Ron Parker <par### [at] fwicom> wrote...
> On Tue, 28 Dec 1999 20:00:25 -0800, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
>
> >Benchmark testing generaly relies on the amount of time it takes
> >to render a given scene. If one were to design a scene that was
> >parsing intensive rather than render intensive how well would it
> >evaluate a systems performance ?
>
> Well, you're evaluating a part of the process that typically takes a
> lot less time and doesn't tax the same parts of the architecture that
> a render does.  In particular, parsing is more concerned with file I/O
> and memory allocation performance than with floating point
> performance, so you're likely to see huge differences from filesystem
> to filesystem and from OS to OS, even on the same computer.

Yes.  For example, with #while loops and macros, POV uses the 'fseek()'
function to get to the appropriate place in the file and parses it.
Especially if you use many macros that are spread across many files, you'll
find that this will be a test of the quality of the disk caches (both
hardware and software caches).

> Your example is probably more dependent on memory allocation than
> anything else, so it might be a good measure of how fast your computer
> can allocate memory.  Whether that's a good gauge of performance is up
> to you, but I'd say no.

The speed of memory allocation and deallocation can depend on the compiler
used and the operating system.  I once saw a paper that compared the speed
of various implementations of malloc() and free().

Also, as Chris Colefax pointed out, the exact nature of the POV script will
have an affect on the characteristics of the parse, which may make it
dependent on the speed of your floating-point math.

-Nathan

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> Pentium III 500MHz, 32KB L1 Cache, 512KB L2 Cache, 256MB 100MHz SDRAM,
> 13.4GB ATA66 7200RPM HardDisk.

mumble grumble
You just wait, I'll get that Athlon someday...
By the time my dad buys it it will be obsolete...

--
Homepage: http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/
___     ______________________________
 | \     |_       <dav### [at] faricynet>
 |_/avid |ontaine      <ICQ 55354965>

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Ken wrote:

> Benchmark testing generaly relies on the amount of time it takes
> to render a given scene. If one were to design a scene that was
> parsing intensive rather than render intensive how well would it
> evaluate a systems performance ?

    OK, let me ask you then, what is the point? With the conditions you set
up the issue appears trivial, the faster the clock the better.

    Benchmarks were the original drivers in the PC business. As soon as one
became popular software was optimized to do well on the benchmark. That lead
to a suite of benchmarks with the intention making them such that everything
had to be optimized to be overall better.

    But what does that mean to the user? It depends what you use it for.
Everyone writes to file but some do it more often than others. Folks playing
action games differ from those who place chess. What does a great video
benchmark mean to the chess players? or rendering folks for that matter?

    If the trend is towards pov scenes that are parse intensive certainly
there is going to be a call for faster parsing. And for the IRTC animation
competition image size parsing time is a non-neglibable consideration.

    Benchmark just a sphere compared to a superellipsoid of <2,2>. Same
shape but different rendering times.

    Everything about the computer can affect the time required. Why should
not everything about a scene have an effect? And therefore, what is the
benchmark to test?

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As you can probably guess, it was good for the first month only, now I'm
settled in once again.  Got it early October and gave up the old clunker to
the folks.  Just didn't want to rave about it much since afterall it is a
middle of the road machine anyway.
Got a stubborn render (or parse) though? Go ahead and let me know, see if
this thing can do it.

Bob

"Mike" <pov### [at] aolcom> wrote in message news:386AD3DC.E77A8282@aol.com...
>
> Damn Bob, when did you get that sweet machine!?  If I'm ever pressed for
> time on a render I'll know who to call. :)
>

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Just read through this thread.
Interesting discussion to what I thought
was an interesting and inventive proposition.

I did run the scene with fairly typical
results and then ran it on my old 'puter.

I would now hereby like to make a public
apology to Ken Tyler for ever scoffing
or questioning his notion that Povray
could only be properly used on a
128MBram system.)

Peter Warren

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Peter Warren wrote:
> 
> Just read through this thread.
> Interesting discussion to what I thought
> was an interesting and inventive proposition.
> 
> I did run the scene with fairly typical
> results and then ran it on my old 'puter.
> 
> I would now hereby like to make a public
> apology to Ken Tyler for ever scoffing
> or questioning his notion that Povray
> could only be properly used on a
> 128MBram system.)
> 
> Peter Warren

Well I never really said you can't use a machine equiped with less memory
but is sure seems like it is becoming more difficult to do so. I would be
very happy to have a machine equipped with about 512 megs of memory and
would consider it my dream machine.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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Ken wrote:
> 
> Well I never really said you can't use a machine equiped with less memory
> but is sure seems like it is becoming more difficult to do so. I would be
> very happy to have a machine equipped with about 512 megs of memory and
> would consider it my dream machine.
> 

Well why not 1024 megs? What would you like to do with it?
I have, as you might know, access to a machine with one GB RAM. It
doesn't change the world too much. I found the 48 megs of my PC at home
in 90% of the cases sufficient. Sometimes it makes me even more creative
when I develop something that can be rendered on my PC.

Marc

-- 
Marc Schimmler

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"Marc Schimmler" <sch### [at] icauni-stuttgartde> wrote in message
news:38734EFA.2E4DB1E3@ica.uni-stuttgart.de...
> Ken wrote:
> >
> > Well I never really said you can't use a machine equiped with less
memory
> > but is sure seems like it is becoming more difficult to do so. I would
be
> > very happy to have a machine equipped with about 512 megs of memory and
> > would consider it my dream machine.
> >
>
> Well why not 1024 megs? What would you like to do with it?
> I have, as you might know, access to a machine with one GB RAM. It
> doesn't change the world too much. I found the 48 megs of my PC at home
> in 90% of the cases sufficient. Sometimes it makes me even more creative
> when I develop something that can be rendered on my PC.
>
> Marc
>
> --
> Marc Schimmler

Right, and I never need anymore than 128MBytes for nearly ever file I ever
rendered with the exception of one or two.  That's just overkill to have
more than 256MB for me anyway.  Although obviously you could get pretty
limited with super massive (well, I'd call them super massive) scenes
calling upon millions of objects for certain uses (loops, meshes, etc.) with
only that much memory regardless of the disk space available to thrash
around in.
Some people are just going to use a large amount.  But I notice that 32MB
would do fine for most of my renders.

Bob

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Ken wrote in message <38734B98.1D083C3F@pacbell.net>...
>Well I never really said you can't use a machine equiped with less >memory
Sorry, Ken. I did not intend to misrepresent what you said.


It struck me a interesting what Matt said about trends in
pov scenes. There has been an iso patch for years but I
only used it for a few specific thing. Now I don't think
twice about using MegaPov.

I wonder what will be next.

Peter Warren
war### [at] hotmailcom

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Marc Schimmler wrote:


> Well why not 1024 megs? What would you like to do with it?
> I have, as you might know, access to a machine with one GB RAM. It
> doesn't change the world too much. I found the 48 megs of my PC at home
> in 90% of the cases sufficient. Sometimes it makes me even more creative
> when I develop something that can be rendered on my PC.

    In the best of all possible Windows on the world, as long as there is
enough RAM to avoid disk swaps, more is superfluous. Of course this includes
any other tasks that are running.

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