Issues utilizing all Xeon cores in AECS6

[andreb58159484]

Hey all,

I'm having some issues setting up my render to utilize all cores successfully in my new Xeon workstation. Below I listed all specifications of the machine, and what I'm rendering.

Workstation:

x2 Xeon E5-2698 20 core V4 2.2GHZ CPU(s) (total cores = 40)

x2 NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPU(s)

256GB RAM

2 1TB SSD setup in RAID 0

1 6TB HDD for storage

Running Win10 Pro

Project File:

Format: AECS6 (rendering in H.264 at 50MBPS target, 300MBPS max with high profile settings).

Basically rendering an audio visualizer which utilizes solely CPU power (not CUDA).

Issue:

When rendering, it'll start out great. Rendering each frame extremely fast until it gets to this one part at 700 frames where the render starts to actually do something. Do something as in the visualizer starts to react (see ex: Maroon 5 - Don't Wanna Know (JELLYFYSH remix) - YouTube ) Whenever the bass hits, the template acts up and immediately stops using every core in the dual Xeon's, instead it just starts using 1 or 2 at full utilization and it goes from a render time at 20 minutes to around 1 hour and 30 minutes. I'd say, yes this could be normal, but I have a workstation at home with a i7 5960x with 32GB of RAM and this wouldn't happen. So I'm wondering, or assuming, that it has to do something with how I'm formatting the multi-core processing settings?

The only error I get at the end of the render is "give more RAM allocation per BG CPU" but I've done that multiple times and it doesn't seem to help .

Any idea why / what's happening and what the solvent could be?

Right now I'm using these settings:

RAM Reserved for other applications: 18GB (248GB is now available for After Effects to use)

# of cores installed: 32 (not sure why it's not 40)

# of cores saved for other application: 6

RAM allocation per BG CPU: 3GB

Actual CPU(s) used: 26

Also using 200GB of disk cache as well.

I've also attached a Dropbox link to the template I'm using. It uses Red Giant for plugins, specifically trapcode particular and trapcode soundkeys. That's really about it. Let me know if there's any more information that I could attach in here.

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

You are rendering to a clip-based format, are quite definitely using single-threaded features and effects somewhere since audio processing and expressions are involved and there may a be a million other things. This is perfectly normal and within what's expected and you are looking for something that doesn't exist, even more so since iX and Xeon processors have completely different behaviors when it comes to things like Turbo Boost and usage of cores. Search the forum, this has been explained at length a gigazillion times. the simple truth is that you have bought/ built a system that is simply not ideal for AE work.

Mylenium