I have a modest laptop with dual core i3 CPU, and while rendering large scenes net surfing becomes very sluggish.
If I restrict rendering cores for just one, I can surf on the net normally.
Question is, can I switch the rendering cores between 1 and 2 during the rendering? If I go to have a cup of coffee, it’s better to have two cores working instead on just one, and when I come back, I want to get other stuff done too.
In Luxrender this option was available, but I want to keep working with cycles (or Eevee if I choose to let go of version 2.79 ).
I also have an integrated GPU (Intel HD 620), which isn’t very useful either, I suppose.
There is a trick I use, that I’m not sure is a great idea, but it seems to work.
On the task manager you can lower the priority of Blender’s process so that it takes up CPU cycles after your browser or whatever else you are using. This can make Blender feel a little sluggish sometimes, but it has never really bothered me.
Ubuntu/Linux OSes supposedly have better render times than in Windows (tho the impact might depend on the version of Blender).
You can try distros without installing (tho I dunno if that’d be an accurate test if it’s running on a USB drive).
On my potato i3-370M dual core CPU with whatever iGPU (arrandale?),
using Bodhi Linux, and trying Zorin OS (Lite Education),
Viewport animation went up +7.5fps! Blender 2.79b
(Tho I noticed specular shiny shading in solid viewport doesn’t work. I can live with that for no extra cost, tho).
).