network render slower than single PC?

[fairx]

Hi guys,

I'm really new to this, and decided to join the wonderful world of Lightwave 3D.

I'm trying to do network render since it sound cool (render farm..) and my fren lend me his PC (winXP sp1, Pentium4 1.8 256 RAM, realtek 8139 nic) and I started the usual Ms networking process with my own (win2k sp3, Duron 1800 o/c, 512 Ram, realtek 8139 nic).

After hours of setting up - reading the manual and watching the video by Matt Gorner (nice one) Screamernet finally up and running. 1 node per PC.

Eagerly, I load some scene provided with LW8 package and start rendering... and then I started to notice things. Is it really that slow? Screamernet renders one.. frame.. at.. a.. time...

then I tried rendering the same scene without screamernet and the speed are three times faster than network render. I tried again with only one node active (my PC) and the result are just as same as using 2 node network render.

What did I do wrong? Does network performance affect ScreamerNet? Please help....

[KeithJ]

I've noticed that if I start the nodes off on my master lightwave PC they dont actually run on the pc they are ment too and the master does all the work. Pehaps this has something to do with hyperthreading?

Anyway, If I launch the nodes for each PC actually on the relevant PC then they do use the correct processor.

Its my first week with screamer net and I only actually got the **** thing working today anyway.. so I am certainly no expert!

hope this helps,

Keith