Thorsten,

I am running into some interesting problems with running the benchmark. I
did as you said and tried opening the benchmark.pov file directly and put

benchmark.ini

on the command line. When I tried to render the file, I got the following
parser errors:

Possible Scene File Parser Initialization Error: Could not find file
'OBJECT.POV'
Scene File Parser Initialization Error: Cannot open input file.

There is no object.pov file on my workstation... but there is also no
benchmark.ini file either. Is that right?

Anyway, I removed the benchmark.ini entry and tried rendering again.
Success! Of course, POV-Ray used the default entries for rendering a file,
so the results weren't worth posting (for example, the preview window was
displayed, and from what I understand that slows things down a bit). So, I
tried to select the "Render Benchmark" command from the menu. It worked!
And, I assume, it used the correct settings for running a benchmark (e.g.,
the preview window didn't show itself this time around).

Now *here* is the interesting part: The benchmark will only run if you
select one of the first two rendering engine options ("Official POV-Ray
3.51" or "Official POV-Ray 3.51 for G4"). If you select "Official POV-Ray
3.51 for G5", it doesn't matter whether you try to render benchmark.pov
directly or select "Render Benchmark" from the menu... either way, you get
the following error during parsing:

Parse Error: Internal error - code size difference for 15 03c4!
File benchmark.pov line 615

And here is where things *really* start to go all wacko: Since the rendering
engine setting seemed to be the tripwire, I wondered whether turning off
some of the performance options might fix things. I did some trial and
error, and determined that the "Internal error" error only occurs on the G5
engine when the "Fast Functions" performance option is checked. Any
combination of the other three checkboxes can be checked or unchecked and
the G5 engine will run the benchmark just fine, but if "Fast Functions" is
checked, the "Internal error - code size difference" error occurs.

My system specs:

Macintosh PowerMac G5
Dual CPU 2.0 GHz
2.5 GB DRAM
POV-Ray 3.51 build 0187 (RC3)
Panther OS X (10.3 -- **not** 10.3.1... I will be installing 10.3.1 later
tonight and will report whether that makes any difference)

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

>Note that it seems the built-in benchmark rendering occasionally ignores its
>INI file and renders only at default size.  Locate the benchmark.pov file in
>the :scenes:advanced: folder and specify its INI file on the command-line by
>simply putting "benchmark.ini" (without the quotes) there to work around
>this.  I would recommend to do all tests with background rendering on.
>Background rendering is a term most users seem to understand better than
>"pre-emptive threading"...
>
>    Thorsten

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