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Sorry if I missed it but are you using a cooling pad? I have one underneath my HP Core I7-5500u laptop with a GTX 850 card. When the fans go into high blower during rendering and the heat really starts radiating from the machine the pad does help, lowering the temp by 4-5 degrees according to Speccy.
Bob
My laptop renders at GPU 75C and CPU 95C, but can hold that pretty much indefinately. I generally put a 2 hour cap on my renders, just so that I can get on to the next project. Looking over at what's rendering right now, it's at an hour and 10 minutes in, just passed 3190 iterations. Says it's 76% done, and some of the shadowed areas are still a bit fuzzy so I'll let it run for a bit longer.
Render time is easy caluculation with the data I presented. With the i7 is is 46.8 seconds per frame. With the i5 it is 108 seconds per frame. The i7 CPU that I bought as medical waste is indeed one of the CPU models that was available as an option from HP so it's not actually a souped up CPU that's been tampered with.
No, afterwards the idle temps dropped from to 34C - 36C which is fine since the intel integrated CPU is even driving the monitor when idle since I have it configured to never turn off when plugged in.
All-in-all the HP 8470P is definitely recommended for someone searching from a cheap, sturdy, dependable laptop but they need to search and bargain on eBay to get a fair price for 5 year old tech.
Thanks, but my point was this:
IF, during rendering, the laptop temps are exceeding the performance throttling limit, then you'd assume that the render time for each frame when that was happening would get longer. So if render time per frame started at 48 seconds, but after 1/2 hour became 126 seconds, you might be able to assume that throttling occurred. So render time per frame gives an indication whether the laptop can handle continuous rendering without issue.
Of course, with an animation, as the scene changes the render time might change anyway, but my "animation" was just 20 frames with the camera fixed in the same position, so I was sure that time per frame wasn't due to the animation itself. And the render time stayed the same with all 20 frames, so I'm pretty sure no throttling occurred.
I think the big issue here is whether, when they design computers (laptops or desktops) do they add up the heat generation of the components (like the TDP watts of the CPU) and design a cooling system to handle that TDP continously or not? I'm assuming they say, "well, this CPU has a TDP of 70 watts, so I'll design a cooling system to handle 70 watts continuously". And with more powerful CPU's and GPU's that generate more heat and perform better, they design better cooling systems (like the image posted above) that handle it. And they charge a bit more because it costs more to design a better cooling system to handle a 90 watt TDP.
It just seems like if they have a 70 watt TDP device that generates 70 watts of continuous heat, and they put in a fan that can dissipate that heat, then whether you run it for 1 hour or 1 day or 1 week should be irrelevant as long as the fan is spinning at the right speed. Which means the temperature should remain stable for that time.
So if our laptops (low end or high end) have idle and render temperatures that remain fairly solid and safe for long periods, then it might tend to confirm the belief of design for continuous use. We just have to make sure there aren't other, unrelated issues causing heating problems.
It sure seems that my piece of junk laptop was designed for continuous use, even in a cheapo laptop where they were pinching pennies. So if someone else gets similar results with a high end laptop, it migh lend credence that the "continuous use" design concept is used by companies across the board. And based on the responses elsewhere from people who have used laptops for years doing rendering without problems, it seems that idea is at least reasonable.
Well, you asked for it.............When I need data, I like to go to my good ole' friends, Puget Systems. They have been doing professional tests like these for years. Read what they have to say about their tests on this topic. Keep in mind, they were using desktop systems, but the same principles doubly apply to laptops:
Is stock cooling adequate?
"While the information from the previous section is really interesting, it may be hard to translate into a real world situation. To help with this, we performed the exact same Linpack test except that instead of altering the cooling manually we used two different CPU coolers - the stock cooler that came bundled with the Core i7 4790 and the budget-friendly Cooler Master Hyper TX3 which only costs about $20. To make this as real-world as possible, we installed our test hardware (Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark II, Intel Core i7 4790, 4x Kingston HyperX LoVo DDR3-1600 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980) into a Fractal Design Define R4 chassis with the stock fans running at 5V.
As you can see from the graph above, even a very affordable CPU cooler like the CM Hyper TX3 is able to dramatically lower the CPU temperature under load. While the stock cooler is easily hitting 100 °C during the benchmark run, the CM Hyper TX3 only ever hits a maximum temperature of 80 °C. In terms of how much the CPU was overheating, the stock cooler allowed the CPU to run at > 99 °C about 20% of the time. " [end quote]
This data certainly backs up what I said. Some stock systems are not designed to keep the insides cool enough for comfort under continual heavy loads. Then the writer goes on to say why this could be a problem (the bold print is mine):
"Frankly, we were a bit surprised at how well modern Intel CPUs dealt with really high temperatures. They manage to run at full speed all the way up to 100 °C, and even then the performance is not greatly affected unless they spend a significant amount of time at that temperature. We certainly don't advocate letting your CPU run at those kinds of temperatures, however. While this article is about performance there are plenty of non-performance based reasond to keep your CPU temperature at a more reasonable level.
Sensitive electronics like CPUs have a finite lifespan and running them at higher temperatures shortens it. So unless you want to have an excuse to upgrade your system often, higher temperatures are counter-productive.
With PC hardware, higher temperatures make both minor and major hardware faults much more likely. These hardware faults can result in anything from reduced performance due to minor errors needing to be corrected to data corruption or bluescreens due to more dramatic errors.
The difficult thing is that just saying "lower temperatures are better" is an overly simplified way to look at CPU temperatures when you consider a PC as a whole. While you can use giant liquid cooling loops, insanely high flow fans, or even things like liquid nitrogen to keep a CPU extremely well cooled those methods are either expensive, cumbersome, loud, or a combination of all three. In reality it is generally better to let the CPU run a little warm in order to properly balance the cooling against the heat output of the CPU.
For example, the Corsair Hydro H60 is a great closed-loop CPU cooler that we use on most of our high wattage CPUs, but it would be overkill for a low-wattage Intel Core i3 CPU.
It would certainly keep the CPU well cooled, but it would be much louder, more complex (due to the liquid and pump), and more expensive than what is necessary. Instead, a CM Hyper TX3 or Gelid Tranquillo (if you want to have the system even quieter) would be a better match for that CPU even though the CPU would run slightly hotter under load."
[end of quote]
The writer of this article says exactly what I have been telling you. Almost verbatim. 3D rendering ain't normal use for most people. It can wear out a lesser machine. These guys have been doing years of research like this. I doubt if they are overreacting. Source: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-Temperature-on-Intel-CPU-Performance-606/
I think then according to what you wrote we are wasting our time, appartently with intel Gen 3 i-core CPUs and newer looking at CPU temperature because they've improved the turbo/throttle to such a degree that they can't overheat.
I noticed that even though 3 of 4 cores reached 104C or 105C on my CPU the actual wattage that I saw in Core Temp only ever maxed out at 37.9W and this CPU I have has TDP of 45W. Unfortunately Core Temp does not save the min watt and max watt of the CPU being monitored like it does the min and max temperatures of the CPU.
My render times per frame after the initial 1 to 15 minutes for DAZ Studio to set up the scene for the 1st iteration iray write are very consistent, even though 3 of 4 cores go up to 100%, and the temperature stay consistantly in the 90Cs sometimes getting to 105C. I think to burn out my CPU I would need to drive the wattage to exceed 45W and I think the modern intel i-core from Generation 2 and onwards won't allow exceeding the TDP.
You can log the results of core temp in a file though to find the wattage used on Core #0 which is most of the wattage used by the CPU package. It is the 2nd to the last entry before the timestamp.
The max time for a DAZ iray iteration you can find by running a grep, cut, and sort on the DAZ Studio log file if you have UNIX utilities on your Windows machine since you said you don't have Wine & DAZ installed on your Linux machine.
Core Temp itself reads directly from CPU registers and shouldn't be habitually used once you are satisfied with the performance characteristics of your laptop.
So my thoughts directly to your question is based on my laptop's performance: it is running a turbo / cool cycle so quickly and efficiently because it was designed that way so that the CPU won't fail even with frequent renders although as I mentioned earlier other components will eventually fail from long term disappated heat without a regular cool down cycle for the laptop such as shutting down daily for a few hours. So I can say that the HP 8460P will fail with frequent renders and no shutdown time daily for a few hours to cool off as I've had one and it's failed in that way already. The CPU on it didn't fail though, something, likely the connections at the graphics i/o controllers failed. Given the HP 8470P is nearly identical I'd expect it to eventually fail in the same way with the same usage patterns. Other laptops too as those designs aren't significantly different except the meatal chassis of the HP 84XXP series is likely to disapate heat better than a plastic chassis.
Wow, drzap, I'm impressed. Thanks for the great data.
So, after reading this, it looks like the following quotes summarize their position:
While this is great data, I'm not sure it says anything different from what has already been posted here, except that higher temperatures are more the norm than I expected, but may not be that big a deal, and may not affect continuous render performance at all. So it seems like there's even a larger temperature margin than I expected, so if a computer's cooling system allows high temperatures it may not be a problem.
Am I missing something?
Yes. You missed a whole paragraph on why he doesn't recommend running a cpu at high temps. You missed the part where they writes that he installs Corsair H60 hybrid liquid coolers on their high powered systems jsut to prevent said high temps. Because while high temps probably won't damage your cpu, they can certainly damage everything else in your system, which leads to the same result: No work gets done.
His post summarizes my personal experience in a more generalized and concise manner and I appreciate his confirmation of my personal experience.
drzap, I really do appreciate the data. I learned something. But it seems clear that their point agrees that even if a laptop runs hotter than a desktop (which may or may not be true), it's not necessarily going to affect performance, even if temps get up near 100C.
And yes, they say "We certainly don't advocate letting your CPU run at those kinds of temperatures, however. While this article is about performance there are plenty of non-performance based reasons to keep your CPU temperature at a more reasonable level....Sensitive electronics like CPUs have a finite lifespan and running them at higher temperatures shortens it."
But the question is whether a laptop can perform continous rendering like a desktop. If you have to replace your computer every 3 years instead of 5 years due to heavy use (due to shortened lifespans) that doesn't mean it can't be used as a serious render machine.
Noone has disputed that question. People have said they use laptops to do render work, including myself. But what use is a machine to someone if the cpu stays alive but everything else dies and why would you recommend or accept that sort of performance? I know I wouldn't.
I was referring to statements about laptops being inferior to workstation desktops in every way, or something like that. But I think this great info you provided has helped to clear things up. I feel a lot better knowing that even high temps might not be that big a deal.
Thanks much.
Of course they can continuous render - modern laptops all throttle to protect hardware. You just render slower . Desktops throttle too. It's just that desktops are less expensive and have better cooling generally
You always get diminished performance at those temps (at stock settings), if your test is CPU limited. The exception is if you disable some BIOS settings and protection and overclock. But if your test setup isn't CPU limited (you have some other bottlenecks), it won't necessarily affect performance
And if your test is GPU limited, same thing for GPU rendering and temps. You can throttle GPU at higher temps too.
Throttling occurs at much lower temps than 100 in modern CPU's. One or more cores can clock up to higher frequencies than base clocks because of turbo boost (this is on stock, non oc'ed CPU's; it's a standard feature). Same idea with GPU's. The % of time in boost frequencies is diminished the higher the temps. Better cooling allows you to operate continuously at higher frequencies
If you are not seeing throttling, 2 common reasons. 1) Your test design might other bottlenecks, ie. it might not be a "proper test" . For example if you are GPU limited, or GPU memory limited by a given renderer, CPU isn't going to do much work. Or maybe your renderer or settings aren't taxing the CPU . 2) Your hardware might not be capable - A "U" series chip is not representative of what 99% people would use for laptop rendering . If even under load, your temps were 62, there should be no throttling as expected. It's designed to be low voltage , low thermal envelop for thin and light laptops. So on those types of laptops you might not see any thottling because of low voltage, low temps.
Of course they can continuous render - modern laptops all throttle to protect hardware. You just render slower . Desktops throttle too. It's just that desktops are less expensive and have better cooling generally
Agreed. A laptop will usually throttle more frequently than a desktop because of a tighter margin and it has to save its hide. There is a lot of room in a desktop to push that hot air out. Most laptops don't have that luxury. Liquid cooling helps though.
And there are many options - you can run custom power profiles / power management options to limit temps etc.. for either desktop or laptop either through windows or with power managment tools. You can disable turbo frequencies for example.
e.g. if you live in the desert with high ambient temps you might want to do that compared to if you lived in the north pole
2 things adversely affect hardware longevity. Voltage and heat. In that order. If you're running stock system (non overclocked), voltage will be auto regulated so it's a non issue. But some people actually undervolt their hardware
I believe Xeons are undervolted. They certainly run at lower frequency than consumer CPUs. Probably the reason is two-fold. Your point about reliabilty issues (customers often have two or more cpus crammed into a cabinet) is one of them. The other reason is power consumption. Big data systems with lots of servers want to wrench out as much power savings as they can and those volts add up. Noise is another issue. lower voltage means lower heat and quieter fans.
Again, the issue is whether laptops are inferior to desktops when it comes to "serious" or continuous rendering.
Based on that, I think it's pretty clear that laptops are not inherently inferior to desktops for long term rendering. Clearly, if you can cool a GTX 1080ti in a laptop, and a Ryzen 7 1700, I don't think there's much data to support the belief that a laptop's confined space somehow automatically makes it inferior for "serious" rendering.
I don't think there's much data to support the belief that a laptop's confined space somehow automatically makes it inferior for "serious" rendering.
I think you are misinterpreting the data and taking my quote out of context. My quote: 'For 3d rendering animations, a laptop is inferior to a desktop in every way except for mobility'. Later, I qualified that statement by excluding mobile workstations, but even most workstation laptops are inferior to desktops for this task. I said these words in reference to giving computer advice to someone asking about buying a laptop for computer rendering. And the data proves this out. Most laptops will throttle more often, get hotter, and therefore have shorter average active lifespans than a desktop. So while your comparable laptop may keep up with my desktop in a sprint race (such as a still render), my desktop will leave your laptop in the dust in the long run in both render times and longevity of the system. In my book, that is inferior. This is why nobody who does heavy 3D work would buy or use a laptop if a comparable desktop was available unless they needed to be mobile or had limited desk space. On those occasions, a laptop wins by default.
I am quite happy with my laptop performance and would only buy a desktop with the most modern GPUs for rendering if I made animations I felt had to be rendered in iRay. Or was creating a graphic novel or something rendered in iRay.
I'm curious if anyone has tried the Thunderbolt 3 connectors which allow you to connect to an external desktop-type GPU in a case? I suppose you could use something like that with a laptop, and I recently saw at GTX 1070 in an external case that had a price almost the same as just the GTX 1070 as I recall. Though something tells me that an external GPU just wouldn't perform the same over a cable like that. Though I may be wrong.
I considered that but it was so expensive I thought it silly. I would just buy a desktop instead. However for a traveler with a laptop such a thing would be convenient but they need better casing and power supply than the typical enclosure offered for those things now.
Besides that, buy extra hardware to attach to your laptop takes away the advantages of having one by making it much less portable. You almost might as well buy a small desktop.
On Newegg you can get one of those boxes with a GTX 1070 for $570. That's like $100 more than the GTX 1070. Yeah, kinda steep, but if you have a laptop and want an upgrade I suppose it might work.
I'd still rather wait for the coming Intel Gen8 CPU with integrated ATI GPU chip for a laptop. DAZ 3D should integrate ProRenderer with DAZ Studio. It is similar to iRay as I've tried ProRenderer in Blender.
Have you considered the laptops with Ryzen 7 1700 and GTX 1080ti? Sounds pretty cool. Though maybe you can't get both together yet, I forget. But I suppose that's another thing to consider when buying a laptop nowadays....if it has a Thunderbolt 3 port in case you want to buy the next generation GTX 1180ti and plug in to an external case when you're at home. Heck, that would eliminate any cooling worries too.
Or is it the 2080ti?
Wow, ASUS has an 2.8GHz i7 laptop with 16 GB RAM and a GTX 1080 and 512GB M.2 SSD for $2,000. And it has a Thunderbolt 3 port.
Dang, that sounds nice. Heck, I could get that and an external case for my GTX 1080ti, and when I'm at home just plug it in and have a 1080 with a 1080ti for rendering.
Sounds like a decent one. Much better than mine. I can't even open DS on mine cause it has a crappy Intel HD Graphics. I can't run most of my 3D apps with it. The laptop is pretty much only used for data and the forums. Thank god I have a big PC so I can do this type of stuff.
I think it also depends on the specific situation.
For sure, some laptops have identical CPU's and GPU's to their desktop SKU counterpart. Some "laptops" are 20lbs , $20,000 and have overclocked Some even have 18 core server chips (single socket) , multiple GPU's that overpower a typical desktop
But if you want to make generalizations, they typically cost more for the same hardware. The enclosed space means they are more difficult to cool (sure you can get crappy desktop cases, filled with dust and cables blocking airflow too). It's more difficult to get exotic cooling. It's more difficult to get higher clocks or higher overclocks. The slower average clocks generally means they are slower (and at the same price point they will always be slower). You can still run continuously no problems. Throttling will prevent excessive temperatures
This doesn't necessarily indicate anything. It's a U series dual core chip. No throttling (as expected) at 62. Typical laptops such as quadcore gaming laptops with higher base clocks will throttle for sure, and run much higher temps
Performance throttling can occur at different temps on different models. And sometimes it's limited not by the chip only , but by the BIOS or imposed by the OEM laptop or desktop mobo manufacturer. Sometimes software can impose thermal limits (an exampel is windows power options, or overclcocking software). But just look at CPU-z along with your temps.(unless you overclock or disable protection or adjust bios)
Note the Puget test didn' t not say "without any performance throttling" . There was a difference,albeit small in their linpack test. Is linpack a relevant test for 3D rendering? maybe, maybe not .
I tested on a i7 Acer laptop and it throttles a lot earlier than a desktop i7 (~ >72 degrees turbo frequences are prevented. The base clock is 2.6 and it turbos up to 3.2 below that temp). On real data on a CPU renderer (arnold) , throttling makes about +10-12% difference on time per frame (but speeds are +23% at turbo frequency, so performance vs. frequency isn't linear here) . (e.g. If I put that laptop in the cooler basement and manually override the fans so they are maxed so it's below 69, turbo frequencies are enabled and it renders faster) . But on a primary GPU renderer , those CPU temps make little difference . The time/frame is ~+/- 0.5% .
Y'know, this has me thinking....
Since most apps I have rely mostly on GPU, not CPU, I could buy a lower end laptop with an older CPU, as long as it has a Thunderbolt 3 port.And then just buy one of those external GPU boxes, and put my GTX 1070 in it. Then it can do some serious rendering while I'm doing other stuff on my desktop (Substance Painter or Blender or whatever).
Darn. Now I'm trying to convince myself to buy a new laptop.