nvLink? Still not worth it in 2020. TESTED.

[pixelsmack]

Finally got my tests up and running. I have a scene that near maxes out the GPUs. I did not see any difference in available GPU ram for textures. Other than out of core. Geometry also pushing the cards to GPU limits, saw nothing. No gains. GPU ram load balancing remained unchanged. Of course the other thing you might care about. Render times. No real difference. In both Octabench and my Lightwave tests.

Here's the RTX Octabench score. (two 2080Tis)

no nvLINK: 2076.26
nvLINK: 2078.97

Conclusion. Don't kill yourself trying to build a GPU system that can use nvLink. Despite what Otoy's press might be saying. It just doesn't do anything. Nothing I can appreciate in day-to-day practical use.

[juanjgon]

About nvlink: have you tried to enable it in Standalone and check how it works? Once enabled in Standalone, it should be also enabled for the LW plugin.

About the RTX acceleration: do you have the RTX option enabled in the plugin options panel? In any case, be aware that not all the scenes are going to be rendered faster. Some features, like the motion blur, are not supported yet by the RTX code.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[pixelsmack]

Yes I have RTX enabled and am aware it does not work with motion blur. I really hope that can be resolved. 1.5 hours versus 3 hours of render time after all, heh.

I have SLI enabled in the nvidia driver. (I know that's not necessarily nvlink) I don't have Octane Stand Alone installed. Was never made aware Octane Stand Alone settings could ever effect the LW plugin? Also, I am using the Studio version, not the Enterprise version. If that makes a difference.

[juanjgon]

As far as I know, the SLI is not needed to work with nvlink, but to be honest, I'm not sure. In any case, yes, you should install Standalone, the same version matching your LW plugin, and enable the nvlink feature there to check if it works. This is a global setting that also affects the LW plugin if enabled.

I'll check how to add this option directly in the LW plugin.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[pixelsmack]

As far as I know, the SLI is not needed to work with nvlink, but to be honest, I'm not sure. In any case, yes, you should install Standalone, the same version matching your LW plugin, and enable the nvlink feature there to check if it works. This is a global setting that also affects the LW plugin if enabled.

I'll check how to add this option directly in the LW plugin.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

nvlink requires the nvLink bridge module of course. But yes unknown if SLI switch in nvidia driver needs to be on or not. Question is this the only way to get out of core mesh support too, then? Enable an option somewhere in the Stand Alone? I did not see this in the LW options. Only out of core texture support.

[juanjgon]

The out of core of the textures and geometry works with the same options that you can find in the plugin options panel, out of core tab. The only feature that you should enable (and check if it works) in Standalone is the nvlink.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[dmodric]

Did someone manage this to work?

Can I get help with how to enable NVlink in LW plugin. Using two 2070Supers and Octane 2020.

I can get it to work with standalone using this method viewtopic.php?f=33&t=69896 but it seems that doesn't work with LW plugin.

[juanjgon]

Doesn't it work if you enable it in Standalone before using the LightWave plugin?

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[dmodric]

It works in standalone. But it doesn't work in Lightwave. There is a blue bar in standalone so I can see it works, but in LW I can only see OOC being used. When I disable OOC octane crashes (it doesn't have enough VRAM to render the scene).

thanks

[juanjgon]

In theory, the plugin should use the nvlink configuration from Standalone, but perhaps something has changed. This same scene can be rendered in Standalone without the out-of-core enabled?

Thanks,
-Juanjo