12% CPU usage max

Here's a screenshot of my CPU usage while running some filters.

Hello, Welcome to the forum

My big congratulations for being able to have and AMD 3950X 16 cores, with this surely would be much faster, but as you show it seems that it uses fully only some of the 32 cores

Have you tested if other graphic software is able to use all 32 cores ?

Maybe you can do a benchmark like for example "3D mark" or any other to see that the CPU is working correctly and how it should be

Are all the cores enabled and working on Windows? as it seems that sometimes the cores need to be enabled manually

How to fix disabled AMD Ryzen processor cores

So then you if you have all the cores enabled and the benchmarks gives similar results to other similar AMD3950X, you can be sure that the problem is from FF software

What kind of cooling for the CPU do you have? as this is a very powerful and hot CPU

I think that if you show already that are using more than one core, is correctly activated the Use all available cores from the Tools menu options

Hey, so it seems that bomber isn't multithreaded when it has a particle loaded from a Color Control being driven from an image file

I've tested other functions which seem to utilise things properly, but the bomber node is stuck drawing absolutely none of my computers power as soon as it has an image texture loaded. Its not like it's using less of all cores, its only using 4 of the logical processors. I'm running the newest bomber node, and have tried Bomber+ too to no extra luck.

Any thoughts?

Hmm, sounds strange. From what I've seen, using bitmaps as particle source can be very inefficient - at least with large bitmaps, the rendering times can go up by 10x. I guess the sampling architecture just isn't very efficient with large bitmaps. However, I still get around 90% usage on all threads, when using image based particles... so sounds like you've got something weird going on there.

You should definitely be able to get better performance with smaller images - pretty much the same speed as with procedural components. The color control preview will upscale the image to fit your canvas resolution, but I think the bomber still only samples at the original resolution. At least the rendering speed suggest this.

Try to find out if this behavior can be replicated anywhere else in FF. Let's hope this will get fixed.

Hi guys,

Apologies for the downtime here, had to focus on work for a while and couldn't spend time bugfixing here.

I've tried the v10 beta and still have the same issues. I've also tried running my filters on my laptop and it fully engages the CPU to 100%. I can't see what is going on with the program that it doesn't seem to leverage a full AMD CPU. Its making it very unusable for my use case sadly.

Many thanks for the replies SpaceRay, my rig has a 2080ti & a 1080ti which I regularly use for heavy 3D rendering without fault so wouldn't expect any issues/bottlenecks there. The laptop is 8 core, so would make sense that it is more supported by default.

Do the developers check these forums at all or do I need to go to them directly with issues?

Thanks again,

I think this is a very important topic and is interesting to know more about this and you are fortunate to have a 32 core computer and thanks to you is possible to test really what FF can do and if there could be any possible bug or problem and I want to help you get the most of your amazing 32 cores CPU and so you can use fully FF

After having seen more information as detailed below here in the quotes I think I may help you to find a possinle way maybe to solve this

It may be that the problem may be possibly and perhaps that you are not using filters that would need really the 32 cores so I suggest the following to be able to test it and have more information to find a solution to your problem

INDEX

POINT 1 - Use both Texture and Effects filters to make the test that make FF work much (i give some possible suggestions below)

POINT 2 - Use high resolution results using Actual Preview size and NOT the reduced 600x600 preview, maybe use for example 5000x5000

POINT 3 - Test also the perfomance of FF and not only the amount of CPU cores used, I mean the time it takes a filter to finish

POINT 4 - To be more clear of the possible difference it would be interesting and useful if you could be able to make the same tests in both your laptop and your 32 cores computer with the same filters and presets

Thanks very much for making these test that I think would be helpful to be able to get more information about what may be happening and help you solve the problem and discover if the problem also help possibly to others that may buy a similar CPU and discover

Here is a more detailed explanation of each point

---------------------------------------------------------------- P O I N T 1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 - As GMM told below amount of cores used depends very much on how complex and power the filter needs to work, so some filters may use little amount to process the result

So here I suggest some complex filters that you can test as a possible example to make FF force use more cores


Texture filters (these are self-generated and does not use any kind of bitmap imput or bomber)

Terrain Generator by Orteil

Effects Filters ( these are the ones wh ere you can use bitmap input and the bomber)

Circular Reasoning by Rachel Duim with Preset 1 that includes dense packing and does not use bomber

Will put more filters to test for you

----------------------------------------------------------------- P O I N T 2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 - I think that an important thing to test it better and force to use more cores maybe and make FF work harder you can increase the output resolution to for example to 3000x3000 or even 5000x5000 or higher. Because if you test it with the default 600x600 it will not force FF to work much more

And remember that some Effects filter that do load the source image from the main menu and not on a color control the final resolution is the one of that source image used

---------------------------------------------------------- P.O I N T 3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 - It would be really appreciated and useful if you could also take note of the time it takes to render the filter to test how much time it takes

if you do not know how to show it, you need to go to the menu
Tools ---> Options ---> Interface tab ---> Show elapsed rendering time (it is below the Multipass)

Because is not only the cores that is important, as the perfomance of FF using those cores also needed to know and not only how much CPU and compare it with other computers or with ourselves. if you want I can make the same tests as you and compare them.

---------------------------------------------------------- P O I N T 4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4 - As you have said that on the laptop works right or better I think it would be great to compare the results that you may get with the same filters and presets and that you test on your 32 cores computer and see what happens in your laptop and how they can compare to see if it may be a problem

Please, Can you be so kind if possible to make the same tests that you make on your 32 cores that I suggested here, ALSO in your laptop to see really the difference between one CPU and the other?

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------------------HERE ARE THE QUOTES I TOLD ABOVE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

QUOTE 1

Quote
Nickson wrote: Here's a screenshot of my CPU usage while running some filters.

From seeing the graphic it seems that at least 6 cores are used but the others also has some minimal low activity, so is really not that they are not used at all.

So I think that you can test some of the filters I put above on the detail of point 1 to really test how the cores are used

QUOTE 2

Quote
GMM wrote on this thread named multi thread speed - 8 cores? 6 cores?: Speed increase on multi-core CPUs greatly depends on the filter itself. If the filter has many blurs, anti-aliasing and other bitmap-based stuff it won't scale linearly with more cores.

So then if what GMM said is true, then it could be that the filters you may have tried are fast and does not need all the cores, so you should really try a filter that is very heavy in the CPU usage and so you could really test it if it increases the number of cores and the % of CPU

See above on point 1

QUOTE 3

Quote
Nickson wrote: The laptop is 8 core, so would make sense that it is more supported by default.

Question 3.1 So then is it a 8 core with 16 threads?

Question 3.2 Is it Intel or AMD ?

Question 3.3 As told above does the CPU of the same filter used in the 32 cores work better in the 8 cores than the 32 cores ( this is why I suggested point 4)

Quote
Nickson wrote: Do the developers check these forums at all or do I need to go to them directly with issues?

As far as I know the only ones that check these forums are the moderator GMM and Vladimir Golovin, as GMM is the one that tells the developers team about any possible problem or questions from any FF user

Quote
emme wrote: Is this an issue with the bomber specifically, or is it happening with FF in general? There are some pre-processing steps that are expected to not utilize all the cores

Good question, and Is true that to be able to know more about the possible problem is needed to test different kind of filters, and not only with bomber, see the point 1 above