fx3800

[maranello55]

Hi guys. A noob question.

I got the demo and have an fx3800. At launch, it says No CUDA device detected. I downloaded the CUDA kit but havent updated my drivers (coz its sunday and im not at work lol).

Would updating drivers finally make my fx3800 work with octane?

[pixelrush]

If you are using Windows you only need a suitable Nvidia driver not the Toolkit as well.
Cuda is included with the driver these days.
The Demo requires cuda 3.0 so you will need a driver of the 197.xx series.
Quadro driver 197.90 is the last one.
HTH

[maranello55]

Awesome. Thanks for the help. Will try tomorrow and post.

[maranello55]

It works....thanks. Although 197.90 is for Geforce cards. Quadro drivers are 259.

Im having prob with white dots with daylight and pathtracing. Can that be fixed in the full version?

Can octane handle translucency?

And does Octane have its own light source instead of the Sun? Ive seen in the gallery pendant lights being rendered. Im considering it for night views.

I have dual e5520 and an fx3800. Does the GPU processing still faster than my CPU in this case? One thing i realise is the absence of the translation time (pre-calculation) on biased CPU based renderer.

Very excited to see interactivity of Octane with my models and seriously considering to get one license for work

Thanks in advance.

[pixelrush]

There is a Quadro driver 197.90 which is the last one to have cuda 3.0
The latest Quadro driver 259.57 is cuda 3.1.
You can find the list of drivers available for your O/S and card by going to the Nvidia homepage header > Download drivers > Beta and Archived drivers.

The white dots are known as 'fireflies'. Without getting technical about why they exist and conspicuously in the Demo I can tell you they have been considerably reduced in the commercial beta and there is another algorithm in development that should all but eliminate them.
For the time being you can remove them in the commercial beta with a filter but you could also use a photographic noise removal tool for the demo if you wish.

The commercial beta now has area lights/emitters. Eventually I would think Octane will support IES profiles. Octane has opacity and this can be texture mapped.

A dual cpu wont be of much assitance to using Octane. I have a single dual core and its fine and only 50% in use. If you want still faster rendering you need a card with more cuda cores or you could add a second 3800. The 3800 will be about on par with a GTX260 or GTX460 so 2 together would be the equivalent of a GTX480.
Since Quadros and Tesla's are expensive/cuda core its often better to keep using your Quadro for the UI display and dedicate a Geforce to cuda ie rendering. The deal with Geforce is that they are more limited in vram which is used to contain your scene and the 'film'.
Many people do just fine with 1,1.25,1.5 and 2gb cards though.
A 2gb GTX460 for instance will hold about 4.5m poly + a film of A3 size@300ppi and a fair number of textures.
In your case it might be a good solution to add a GTX480 which will give you a bit more vram and render twice as fast. Offloading the UI display duty from the render card will also improve the viewport navigation experience further.
You need to make sure your PS is adequate to power your system with the cuda card at max load and of course has enough connectors.
Other than that you could look at a GPU-X expander - see the link in the header
HTH