I think we've discussed that BIAB and perhaps RB make use of multi-core processors. I think, but perhaps I'm wrong, that the consensus was that BIAB does take advantage of multi-core capabilities.

Here's what I'm wondering: it seems that newer processors are constantly upping the number of cores and threads, is BIAB and RB keeping up with this and do they take advantage of this? If I go from a 4 core processor to a 6 core, 12 thread processor would I expect to see and difference?

Jeff

BIAB does use all four cores in my older i7. I don’t know about more recent CPUs with more cores than that.

I have been experimenting with few animation programs. It is scary how much you can spend that is actually useful for processing video.

$2500 for a video card, $2500 for a processor, $1000 for a motherboard. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32-Core, 64-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor...$2600 WOW

8K plus for a machine ready to go. Then of course you need the latest iPhone to go with it. The new phone is actually useful.

The only good news is that Blender software is free and can do almost everything that Maya can. The industry standard is called Maya and costs a mere $1700 a year...lol

It is totally amazing to me the quality of animation that one can create in a home studio.

Well, in the scope of things I guess it is pretty easy to spend 10K on a good piano. So everything is relative I guess.

Billy

To answer Jeff's question, yes. I saw speed of use increase with the new i9 computer I built. I have no idea if BIAB is using all the cores. Things load faster and render faster as far as I can tell.

But... whatever performance increase I got with the i9 over the old i7 4770 was not all that useful for BIAB.

If my old i7 computer would have not started to give me issues I would not have built a new one. If I was forced to build a new one again I would still buy an i9 because the price difference between the i7 and the i9 is not much.

I also just finished building a new i5 machine. BIAB runs on it faster than I can think...lol

All these more complex CPU/GPU devices make a large difference with video. With the type of audio stuff that most of us are using everything ran fine on XP with i7 processors. If BIAB was my only consideration, buying really faster CPU's does not buy you a lot.

Billy

Since graphics cards were mentioned, it has always been the case that this is at the bottom of the list for BIAB hardware. Now, I don’t use any of the video functions BIAB introduced a few years ago. Not much is discussed here about that. But for audio and BIAB, that’s the last place I would spend any money; instead I would upgrade to an SSD then the CPU then RAM.

Billy, there are some hardware-monitoring utilities that show the activity of each core while running a program. Give it a try on your best CPU and let us know if all are being used.

I've used BIAB on an 8-core machine, and IIRC it did use all the cores available. Honestly, I've tried BIAB on slow dual-core laptops, my 6-core gaming machine, and my old 8-core monster, and never noticed much difference in speed. Yes, I can measure a difference (sometimes a significant difference), but seeing or feeling the difference? Not much. If you want to upgrade, try putting in a nice NVMe SSD, that will likely give you the most noticeable difference.



It's also easy to spend $10k on a not very good piano as well. I've played a few in the $10-20k range that I didn't particularly care for.

That said, I've also played one that was $150k, and was much happier with the one across the room from it that was $25k. Whatever floats your boat I suppose



There's one built into Windows - the Resource Monitor. It can give you a graph of what each CPU is doing - see my screenshot.

With BIAB running a demo song.

I thought Task Manager would show the cores but I don't know how to make it do that.

Billy

In resource manager, it shows all 8 cores being used. Less than 2% CPU use and 2 gigs of ram being used if I understand what I am looking at.

Task Manager doesn't, but Resource Monitor does and costs just as much (nothing).
Some systems seem to have it, some seem to need to have it installed (download from M$ via SysInternals), but it is an excellent tool for troubleshooting and other fun stuff, as Simon showed.

Sometimes, once installed, Resource Monitor actually shows up inside Task Manager as a button to launch it. Sometimes you need to make a separate shortcut, never bothered to learn whatever trick makes it appear, maybe it's simply OS dependent.


*Edit-
I see you found Resource Monitor (I assume, though you said Manager, which is for servers), great. This post may help others know how to find it so I'll leave it for now.

Billy - most likely your CPU's are too powerful, and only need to exert 2% of the power to get the job done. BIAB typically starts playing before the entire song is generated, so it likely is programmed to not use 100% when it's not necessary.

Realistically, there is likely something else bottlenecking BIAB. It could be a power management setting, could be storage speed, who knows. I personally don't often see BIAB using absolutely 100%, usually topping out at 50% on my ancient computer.

Rharv - I've always seen the Resource Monitor linked from the Task Manager, so I didn't know that there was the possibility of it not being there. Maybe it's not automatically installed with Windows 10 Home - every computer I personally use with Windows 10 is running the Pro version.

Resource Monitor is at the bottom of the performance tab in task manager on my system. I just did not see it at first and went to the control panel to find it.

The Radeon RX 570 GPU is the only thing on this system that gives me any issues. I have had to reload the driver after an update a couple of times.

Billy

Yeah it may be OS dependent.
I work on a lot of different machines, many of them servers, so my experience will likely be different than most users.

If it isn't there on a given machine, it's a free download/install.
That was my only point. It's worth having.

Billy,

Task Manager does show the cores. See my screenshots. Highlight the Performance Tab, choose CPU, right click on the graph and choose Change Graph to-->Logical processors.

Thanks, Steve, that is a pretty convoluted process...lol



Billy

It is but your PC will remember that you have it set that way and it will be useful in seeing which CPUs are being used.

Good trick Steve, I forgot about that!

Also I need your CPU. I currently have 4 cores, no HT.....