GPU prices are insane. Maybe time for Octane to run on CPU

[azims]

GPU prices have gone through the roof. Does Otoy have any plans to enable CPU/ hybrid rendering?

[Phantom107]

Isn't a high end GPU over 50 times as fast as a high end i7?

[mirobimbo]

In Cycles my AMD Threadripper 1950 and my Nvidia 1080Ti is GPU maybe 50% faster.

I did more tests, there are scenes, where my CPU is faster than GPU, for example:

benchmark_279_denoise_disney.blend scene:
GPU 1:42 min.
CPU 1:22 min.
GPU+CPU 0:42 min.

[azims]

Gpu prices now are eye watering. However CPU prices are reasonable and thanks to core wars between AMD & Intel the core counts are going up. Octane team must seriously consider enabling CPU rendering. Otherwise small users like me who cant afford expensive Gpus may have to look elsewhere.

[Iceman9]

Give it a month, maybe two. I think the GPU demand will soften and the prices will return to "manufacturer recommended" prices.

If crypto currencies crash--or mining returns really diminish (two independent possibilities)...we could see a glut of used and new cards with prices plummeting.

Tomorrow ≠ Today with this stuff.

[Goldorak]

Gpu prices now are eye watering. However CPU prices are reasonable and thanks to core wars between AMD & Intel the core counts are going up. Octane team must seriously consider enabling CPU rendering. Otherwise small users like me who cant afford expensive Gpus may have to look elsewhere.

We've built and shown (at various roadmap talks) cross compiled versions of Octane for AMD GPUs, as well as Intel CPU (and yeah it's slower than a 650 M) and, more interestingly, a third target: Intel Integrated graphics (on the exact same chip as CPU). The iGPU is over 4x the speed of the 16x thread x86 CPU cores, but can also use system memory. It has been a challenge to ship these builds given that drivers (and platforms/OS) support for this to work is really not in a good place (all our AMD work doesn't port to Mac OS), but we'll focus on these platforms in the coming months. One thing we are adding in 3.09 that will leverage CPU cores, is for the AI denoiser to also have a high performance CPU fallback for Haswell/AVX2. While Denoising isn't perfect, it also can cut down crazy long render times for scenes that are really noisy - having CPU handle denoising while GPU renders might be a starting point to provide more value using the CPU. The other solution is to offset local GPU costs with cloud rendering, which already exists through ORC. It will be improved and integrated better and with smaller overhead through RNDR. Also, RNDR will pay out more than ETH mining, so consider that all these mining GPUs may end up helping Octane users in the end once RNDR decentralization kicks in.

[manalokos]

when do you think RNDR mining will be starting?

[khdownes]

Gpu prices now are eye watering. However CPU prices are reasonable and thanks to core wars between AMD & Intel the core counts are going up. Octane team must seriously consider enabling CPU rendering. Otherwise small users like me who cant afford expensive Gpus may have to look elsewhere.

We've built and shown (at various roadmap talks) cross compiled versions of Octane for AMD GPUs, as well as Intel CPU (and yeah it's slower than a 650 M) and, more interestingly, a third target: Intel Integrated graphics (on the exact same chip as CPU). The iGPU is over 4x the speed of the 16x thread x86 CPU cores, but can also use system memory. It has been a challenge to ship these builds given that drivers (and platforms/OS) support for this to work is really not in a good place (all our AMD work doesn't port to Mac OS), but we'll focus on these platforms in the coming months. One thing we are adding in 3.09 that will leverage CPU cores, is for the AI denoiser to also have a high performance CPU fallback for Haswell/AVX2. While Denoising isn't perfect, it also can cut down crazy long render times for scenes that are really noisy - having CPU handle denoising while GPU renders might be a starting point to provide more value using the CPU. The other solution is to offset local GPU costs with cloud rendering, which already exists through ORC. It will be improved and integrated better and with smaller overhead through RNDR. Also, RNDR will pay out more than ETH mining, so consider that all these mining GPUs may end up helping Octane users in the end once RNDR decentralization kicks in.

Oh, so will RNDR actually pay out in cash for donating your gpu time?
I thought you just earned tokens that could be spend when you submit your own jobs to RNDR.

[Goldorak]

It’s an erc20 token and you can buy/sell it for on exchanges (just like ETH) once it’s widely circulated after phase 1.