offered a valid point of view based on actual experience in context with the original request.

i already considered it as i was typing.. i was being an ass.. on purpose..

@unknownuser said:

I am sorry if my own experience does not support the popular myth propagated on this forum.

that's the thing.. it's not a myth.. (again, i'm not talking about multi tasking here - i have a quad and i love the fact that i can do things with it that are virtually impossible to do with my old computers)..

toxicvoxel

Jeff,
I looked into your charge that the shading mode would make a big difference. Turns out that the system switches the textures off automatically in order to maintain frame rates, so I hope you will accept that working in shaded mode was not done deliberately on my part. The movie shows that it is only slightly slower but certainly still workable when running in texture mode.

I noticed this behaviour (it would also disable shadows temporarily) on the Quadro FX1600 card on my laptop (- which I also mentioned and as far as I know does not cost $1600 - but which you apparently fail to mention in order to make your point.). This makes me wonder if this is not one of the differences between the gaming and Quadro cards intended for technical work. I would asume that losing textures while running a game would not be acceptable (- but that would be speculating!).

This time shaded with textures!

I wish that we could have this discussion on a scientifc basis (based on actual experience, and testing) rather than relying on hearsay and guesswork. I hope that this discussion will help establish the principle that information does not become fact by simply repeating it. If we wish to provide accurate and balanced advice we really need to be responsible enough to verify the information before we post it. To discredit anyone that offers a different experience (which he can actually demonstrate) is frankly unacceptable.

AdrianM

My system isn't state of the art but I regularly run very large models as I design boat interiors which means I have a model of the whole boat to scale with each individual room drawn inside. Due to the nature of a boat having a lot more curves than the average house and because I have to make these models from the 2D cad files they tend to be a lot bulkier than most house designs.

The OP's file, however, is unusable on my system. Any operation takes several seconds to achieve. A few minutes spent on setting up and hiding layers (as I do all the time in my models) and it's fine.

The moral of the story is that working smarter is a lot cheaper.

I have a dual-core Athlon 64 4400+ with a Quadro FX3500 and 4gb of memory (for Vista although I've gone back to XP for work).

cadmunkey

Hi guys, I'm a new forum member but a long time Sketchup user (since version 4).
I have a quad core processor and a 8800GTX card and the model runs very well here. I also run a 30" monitor at 2560x1600 resolution, so that in itself adds a slight performance loss.
Admittedly with textures permanently on it takes approx 2-3 seconds to start being able to rotate the model if you are fully zoomed out, but with 'shaded' mode active it runs absolutely 100% fine. You can actually walkthru the model with textures turned on with no performance loss at all.
Having constructed alot of exterior models for archviz presentations, in my experience it is the vegetation that creates performance problems within sketchup. With larger models I tend to add trees etc at the very end of the modelling process. Even then I will always make sure that plants are on a separate layer so that I may turn them off whenever editing the main model. I have used models that are way worse performance wise than this one.

Nice model by the way!

s_arrow

Problem solved by changing video card from the HD2600 to Nvidia 8600GTS.
Thanks for all of the replies.

Greets from Spain