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Remeshing/Dynamesh doesn't boost i7 1165g7 clock speed - limited to ~1,1GHz

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi!

I am using the newest Version of ZBrush (2021.6.2) on a Lenovo Tablet PC, featuring the Intel i7 1165g7 cpu. And while all other programs seem to fully utalize the cpu, with clock speeds of over 4,5GHz, zbrush how ever does stay at around 0,8 - 1,1GHz.

My performance settings give ZBrush access to all eight cores (4 physical + 4 virtual).

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?
Currently, I am limited to less than a quarter of my available performance, dooming me to wait quite long when remeshing larger projects.

Many regards,

Arahn

#2

Hi @Arahn

For Tablets and Laptops, if you’re running on battery power your performance may be throttled by your system’s power management features. This is generally what you want to happen if running on battery, but make sure your device is set to full performance if it is plugged in.

Optimal thread count in ZBrush for most systems is going to be max threads minus 1. This can be checked in Preferences> Performance. Setting ZBrush to use the max # of threads wont improve performance significantly, but may make your machine perform poorly if all of the available threads are being used by ZB.

How are you testing your CPU usage? Obviously ZBrush wont use 100% of your CPU all the time, or your fans would be pegged all the time, and likely shorten the lifespan of the device. But even just panning a dense model rapidly around the viewport should see your CPU usage start to tick up towards the upper end of the CPU utilization, if you’re watching it in Task Manager. Trying to decimate a dense mesh of around 35k polygons should see CPU usage reach the upper end of CPU utilization at points, however this will be split between the ZBrush executable and the Decimation Master utility.

Otherwise, please contact Pixologic Support for technical issues involving ZBrush. Our ability to assist you on the community forums is limited, and other users wont be able to help you with system specific technical issues.

Thank you!

#3

Hey Spyndel,

thank you very much for the very detailed information.

I checked all these settings thoroughly but couldn’t achieve any improvement – at first.

  • ZBrush already was utilizing 7 out of 8 available cores (4+4)
  • the PC was plugged in
  • My Windows battery savings were set so maximum performance

You lead me down another rabbit hole though, namely my bios settings!
In case of my Lenovo 13ITL16 it was not enough so simply change the Windows Battery Saving Options. I had to set the general behavior in the BIOS settings themselves. From “Battery Saving” to “Intelligent Cooling” (Maximum Performance was also available, but turned my active cooler into a jet engine).

This instantly improved my systems performance by a lot, giving me much higher clock speeds.
But still my performance was lacking greatly behind what I was expecting from an 11th gen i7 processor.

For one, my machine does throttle rather quickly under heavy load due to its thermals of course. This still could not explain my extreme remeshing times though (about 3 to 5 Minutes for 2m polygons)

Then, somewhat by accident, I discovered, that in another project remeshing 7m polygons took only about 3 seconds. A factor of about 100x and a reproducible phenomenon.

I then quickly discovered that in my other project I had activated the Dynamesh option “project”
Once this was disabled, remeshing took only about a single second for the said 2m polygons.

TL;DR:

  • Disable “Project” in Dynamesh
  • Check your BIOS settings