Comparison between FF2 and FF3 render speed test

I have just upgraded my computer from an Quad Core AMD X4 645 to an Quad Core Intel i7 2600K. Also have upgraded to 16 GB 14900 DDR 3 memory and now I am running Windows 7 and all the applications from a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA 3.0 6GB/s SSD drive (which from the benchmarks I have seen is one of the fastest if connected to a good SATA 3.0 controller using a 6GB/s cable)

Making some speed tests I am VERY SURPRISED to see the results !!!

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How Filter Forge be so slow with a much better cpu processor and more ram and having caché and writing the file to an SSD drive ? A perhaps more important question. Are the different filters in Filter Forge with the SAME speed proportionally in speed according to the hardware ?

Please, Please, I want to ask if I am making something wrong, or have the wrong configuration, or there something I have to change to get better speed, or this is right and I am not making nothing wrong ???

FILTER FORGE VERSIONS USED

FIlter Forge 2 (FF2) is latest 2.011

Filter Forge 3 (FF3) is latest 3.03

Using both in Standalone version (not using photoshop)

I will explain what I have done to test the speed

NUMBER 1(N1) Old Computer

AMD X4 645
8 GB Value ram
5400 rmp Hard drive SATA 2.0 3GB/s
Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT with latest drivers
Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit

NUMBER 2(N2) New Computer
Intel i7 2600K
16 GB 14900 DDR3 Special RAM
SSD SATA 3.0 6GB/s
Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT with latest drivers
Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit


RENDER SPEED RESULTS

TEST 1 - Render a 2000x2000 texture using Crysta filter by Vladimir Golovin

N1 - FF2 - 21 MINUTES
N2 - FF2 - 15 MINUTES (only 6 minutes difference ???)
N2 - FF3 - 24 MINUTES !!! (24 Minutes on computer 2 ??? Higher than computer 1 ?)

TEST 2 - Render a 2000x2000 texture using Creepy filter by Vladimir Golovin

N1 - FF2 - 11 MINUTES
N2 - FF2 - 8 MINUTES (only 3 minutes difference ???)
N2 - FF3 - 12 MINUTES (12 Minutes on computer 2 ??? Higher than computer 1 ?)

FILTER FORGE CONFIGURATION

On both FF I have put the same configuration, and is the default configuration, I mean:

Use ALL available CPU/Cores
Use Direct X style
Using output dithering
Optimizing Blur Calculations
Temporary folder in C: with 56 GB free
Anti Alias OFF
Not using double precision
Gamma correction enabled

COMPUTER ACTIVITY WHILE RENDERING


I have seen that in both the CPU activity is between 92% and 98% with 4 cores active on the AMD and 8 cores (4 real+ 4 HT)active on the intel. The RAM consumed was only 2GB.

CONCLUSION


I am very surprised that there is little difference between computer 1 and 2, and I think that at least it should be on FF2 64bit around half the time than it was on FF 2 64 bit on the first computer.

Also very surprised that FF3 is SLOWER than FF2 64 bit on computer 1 !!!!

How is possible ?

There is so much difference between 32 bit and 64 bit ?

Or is it because is still a beta version ?

At first I wanted to make the test with 4000x4000 but it was REALLY VERY SLOW so I decided to make it at 2000x2000.

I wonder if this starts heavily depending on processor... I've done some testing since I was curious and had some time to spare.

I rendered out a 600x600 DOGS filter using the first preset with everything set to default. Antialiasing was on as usual.

Method of testing: Do the render 10 times using the same preset with some time in between, then average results. This test was done using my macbook pro running MacOSX 10.6.8 (not Lion). The processor was Intel Core i7 2.66GHz with 8GB of RAM (DDR3). All multipass renders were rendered with 100% degradation.

All results are in seconds
-- Using Multipass 5 --
(1) 3.31 (2) 3.34 (3) 3.49 (4) 3.54 (5) 3.47 (6) 4.78 (7) 4.39 ( 4.99 (9) 5.08 (10) 5.21

MEAN: 4.16 seconds

-- Using Multipass 4 --
(1) 3.47 (2) 3.05 (3) 3.19 (4) 3.10 (5) 3.33 (6) 5.46 (7) 4.31 ( 4.71 (9) 4.03 (10) 4.01

MEAN: 3.866 seconds

-- Using Multipass 3 --
(1) 3.28 (2) 2.92 (3) 3.50 (4) 3.87 (5) 3.03 (6) 4.57 (7) 3.88 ( 4.05 (9) 3.30 (10) 3.60

MEAN: 3.60 seconds

-- Using Legacy --
(1) 3.43 (2) 3.91 (3) 3.87 (4) 3.88 (5) 3.81 (6) 4.01 (7) 3.81 ( 3.24 (9) 3.46 (10) 3.80

MEAN: 3.722 seconds

Now... let me just say that I don't think these numbers represent too much. For one thing I'm not a technician and I haven't done this with my comp at the purest point. In other words I do have some programs running and they will contribute to the numbers somehow. I don't know how exactly FilterForge's render engine runs and I don't know what processes go behind the render. Either way I did these tests in a manner to see if Multipass is any better than legacy. Turns out its almost no different for this filter at 600x600 pixels. Maybe it'll change significantly with higher resolutions. I'll let somebody else try that.

Oh well. I really enjoy progressive renders however. It's given me some more leg room to work in.

Thanks Sphinx and Skybase for your help and test results, and perhaps using different multipass would increase the rendering speed, but I do not know if it would be really see a great difference in higher resolution, and not just A FEW SECONDS DIFFERENCE.

I will have to test with different multipass and see really if this improves the rendering speed.

IS TRUE that the rendering time depends VERY MUCH on the filter construction, and what the filter does, and how much CPU intensive is the filter, for example Photo effect filter are really very fast, but others that modify and distort and change very much the image are really slow because must make a huge amount of calculations to get the result.


I choosed to make the test with Crysta and Creepy because:

They are very CPU intensive and is good to test the rendering speed.

These filters do not depend on any image that must be loaded to work

These have been created by Vladimir Golovin so is supossed that as he is the creator of FF he should have optimized these filters to work in the best way and get the most of FF.

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GMM wrote: Spaceray, you should get the same results with FF2 and FF3 (or close to the same) if you set Progressive previews to Legacy and turn on preview cache preservation. These are the only two settings that make FF3 different from FF2.

OK, I will try to make many other tests and time each one and see what differences I can find by configuring it as you have said.

There are only two settings that make FF3 different from FF2, BUT there is ALSO one perhaps very important difference, at least I think it is for me, and is that FF2 is 64 bit and FF3 is 32 bit, and I am using Windows 64 bit.

¿ There is NO difference in performance or render speed by using the 32bit or 64bit versions ?

I want to thank very much to Sphynx and Skybase that have taken the time to make the time test and have put the results here and I appreciate it.

I think I have solved the mystery and why FF was so slow and I want to sincerely apologize and say that I am very sorry I did not make more research and investigate more to see if the results from the first had been really true.

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Please, I want to ask to any moderator that could change the thread title to a better one that could probably read "Comparison between FF2 and FF3 render speed test"

As the SLOW reason is NOT true.

I am sorry that I had not time to compare yet FF2 to FF3 render speed, BUT I have made a benchmark of FF2 and found a very interesting thing that I did not know and I think is very important for thinking that FF could be slow

I had a very wrong thought that if the time taken to render a 2000x2000 was 8 minutes, the render speed for a 1000x1000 would be 4 minutes, and really is a little more than 1 minute. So I am sorry that I had made this mistake and have wrong thinking.

Here is the result to the benchmark done and have seen that instead of the 8 minutes from the first post, I have make it 3 times more in a different day and got that it really was around 6 minutes, so it really is nearly half the time of old computer 1

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Render speed time is in minutes and seconds FF2 1000x1000 1.20 FF2 1200x1200 2.11 FF2 1400x1400 3.03 FF2 1600x1600 4.10 FF2 1800x1800 5:12 FF2 2000x2000 6:08 FF2 3000x3000 13:10 FF2 4000x4000 23:42