Resource usage while rendering

[meatlockerii]

hi,

I'm just wondering does xsi use all of a computers resources when rendring? How cpu intensive is rendering?

How would using other applications during render time affect it?

[richard-sher]

does xsi use all of a computers resources when rendring?
If you mean CPU, then the answer is yes.

How cpu intensive is rendering?
Most rendering is very CPU intensive.

How would using other applications during render time affect it?
If they are not very CPU intensive or you set their priority at "low," then they will not affect it very much at all.

[gk2k]

Ed, we work on dual Athlon with 2Gbs RAM here, so we have noticed XSI uses just about 1GB RAM in any rendering process. even if optimization optoins RAM limit is set to 2048. Is that it ?

[richard-sher]

Just because you set your RAM limit to 2048 does not mean that your render will use all of your ram. What it means is that your render will not use over 2048.

If you render only needs 500 meg then it will only use 500 meg. If it needs 3000 meg then the memory limit will tell mental ray to try to flush unused information from your ram to keep renders under 2048meg.

[blitzbo]

Just set one of the cpus to use xsi and leave the other for other apps.