i’m working on an Intel Core2 Quad CPU @ 2.4GHz.  i’ve been having trouble merging an 8MB file into a 186MB file (i will clean it up) and discovered that during this import process, which locks up the app, i’m only using 25% CPU power at any time.  It’s as if the app is only using the processing power of one of the four processors.  What is that about?

using VIZ 2008

does it reach 100% while rendering?
if not it may be an affinity issue…

to check;
open task manager (ctrl+shift+esc)
click on processes tab
right click on 3dsviz.exe and go to ‘set affinity’
if any of the boxes are unticked, tick them.

what os are you running?

dual xeon 5345 - gtx 570 - 4gb ram - vista business x64 - 3ds max design 2011 x64 - vray 2

Thanks, s0real, for your help.

i checked the affinity like you said and all four processors (CPU 0-3) are already checked.  i’m running XP Pro (32bit).  The processor does reach 100% while rendering.  Does that indicate anything?

using VIZ 2008

well it shows that your processor is using all it’s available power when it can.
it looks as if the import portion of viz is not multi-threaded so is unable to use all four cores.

dual xeon 5345 - gtx 570 - 4gb ram - vista business x64 - 3ds max design 2011 x64 - vray 2

There are lots of functions not optimized for multicores. For instance refl/refr map calculations

Cheers,

Nils