Hello..

it seems that it is always myself complaining about the same thing?

anyway I made my first scene in pov 3.5 I just got today: checker, 
sphere, area light.
render. dog slow. 4 minutes andsome seconds

I take the scene and render it in megapov latest version (I can't 
compare to pov3.1 since that aerealight wasn't supppoerted) and i get 6 
seconds

i then render a trivial sample scene and i get 16 minutes... my G3 slow 
as a quadra??? the same scene on pov 3 took less on my quadra!

now it is sooo lae and it's better to go to bed... but I read that 
povray should be faster and more stable than megapov while using the 
patches and I hoped the rest would remain unchanged!


-r-

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In article <20020711014929711+0200@news.povray.org> , WhiteGandalf 
<zus### [at] liberoit>  wrote:

> anyway I made my first scene in pov 3.5 I just got today: checker,
> sphere, area light.
> render. dog slow. 4 minutes andsome seconds

Turn off the freaking preview as the documentation tells you!  The Mac 3.5
version is significantly faster than any version ever out there unless you
of course screw up your settings so much that you end up comparing Apples
and Bananas...

    Thorsten

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> Turn off the freaking preview as the documentation tells you!  The Mac 
> 3.5 version is significantly faster than any version ever out there 
> unless you of course screw up your settings so much that you end up 
> comparing Apples and Bananas...

yes, ideed. Sorry I didn't read the docs, but I was just eager to try 
out the new version

So these are the timings. I made a little scene using area lights with 
some new features and a sphere:

PoV 3.5
preview: 4 minutes
without: 18 sec
(dramatic increase)

MegaPov latest rev with with patches turned on (so to use the bnew 
arealight as in PoV)
preview: 6 sec
without: 5 sec

so definitely preview is not something for the final render. But I quite 
like the progress bat, it adds a "mac" look.

-ric

PS: in the preferences my version says it is a beta built 8 Jul with 
timeout july 15 (which is tomorrow..) is this just an old thing or was 
the official mirror from where I did download not updated???? maybe I'm 
using a beta!

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In article <20020714195121389+0200@news.povray.org> , WhiteGandalf 
<zus### [at] liberoit>  wrote:

> PoV 3.5
> preview: 4 minutes
> without: 18 sec
> (dramatic increase)
>
> MegaPov latest rev with with patches turned on (so to use the bnew
> arealight as in PoV)
> preview: 6 sec
> without: 5 sec

There is still something wrong with your measurement.  First of all, are you
running on Mac OS Xor Mac OS 9?  You should really do benchmarking on Mac oS
9.  Anyway, that said, you also can only benchmark if you actually run for
more than a few seconds.  Something like 10 minutes or so.  Right now you
are measuring everything, but not render speed...

> PS: in the preferences my version says it is a beta built 8 Jul with
> timeout july 15 (which is tomorrow..) is this just an old thing or was
> the official mirror from where I did download not updated???? maybe I'm
> using a beta!

No, it is just that one string taht didn't get changed.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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To be more precise, try a more complex scene that simply takes longer.  One
that will run on much longer.  That would be the typical classical benchmark
scenes like skyvase.pov, chess2.pov or of course (but 3.5 specific)
benchmark.pov, all of which may be found in the:scenes:advanced: folder.

Oh, and of course, don't forget when under Mac OS 9 to set the application
friendliness in the POV-Ray prefs dialog to "Tyrannical".  And while you are
there, turn of the "Use Temporary Memory" feature (you need to restart
POV-Ray for the memory changes to take effect).

Then render at a resolution of at least 640*480, and make sure nothing
secondary is running.  In particular turn off file-sharing and virtual
memory!

Oh, and in MegaPOV, set the Cooperation to 11 and turn Verbose on, which
then approximately equals the POV-Ray 3.5 settings.

    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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> 
> There is still something wrong with your measurement.  First of all, 
> are you running on Mac OS Xor Mac OS 9?  You should really do 
> benchmarking on Mac oS 9.  Anyway, that said, you also can only 
> benchmark if you actually run for more than a few seconds.  Something 
> like 10 minutes or so.  Right now you are measuring everything, but 
> not render speed...

I am running X (8.6 is on another computer). Both programs were executed 
under the most similar conditions, one after the other. Same settings, 
same file.
I know it isn't a definitve benchmark, it was just a quick test!

As for benchmarks, I ried to compile pov from the spources (from 3.1) 
under apple cc, I made several compiles using every possible combination 
of optimizations, the result was that megapov still was an edge faster (
on skyvase). This is somehow strange, since pov from command line should 
be advantaged.


I will render skyvase as soon as I have time.

bye
-ric-

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In article <20020715222950264+0200@news.povray.org> , WhiteGandalf 
<zus### [at] liberoit>  wrote:

> I am running X (8.6 is on another computer). Both programs were executed
> under the most similar conditions, one after the other. Same settings,
> same file.
> I know it isn't a definitve benchmark, it was just a quick test!
>
> As for benchmarks, I ried to compile pov from the spources (from 3.1)
> under apple cc, I made several compiles using every possible combination
> of optimizations, the result was that megapov still was an edge faster (
> on skyvase). This is somehow strange, since pov from command line should
> be advantaged.

Out of curiosity, do you see a spinning beachball when rendering with
MegaPOV and switching between applications?


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

In article <20020715222950264+0200@news.povray.org>,
 WhiteGandalf <zus### [at] liberoit> wrote:

> As for benchmarks, I ried to compile pov from the spources (from 3.1) 
> under apple cc, I made several compiles using every possible combination 
> of optimizations, the result was that megapov still was an edge faster (
> on skyvase). This is somehow strange, since pov from command line should 
> be advantaged.

You forgot to take the compiler into account...the version of gcc in the 
development tools is nowhere near as good at optimization as Metrowerks 
CodeWarrior (which is used for the official version). The next update of 
the development tools will use a more up to date version of gcc which is 
apparently much better at optimization of PPC code, I don't know how it 
compares to CodeWarrior. If you want to compare 3.1 and MegaPOV, compile 
MegaPOV with gcc as well.

And anyway, being a GUI program won't really affect the render 
speed...you probably ran the command line version from Terminal.app, 
which (obviously) is a GUI program itself. The only way there could be a 
significant difference is if you booted up without any GUI at all, which 
I don't consider worth the few % of CPU time gained. Just being a CLI 
program doesn't give any special advantages.

There may be something specific to how POV-Ray Mac works though...maybe 
the way it handles events uses up CPU time or prevents it from using 
100% of available cycles.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

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some benchs:
skyvase, with original antialiasing rendered. I set also the bounding 
options in the same manner.

megapov: 1 min 46 sec
pov 3.5: 6 min 54

> Out of curiosity, do you see a spinning beachball when rendering with
> MegaPOV and switching between applications?
yes and no. Not while I render. But if the preference pane is open when 
it needs to be refreshed (ie. becoming oncovered from a window or such) 
it takes a long time and the spinning ball appears.) This independently 
from the CPU occupation. I wanted to report this to smellenbergh, but i 
really forgot!

-ric-

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In article <20020716014246106+0200@news.povray.org> , WhiteGandalf 
<zus### [at] liberoit>  wrote:

> some benchs:
> skyvase, with original antialiasing rendered. I set also the bounding
> options in the same manner.
>
> megapov: 1 min 46 sec
> pov 3.5: 6 min 54

You had the preview on again, right?

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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