Does GPU affect final render speed, or just preview speed w/ Vray 2.0 for 3DS Max?

[vegascarnut]

Total noob here. First post. I am running 3DS Max 2010 64 bit with a desktop tower. Tower was new in 2010.

 

Basic CPU/GPU is this:

• 2xE5520 processors (8 cores)

• Basic GeForce 250 graphics card.

• Win 7, 64 bit

 

I am converting from Brazil to Vray. I render mostly cars/garage type scenes.

 

I plan to add render slaves in the near future, because I realize that CPU cores are the key to final render speed. However, keep hearing about GPU render acceleration with Vray, but the only demo videos I see relate to preview render speed with shaders and the like.

 

I want to know if getting a KILLER Cuda/Open CL card like a Quadro 4000 QVC or something like that would increase FINAL render speed.

 

I do lots of still frame renders, and my ONLY concern is how to crank out those final renders faster.

 

Thanks!!

[tzframpton]

I do not believe the video card helps in final renders as much as pure processor power. In all my years of browsing forums and reading online, it's all about processor horsepower. Video accelerators help in real-time screen rendering, not final output rendering. I could be wrong tho.

 

Personally, a friend of mine owns a powerhouse computer. Dual CPU's, and they are ultra high-end Xeons that shows 24 cores, and he has 96GB of RAM. It has a decent video card, but nothing over $200 price range (gaming card at that). I have to admit, that rig he owns did a Revit walkthrough render in record breaking time compared to my workstation computer at work. I was beyond impressed. Hope this has some merit for your inquiry.

[vegascarnut]

Thanks! For so long, all I've heard is CPU, CPU, CPU, but more and more I'm hearing about GPU being used for final renders. I still have to think that cores win in final render improvement, but what is confusing me are things like this:

 

 

I don't care about the shader preview render, which is awesome, but look at the final render speeds!! I'm still blown away by this.

[tzframpton]

That is an awesome and very informative video. And since you're using 3DS Max, I would assume that MentalRay can select CPU's or GPU's like the narrator did in the linked video. I don't think you can do this in AutoCAD or Revit (which is what most members of this forum are using) but I could be wrong.

 

I like how the narrator says "GPU Revolution" because it does make sense to let hardware specifically designed for graphical rendering take over. I'm glad to see this happening finally. This setup is very unique and costs almost $19k as it noted in the last slide. I would imagine you'd have to use a 220v electrical connection for this much power as well. 8X 580GTX GPU's and dual Xeon's doesn't come cheap in terms of power consumption.

 

This is obviously a professional setup. If you're a casual user, or employed at a company that has limited budget then it seems the differences in useing CPU vs GPU might not have any bearing since money comes first. If you have a dual GPU setup in a standard computer, I wonder how much difference this would yield vs raw CPU/RAM power. It seems your inquiry might be a little premature and the programs still will need to catch up to the power offered by GPU's. In other words, the market needs to shift how the programs are utilizing power to render scenes. This might take some time so for now I see us still being in the middle, unless you have $19k to throw around for this unique setup.

 

Again, good find.

[driftingsun3]

You probably already made a decision on this, but I thought I would put in my 2-cent's worth.

 

The way I understand it, if your GPU is a Nvidia, you can utilize it to accelerate rendering in 3ds Max but only when you choose the "iray" renderer. Iray is a is part of Mental Ray, which are both proprietary to Nvidia, hence why you need a Nvidia card with its CUDA cores to work. Mental Ray alone only uses the CPU power to render; if you have lots of cores this will make it go faster. Revit only has the Mental Ray, and not the iray component, so in Revit, it is not possible to use the GPU to accelerate.

 

So - Mental Ray = CPU

Iray (a component of Mental Ray, but not available on Revit) = CPU + GPU (but only for Nvidia cards)

 

- and with Vray it is similar:

Vray = CPU

Vray-RT = CPU +GPU

 

BTW as a general note - I think that GPU acceleration trumps CPU cores in rendering speed/performance, when you have specific rendering engines that can take advantage.

So, before you spend $1,000-$2,000 a piece on Xeon processors for a dual cpu machine, check to see if your programs can utilize GPU acceleration. In the case of 3ds Max, it might make more sense to get a fast quad or hex core consumer processor, and a good graphics card with as many CUDA cores as you can afford. However, Nvidia's new Kepler series of gpu's have apparently not been optimized for GPU computing/acceleration (as far as I know); the older Fermi based Nvidia cards work better for that.

 

Also - for OpenCl and GPU computing purposes - the GeForce's work just as good or better than the Quadro's (partly because the Quadros have less of the CUDA cores than their "gaming" counterparts, despite being much more expensive), something that I think Nvidia hoped to squash by crippling the GPU compute performance on the Kepler GeForce's, so people needing acceleration would be forced to buy Tesla's.

 

In addition, for a lot of OpenCL accelerated programs, the 7xxx series Radeons kick the Nvidia cards around in a lot of functions.

[tzframpton]

Very good information driftingsun. Thanks for sharing!

[driftingsun3]

I'm delving into 3DS Max Design now, so I am making it a point to try to find out everything I can about hardware performance related to particular software.

[spittle]

I saw a video somewhere where Nvidia were showing new technology - amongst other things they were rendering an object wirth a shader that was using the GPU for AO. This is very cool and I think we'll see the GPU helping the CPU out more in the not too distant future.

 

There may already be shaders out there that do this - post here if anyone finds any, i couldn't after a quick search.