LW2023 + new Octane

[Builtdown]

Hi,

I´m strugling with an issue:

I have been using Lightwave2011 + some old Octane version (2016 maybe) happily for years. Basically I have just been lazy to update anything for ~6 years. For example I did and rendered the attached pic just few weeks back and it did take 100 minutes with my 3 GTX1070's.

Now finally I took the bull by the horns and decided to update LW and Octane since I saw the Black Friday bundle. I thought that there should have been made lots of improvements and speed must be much better etc.
I installed LW2023 and Octane 2020 to that. Everything seems to work as it should. BUT I was horrified when I tested to render the same scene with the new program versions. Same scene, same render attributes etc took 500 minutes. How can this happen? Shouldn't it been changed to faster rendering and not the vice versa?

Is there some explanation and maybe tips to make it faster?


Thanks!

[mikefrisk]

Are you running octane prime? If so it can only use 1 GPU as far as I know.

[Lewis]

Yes, if you used native one bundled with LW2023 then you have free tier/Prime which is 1 GPU limit as mikefrisk mentioned.
Also be sure to turn on RTX acceleration in octane options, if you used 6 years octane till now that could be v4 or even 3.x so it possibly didn't have RTX back then.

[Builtdown]

Ok, great. Thanks for the info.
When I rendered with the bundled system it took 8 hours. The renderer showed that all 3 GPUs would be running but maybe didn´t.


Now I installed the "real" Octane. That dropped the time to 150 minutes. Still more than with old LW+Octane versions but maybe I can live with it.
(RTX and all running).

[Lewis]

Ok, great. Thanks for the info.
When I rendered with the bundled system it took 8 hours. The renderer showed that all 3 GPUs would be running but maybe didn´t.

Naaaaahh it just shows all GPUs are available but it didn't use them all, it uses only 1, that is limit of Octane Prime.
I suggest you install whNvinfo app so you can see constant GPU usage/Vram and similar settings. It's great small free app.
https://whurst.net/de/software/whnvinfo/

Now I installed the "real" Octane. That dropped the time to 150 minutes. Still more than with old LW+Octane versions but maybe I can live with it.
(RTX and all running).

Yep that should be correct.

[Builtdown]

Thanks for replying, Lewis.


What do you think is the reason that with 6 years younger programs it takes still a lot longer to produce the same quality picture?
I would have thought that there would have been made some improvements to speed...

Or is new hardware only way to make rendering faster?

[Lewis]

Thanks for replying, Lewis.


What do you think is the reason that with 6 years younger programs it takes still a lot longer to produce the same quality picture?
I would have thought that there would have been made some improvements to speed...

Or is new hardware only way to make rendering faster?

Well octane got more features after v3.x or 4.x so eventually all those additions slows it down since it has more stuff to work out, granted with new hardware being faster and faster people haven't been bothered much with that (although I agree it shouldn't be slower but maybe DEVs haven't bother too much with optimizations due newer hardware being faster anyway) so basically yeah it seems you need some new GPUs.
I change GPUs every 2-3 years, so it's always "faster" for me .

What GPUs you use and what Octane version you compare it to?

[Builtdown]

I had Octane v3 before. And running with 3 x GTX1070's.


What GPU's would you recommend? (Reasonable price but effective.)

[Lewis]

I had Octane v3 before. And running with 3 x GTX1070's.


What GPU's would you recommend? (Reasonable price but effective.)

Ahh yes, octane was even faster than octane v4, but it didn't have RTX and new stuff. Your GPUs don't have RTX so you have no benefit of new RTX options in octane with those GPUs.
Lowest GPU series support RTX is 20X0, but if you don't want to shell out money for RTX 4090 then look at RTX 30X0 series .

Although One RTX 4090 would beat all 3 of your RTX 1070s combined in speed by 3x-5x (RTX off/on), so worth to reconsider your setup for future .

I have 4*3090 and 4*4090 + one 3060 12GB

Maybe best for you is to download OctaneBench 2020.1 and compare OB score of your GPUs on that list and see then what is same/similar speed as your current setup and then decide the best option for your budget.
https://render.otoy.com/octanebench/results.php
https://render.otoy.com/octanebench/

[Builtdown]

I´m now concidering to change my 3 X GTX1070 to one RTX4090.

Is it so that there is no profit to have multiple GPUs? So for example one 4090 would be still better option than two 3090's?