3DSMax 2008 dropping processors on Windows 32bit on workers

[drandolph]

I have a client that when they submit a 900 frame simple job to the farm using submit batch mode that the workers start dropping processors by the end and will hang up before the render is complete. I think it might be running multiable instances per machine but i was wondering if other people have had this problem or if this is unusual. The workers are all boxx render nodes with 4gb ram in WindowsXP 32bit with a max of 2 processes per worker. Thoughts? Suggestions?

[shinya]

Hi drandolph,

I believe that I just spoke with your client on the phone-- while
it's possible to run more than 1 instance of 3dsmax on a worker, we have
found that 3dsmax can be more stable if it's limited to 1 instance.

By default, Qube workers are configured to accept as many subjobs as
there are cores on the machine-- your client asked me how to set up his
workers to take only 1 subjob at a time, which can easily be done thru the
configuration GUI.  He wil be reconfiguring his 4 nodes, and do some tests and
get back to us.

Thanks!
-shinya.

[drandolph]

Thanks so much thats what i told the client as well. I just wanted to make sure that was the only option for them at this point. would a long term fix be to install xp 64bit and increase the ram to handle the multiable subjobs?

[Genom]

Can you post how this would be done? I am setting up a 3DS max farm right now and would like to do this as I go.

[drandolph]

I not sure what you are asking. The thought is that the 32bit version of 3DSMax only likes handling 1 job at a time so inside the GUI you can click on the workers tab and right click to set the max subjobs per worker and this would solve the problem.

My thought is that the 64bit version would be better at handling subjobs and if i increase the RAM and install a 64bit version of windows and a 64bit version of 3DSMax then in theory I would be able to address more RAM and take full advantage of the 8 cores without threading and hence should be able to run sub-jobs better and faster.

[Genom]

Specifically I was asking where the option to assign 1 subjob per cpu. I dont recall ever seeing that option.

However, I have bigger issus ot resolve now. Doing a separate post on it.