Utilizing my C2D's full potential

[.Maleficus.]

Right now I'm rendering a fractal in Apophysis, and it's been going for almost 7 minutes, and its not even half way done. I looked at my CPU usage, and I'm only at 50%. Are there any settings in Windows where I can tell my processor to work at 100% during certain programs? Like, Photoshop, Apophysis and games? I don't want half my processor doing nothing and the other half doing all of it.

[dgrmkrp]

u could go into task manager and give the task greater priority.. it's not recommended tho, but i've seen this giving 3dsmax a huge boost on my humble xp... but, while it renders, i can't do anything else.. anything..

[.Maleficus.]

Cool, I'll try that next time I render something. Is it just, View>Update Speed>High ?

[dgrmkrp]

nope.. you have to find the process in the processes tab, right-click and set priority to high or something, never real time. you'll probably notice something at the instant you click.. when i do it, 3dmax gets more responsive and faster, but the shell itself or other programs lose a lot of resources and cpu time.. so, use with care.. i did a test right now and i can get more than 50% improvement on render times.. but the cpu is 99% loaded with 3ds :|

edit: it's a core duo... d'oh.. you can boost the performance by stuffin the first core, but i can't ensure a program made for one core can use the second without optimizations.. on the software level.. so, i hope you get a boost and keep system responsiveness but if the software isn't multi-threaded.. can't predict the outcome...

[bartvandenberg]

but if the software isn't multi-threaded..

thats usually the case with dual core. If the software wasnt designed to use both cores, then the other core is usually a little useless....but.....then again...im not exactly a connoisseur of c2d.