Word on the developer site is that the system’s code has become so spaghettified and filled with hacks that it has finally caved in, making the functionality unusable when more than 1000 particles are used because the random number generator has broken (with no easy fix either)
If you value your sanity, you should start looking for alternative ways to make effects (possibly through a ‘particle system’ created by an addon. It’s sad that it’s gotten to that point in Blender, but there’s really no way forward other than the devs. completely ripping out the existing particle context and starting on a new one.
My question is, What was the version of Blender where particle simulation has worked better?
The weird thing is that I notice that in some simulations (not only particles) the resources of my PC are not intensively used. In some cases a single CPU thread is used, in other cases multithread but none of them exceeds 30% CPU usage. I have no idea how it should work, I’m just saying I notice that.
The developer website reports that Blender 2.72b is a version where the random number generator worked properly.
The main concern for artists is that Blender particles can’t do random numbers properly anymore, something that is at its core the absolute most basic function for a particle system (that’s how bad the code situation has gotten in Blender’s particle functionality).