New M6500 Discussion Thread

Hi Jun Austria,
I can do the test for you on Revit2010.
Just let me know...

 

Hi Stephane,

Thanks for the info. Yes I have tried DPC Latency Checker and for the most part it stays within the green bar limit between about 250 and 500 us although I am getting the occasional bar at around 750 us. So actually the latency seems to be ok. I have also tried running it with nearly everything turned off or disabled in the device manager and that does reduce the latency a little.

One thing I have noticed is that even when the M6500 is idle the Hard Drive light blinks on and off every second or so. I am wondering if this might be something that could be the cause. Its as if there is some kind of process running that keeps accessing the HD and this flashes at roughly the same rate as when I get the higher readings on the DPC latency checker, and when running Cubase I get the dropouts at roughly the same times too when using the lowest latency settings (Please see below for explanation of when I get dropouts). I have tried finding the source of this process using resource manager but until now no joy. On a normal desktop machine generally when the machine is idle the Hard Drive activity will be pretty much idle as well, but because this is a laptop I guess it needs certain processes to be running in the background, such as heat sensor, power manager, etc so it could be that this is something that cannot be addressed. But if anyone else gets this flashing HD light when the M6500 is idle could they let me know, and if there is any process that can be disabled that stops it then even better. Thanks.


Actually when I am using the built in Audio and use the Generic Low Latency ASIO driver in Cubase it all runs fine with no dropouts. But I am mainly intending to use the M6500 with a Sonic Core XITE-1 which connects via an expresscard interface over an HDMI cable. Again the XITE-1 is a new product and I am sure there will be some improvements and fixes to come for that. In fact I am waiting for them to release the 64bit drivers and OS for XITE-1 which should be out in the next week or so. In the meantime I had to create a new partition and am using Win7 x86 at the moment. I can get this XITE-1 to run fine when I have its own latency settings (called ULLI) set to 4ms but when I try and run it at its minimum 3ms is when I am getting dropouts and glitches, and the ASIO Time Usage indicator on Cubase transport panel goes crazy. The thing is I can get this lower setting on my older desktop PC that is running the Sonic Core Scope Pro cards and that works fine, so I wanted to see if the option of disabling Hyperthreading improves this issue or not with the M6500 and XITE-1 setup.

Anyway thanks again for the ideas and if I find out any more info then I will let you know too.

Cheers

Tim

 

Tim,

Thanks for sharing your results. I'll test the M6500 with a Fireface UC, and will keep you informed.

 

Giannini,

e-mail me at [email protected]. I will forward you the file. Thanks in advance.

 

I'm willing to bet you will see a good size difference between the Render times for the 920 and the 820. Thats why I went with the 920 over the 820 and downgraded to the 2800 graphic card. Simply because the processor does all the work when rendering.

Still curios to see the the difference though!

 

I always liked nutral colors because you can always put different screen back covers (Skins) to change things up when I get board! Not to mention it protects the top of you prize possesion.

 

I would like to see the result.

 

I tought the same as you when I choose the 920 but after doing the rendering of the Jun Austria's file, the result is 20min15 so less than 6% better than the 820 (21min40).
In 3DS, the "processor does all the work when rendering" but apparently not in Revit or I need to change something.

I do not understand why I have that "poor" result with my configuration (I am new on Revit).

The process fbxooprender.exe was "only" at 50% (constantly) and I was able to use the computer without problem for other Tasks (Outlook, Powerpoint and Internet Explorer). I did not heard the fans... I used the "High Performance" as a Power Plan and Revit2010 x64.

How can you explain that? I am waiting the return of Jun...

 

The explanation is simple : revit is not optimized for multicore rendering. Revit is only optimized for dual core processors that's why there is only 50% of your processor used. (i7 has 4 cores)
Sometimes there is an option to change the way your processor appear for windows and other programs. In the bios, there is an option to disable multicore so windows will see one processor instead of the 4 cores and revit will fully use the potential of your processor. There is one drawback by doing that : all programs optimized for multicore won't take the ability to share the work out among the cores.

 

fbxooprender.exe always is running at less than normal priority, but you can bump it up to normal if you have a processor wit 4 cores and still be able to work. Anything above that I always end up with a freeze. It makes a difference though. As for Revit, it is the same Rendering engine as 3DS and will onyl utilize the processor for rending scenes. They are talking about intigrating the ability to utilize the graphic card in later releases of 3DS but its all boils down to number crunching.

I take it the Rendering you did with Jun's file was an exterior? The interior renderings that I have been doing on my desktop at work run from 14-32 hours depending on the dpi settings. Also If you use the screen settings for Revit and have it zoomed out it makes the rendering smaller. Wierd, I know.

Well I would think it would have been fast, guess you need to talk with Jun and see what exactly you did different then to get a true apples to apples comparison.