IGMESH Benchmarks: SSD vs. HDD / Blender 2.4 vs. Blender 2.5

[dougal2]

The results are in!

This was tested with the following setup:
- i7 @ 3Ghz
- 12GB 1600Mhz tri-channel RAM
- Kingston 64GB SSD
- ~3 year old 320GB 7200 rpm HDD
- Linux Ubuntu 10.04 64bit
- Blendigo 2.6.1 for Blender 2.49b
- Blendigo current dev version for Blender 2.55 beta

The test mesh was the default cube, to which I applied 6 levels of subsurf twice. I applied the modifiers beforehand so that no time was wasted doing it during export. The test mesh has 1,572,866 verts and the resulting binary igmesh file is 120MB.

It should be noted that the mesh export processes in Blender 2.4x and blender 2.5x are fundamentally different. For Blender 2.4x, the mesh data is first built up as a copy in RAM ("built igmesh" time) and then saved to disk ("save igmesh" time). For Blender 2.5x, a 'streaming' approach is used such that the data is written to disk as needed rather than building a copy in memory first.
In terms of an exporter comparison, the "total export" time is comparable to the "stream igmesh" time.

The results indicate that the SSD is a lot more consistant in write speed, and also faster. The "save igmesh" time is the best indication of pure device speed.
The results also indicate that a streaming approach to export is about 3 times faster than the old method.

I'm sure you can draw further conclusions for yourselves

[dougal2]

I just remembered that the exporter for Blender 2.5 also has the "build + save" method implemented in it. The results for this allow a better comparison between exporters, however it should be noted that although the export is faster, it uses a LOT more memory in the process.

[StompinTom]

Sweet! Thanks for the comparison. I'm liking the (potential) 3x speed increase

[Borgleader]

To hell with memory SPEED IS GOOD!!!! Tyvm dougal2!!!

[CTZn]

The results also indicate that a streaming approach to export is about 3 times faster than the old method.

Interesting, thank you.

[dag]

I get an export time of 74s from i click F12 to Indigo launches with both Samsung F3 1TB and Samsung 470 128GB.
Subdivided a cube 6 times, then 3 times to get same vert count as you, but igmesh is 228MB.
Can you choose export mode somewhere?

[lycium]

Seriously impressive speedups, and the new streaming architecture is great news for memory usage too!

[dougal2]

Performance in the latest version is different from when the benchmark was first made since the way the mesh data is processed has changed significantly. It's probably time it was re-benchmarked though I should think it is still faster than the old exporter.

[dougal2]

I get an export time of 74s from i click F12 to Indigo launches with both Samsung F3 1TB and Samsung 470 128GB.
Subdivided a cube 6 times, then 3 times to get same vert count as you, but igmesh is 228MB.
Can you choose export mode somewhere?

It could be that the exporter you have tested was using the old build+save method by mistake. The next release will definitely be using the faster method. This is not a setting which is available for users to adjust, it should be using the faster method all the time.