Hi all,

Was wondering if anyone else had experienced this issue. After Effects (both CS3 & CS4) rendering becomes slow after repeating the same render job and especially after closing the application and opening it again. If I watch the Activity monitor I can see the first fresh render using all 4 CPU cores of the system at 100%. The second will sometimes (if I'm lucky!) match the first renders speed. The third will take almost double the first renders time. If I close AE, re-open and try again it will take double, if not more the time of the first render. The activity monitor will show flakey CPU usage with spikes and dips across all 4 cores.

The only thing that remedies the problem is a reboot.

I've tried quite a few things to get round the problem. Initially the system was running iDeneb 10.5.6 and AE CS3 so I upgraded it to iDeneb 10.5.8 (fresh install) and AE CS3 was still having the same issue. I upgraded to AE CS4 and updated that to 9.0.2 (current) and still the same issue. Which draws me to the conclusion that it's something to do with the hardware config. No other applications seem to suffer from this issue. We ran some tests with Motion just the be sure.

I've messed about with some of the Bios settings and nothing seems to have has helped.

The system consists of the following hardware:

Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 mobo
Intel Quad Core 2.4ghz CPU
8gb of decent ram in 4 x 2gb modules
2 x 500gb SATA drives
1 x 300gb WD Velociraptor (used for rendering)

Anyone got any pointers?

Thanks in advance ;]

Jim.

hey there,
i have almost the same cpu and mobo as you and use ae quite regularly. i never experienced this kind of problem, i must say though that multi processor rendering in after effects in general sucks big time! i even find it worse on cs4 than cs3.

for troubleshooting:
the first thing that comes to my mind is that maybe there are problems with your cpu detection. do you have the same problem when you only render with one core? let's see if your problem is only related to multicore rendering!
since you can define the memory usage and how many cpu's you want to use for rendering did you try only to use 2 or 3 cpu's in cs4?

one thing you could try is to install the chud package. you'll get a new entry in system preferences about the processor.
please report back!


ps: please try multiprocessor rendering in an application like cinema 4d. does it produce the ae issue?

Hi Chris thanks for the reply and the pointers much appreciated;] That's good to know you have a similar system and it runs OK.

OK well we tried disabling the multicore option completely inside AE CS4 and still get that same issue. The first render will talk about a minute and a half. Close AE, open it, run the same job and it takes 7 minutes.

I've also tried running it in multi-core with 2gb RAM assigned to each core, AE reported it would only use 3 CPUS for this render. Still the same issue.

I've installed CHUD but we didn't seem to get the systems preference panel option. I had a look around in the CHUD folder and found a proggy called Reggie SE which looks to ID the CPU. It looks like it has recognised it as expected. I've attached a screen grab of Reggie SE showing the first core, the other 3 all contain the same data. Have a look and see if anything looks wrong if you could.

Click to view attachment

We've tried Motion as a test application. Sorry we don't have Cinema 4D. Motion seems to run as expected with renders taking roughly consistent times after opening and closing the application.

Have you got any further pointers that might help us?

Cheers,


Jim.

yeah it seems to recognize the cpu fine. please check as well with cpu-x if there is anything abnormal.

here is the way to make the cpu prefpane visible that i was talking about

i'm sorry mate atm i'm out of ideas what the problem could be. i still have a q6600 cpu so our systems differ in one important point: the cpu! i guess it has something to do with the xeon cpu you guys are using. it's weird that you have the same problem with only one core. i thought that the problem was probably related with the multi cpu rendering. you could try googling for "xeon problems insanelymac" maybe

i don't know if motion is the right way to test the cpu. there is a small awesome program for this called cputest. set all the options to the maximum value and let it run for a few hours. see if it crashes or if something else weird happens!

Thanks for the reply Chris.....

Think I've finally sorted it!!! Updated the mobo bios from vF4 to vF9 (it's rev v1.0 GA P35 DQ6) and so far it's re-rendered each time at a consistent speed!! With 100% CPU usage on the activity monitor. Wooo fu**en hoo!

The CPU was a Q6600 after all, it was Reggie Se that was reporting it as a Xeon (it's not my system, it's a friends).

Can I ask how well the Q6600 clocks up I see yours is @ 3.2ghz. Is this an easy OC to achieve? We only have a stock cooler on it at the moment.

Ta again for your help ;]

hey buddy, good to hear it worked for you! man, that was a really obvious solution

the oc took me a while to figure out. i had a lot of problems at first but now it works totally stable except that after every 5th restart of the system or so i have to set the bios settings for oc again. kind of a weird bug but usually my system only goes to sleep anyway...

if your friend is not really into tinkering with settings from time to time then i wouldn't recommend oc'ing!

this is my first oc'd computer so i can't give you a lot of tips on that... there seem to be 3 important things when oc'ing.

1. the power supply (i have 500w bequiet)

2 the ram . i toasted one of my ram sticks in the process of oc'ing, so i'm running on 6gb now instead of 8gb. 4gb seems to be the most stable solution though

3. the fan (i use an alpenfoehn gross clockner which is a real beast but quiet and powerful

so the most important thing is a good fan. it's not a big investment (mine was like 30 euros). with the stock fan i wouldn't bother with oc'ing.

if you get a better fan just let me know, i recently made pics of my bios and i could send them to you
it is quite an improvement. try geekbench 64bit to see how much power your friends system has. with 3,2 ghz i now get around 7000 points

cheers,
chriss

Heh tell me about it I should have gotten to that a lot sooner! Thx for the help though and the OC tips;]

I think we'll leave the OC for the moment. Spent about 4 days tearing my hair out over that AE problem! Not sure if I can take any more!!

Take it easy amigo,


Jim ;]