Using the motherboard built-in graphics card with Octane?

Tue Dec 18, 2012 3:41 pm

Greetings and thank you for a great forum and product. I am a proud owner and early adopter of Octane Render (Yeah!) and searched for this topic but could not find an answer for my purposes so would like a little help.

Like most people I have a built in graphics card on my mobo (MSI Z77A-G45)

Can you use the motherboard graphics card for your monitor and separate GPUs to render on Octane?

I took the octane benchmark test on my quadro fx 4800 and turned in an abysmal score of .60 As I need to use Octane to render my C4D scenes I purchased a GTX 580 and my score bumped up 4.3 I now have two more GTX 580 cards coming and want to use all 3 to render and my mobo graphics card for the monitor.

Anyone here with experience in this set up?

TIA

Tue Dec 18, 2012 3:44 pm

This is exactly the way you should set it up

you will be able to use Octane with zero slow down as your GTX 580 is not handling display. Also, you can be rendering and browsing the web/start work on another project without affecting your render time or slowing down your display

Tue Dec 18, 2012 5:12 pm

kavorka wrote:This is exactly the way you should set it up
you will be able to use Octane with zero slow down as your GTX 580 is not handling display. Also, you can be rendering and browsing the web/start work on another project without affecting your render time or slowing down your display

Thank you, now to switch it up a bit. My Intel card will only display 1280 x 800 so that is not going to cut it. I assume the on board GPU is useless in rendering as well as it does not show up in Octane as a Cuda device?

Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:41 pm

ya, I don't think that would work.
If you have another PCIe slot open after the addition of those cards, you can get a relatively cheap card that will do everything you need for display.

Tue Dec 18, 2012 9:48 pm

1280 x 800 doesn't sound right to me. This is an HD4000 right? Is windows showing this as a standard VGA adapter? You may need to install the correct drivers from intel - this will give you full resolution and multiple monitor support.
We have a few machines with HD4000's here and we had to do this...

Thanks
Chris.

Tue Dec 18, 2012 10:13 pm

buzby wrote:.. Intel card will only display 1280 x 800 ..

3770k should output up to 2560x1600 & posibility to power up three monitors (if enough conections on the MB)

Beppe OctaneRender™ Italia Blue Sky · Tue Dec 18, 2012 10:55 pm

i have a similar mb and works very well especially with the latest intel hd 4000 graphics drivers.
here is the details from the msi site:
- 1 x HDMI® port with max. resolution up to 1920x1200 @60Hz
- 1 x DVI-D port with max. resolution up to 1920x1200 @60Hz
- 1 x VGA port with max. resolution up to 2048x1536 @75Hz
ciao beppe

Wed Dec 19, 2012 4:03 pm

FooZe wrote:1280 x 800 doesn't sound right to me. This is an HD4000 right? Is windows showing this as a standard VGA adapter? You may need to install the correct drivers from intel - this will give you full resolution and multiple monitor support.
We have a few machines with HD4000's here and we had to do this...

Thanks
Chris.

Hi Chris thanks, I think I do have the latest drivers here are the properties. It think it is my Apple display that is the problem.

Wed Dec 19, 2012 4:18 pm

I ran a 3770K with HD4000 and 2x 580s on a cinema display with no problems mate

Wed Dec 19, 2012 4:25 pm

bepeg4d wrote:i have a similar mb and works very well especially with the latest intel hd 4000 graphics drivers.
here is the details from the msi site:
- 1 x HDMI® port with max. resolution up to 1920x1200 @60Hz
- 1 x DVI-D port with max. resolution up to 1920x1200 @60Hz
- 1 x VGA port with max. resolution up to 2048x1536 @75Hz
ciao beppe

Thanks for the research beppe. My first thought was maybe it is a single link DVI-D but I have confirmed it is a dual link. I have confirmed the 1 x HDMI port with resolution 1920x1200 @60Hz on my Samsung 42" TV but the flicker is pretty noticeable, but I cannot get the 1920x1200 @60Hz on my Apple display. nor does my Apple does have a VGA connector for the 2048x1536 @75Hz.

I have to say I have gotten used to the 2560x1600 and it would be hard to give it up just for the sake of having the fastest render time as I use this computer for all my other applications as well.

So one last question, If I give up on the built-in HD 4000 and choose 1 of the 3 GTX 580 as the display am I losing that card for rendering completely or will Octane use the display GTX 580 in tandem with the other 2 GTX 580?