Hi Hans
For max performance:
Try to stop all other unneeded tasks like onenote.exe etc.
Stop Antivirus tools (!), they sometimes check all your temp files.
Activate all buffers/cache on HD and if possible on SSD.
Check the temps of your hardware, if there is no overheating of a component,
so it will be regulated down.
Check the settings for multicore in APG
Have you XMP memory ?

Hi Hans
Have you only upgraded the mem or the motherboard too ?
In some case, using the max RAM amount will degrade the RAM running only in single than in dual channel mode.
This means only 50% of the RAM speed and could be a new bottleneck ;-)

A good multithreading algorithm is hard to achieve. We are working on this topic since 2 years already with Intel as partner. An engineer there validates the changes we do in the code to see if the idea / spirit of each algorithm is going to scale well or not.
This is complicated. Many of the stages are now multithreaded, but some of them are not at all.
Moreover, we have to take care of the hyperthreading fact too. It's a core, but virtual core and doesn't have the same abilities as a real physical core.
Be sure, that on the MT topic, we are really good even if the task manager isn't showing that well ( BTW : it's the worth MT benchmark, but unfortunately, it's the only visible ).

So, in you case, blending, we only use real core and not the virtual core because it would have slow down the process. Here's the IO dominates and a virtual core cannot do IO ( in fact it can, be it would lock the second core sharing the same die ). So we just use real cores.

Hi Alexandre,

One followup question, would I gain something by turning OFF the hyperthreading? The % will go up to 25% but is that really faster then 13% when hyperthreading is on?

Martin,

The question is what is best for APG, hyperthreading ON of OFF.  Rendering I do while asleep so not the first thing I was thinking off, but if hyperthreading helps there, that would be good.