Benchmark 9

This benchmark emulates the work on the game level, as it contains both: sufficient geometry and numerous textures. The animation is arranged in such a way that the entire scene could be displayed completely.

• Polygons: 12548;
• Light source: 5;
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights.

Benchmark 10

This test reveals the ability of the graphics accelerators to display textures on the deforming geometry.

• Polygons: 5048;
• Light source: 1;
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights.

The results in texturing benchmarks show that Hyper-Threading hardly has any positive effect on the performance. On the contrary, its influence is sometimes quite negative.

Benchmark 11

This test is aimed at showing what the graphics cards are capable of in terms of transparent textures processing.

The new 3ds max 5 features not only the transparency remaining from the previous version, which is imitated by dithering:

But also the 'real" transparency implemented by blending the pixel color of the overlapping objects:

You can shift between the transparency modes in the viewport control panel:

Of course, you can guess that the more correctly implemented transparency will be slower.

• Polygons: 39940;
• Light source: 2;
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights.

Well, as we see, the picture here is quite predictable. The CPU and GPU workloads here are nearly equal, that is why in the more or less balanced scene with reasonable geometry (up to 100,000 polygons) and not too many light sources, the advantages and drawbacks of the Hyper-Threading technology level out.

Benchmark 12

Here the camera flies through the rocks and hills of the moon surface landscape built of 400 thousand polygons, i.e. the scene is the same as in Benchmark 2, actually. However, the picture is displayed in the Wireframe mode.

• Polygons: 400008;
• Light source: 1;
• Mode: Wireframe.

However, in benchmarks with huge geometry, Hyper-Threading finally gets the chance to show its best, especially in Wireframe mode, where the graphics card is loaded considerably less than in Smooth modes. So, the processor's ability to cope really fast with geometry calculations moves to the forefront.

Benchmark 13

This is the Benchmark 3 scene in wireframe mode:

• Polygons: 742128;
• Light source: 1;
• Mode: Wireframe.

Well, more geometry, more advantages provides Hyper-Threading technology.

So, summing up the results obtained during tests in viewports we can conclude that in case massive geometry needs to be processed, especially in Wireframe modes, Hyper-Threading appears really demanded, though not that much: The performance grows up within only 5%. Sometimes, if the geometry is really gigantic (Benchmark 13) - up to 10% at the most.

At the same time, when we have to process scenes with little geometry, but quite many light sources and textures, the situation appears just the opposite: the system with Hyper-Threading gets about 5%-10% slower. In general we can state that both platforms showed quite similar results.

Performance: Final Rendering

Benchmark 1

This benchmark is based on a well-known ktx_rays scene borrowed from the very first 3ds max version, when the whole package used to be called 3D Studio MAX developed by Kinetix Company, which wasn't yet a part of Autodesk. Now the file is called 3smax5_rays, which anyway doesn't change its essence. Unlike the first version of this scene, the current benchmark includes not only the demonstration of the volumetric light but also a reflective surface at the bottom:

• Polygons: 4160;
• Lights: 3 (1 Shadow Mapped, 0 Raytraced).

Benchmark 2

We have come across this file in the previous 3ds max versions, though it wasn't included into the benchmarks package at that time. This benchmark features two lights (one Raytraced and one Shadow Mapped), which light geometry built of 50 thousand polygons:

• Polygons: 53528;
• Lights: 2 (1 Shadow Mapped, 1 Raytraced).

Benchmark 3

This test represents a scene from the underwater world and includes numerous reflective maps. It can be rendered in 5 passes:

• Polygons: 41716;
• Lights: 5 (2 Shadow Mapped, 0 Raytraced).

As we see in the final rendering benchmarks, the platform with enabled Hyper-Threading shows results, which are stably 15%-20% higher.

Performance: Multi-Task Applications

Benchmark 1

To run these tests, I opened two 3ds max 5 applications and started rendering VolumeLight file from Benchmark 5 in one of them. In the other application I started Benchmark 1 from the First part of our Viewports performance tests. This way, we could see how the testing participants would cope with the animation played against the background of the final rendering. Here are the results obtained:

As you can see, the system with enabled Hyper-Threading proved extremely fast: the performce got 5 times better!

Benchmark 2

Here I started two tasks at a time: archiving with the maximum compression level with the WinRAR utility and rendering the Benchmark 2 file from the previous part of the performance analysis.

Again the results are fantastic: over 25% performance increase!

As is known, when we work with a single processor system (without the Hyper-Threading technology) with two or more tasks in Windows environment, the priority lies with the active task. However, it is not always the case: sometimes the priority goes to a more resource hungry task. In case of a dual-processor system with two tasks running at a time, these tasks are processed in parallel by both processors. The same thing happened when we tested the system with enabled Hyper-Threading technology: independent of the active window both tasks were processed at a time, which results into a tremendous performance growth. Especially is the background task is more resource-hungry than the "active" task (such as the Benchmark 1). Of course, we can hardly hope to catch up with the real dual-processor system in terms of performance, however, compared with the uni-processor one running without Hyper-Threading, the improvement is simply gigantic.

Conclusion

Well, Intel managed to move from the simple increase in the core clock frequencies to introduction of optimized algorithms, which will definitely make the further frequency increases much more efficient. In 3ds max 5 application Hyper-Threading technology proved highly powerful, as it ensured at least 10%-20% performance growth during single-task final rendering and a multiple performance increase during multi-task viewports processing.