GPU question before buying Octane.

[naudofr]

Hi, I'm new on this forum. I'm using the demo version since a few days. I would be interested by Octane with one goal in mind :

Making fly through animations for architectural visualization.
Photorealistic (using pathtracing kernel)
Render time (noise free) : 1 min to 5 min / frame

Here is my PC :
Pentium Dual Core CPU E5200 @2.50Ghz
4 Gb of Ram
Quadro FX580
Dell Inspiron 545

So I would like to know what GPU should I buy to reach that ?
Do I have to upgrade my CPU and RAM also, or it has nothing to do with Octane ?
My goal is realistic or do I have to use an external render farm for that ?

Your answers would help me a lot. Thanks in advance. (I have already did some search in the forum)

[pixelrush]

Hi, welcome to the forums
A quick look at the Dell 545 specs tells me the mobo only has one pci-e graphics slot.
If that's the case you won't be able to use another card in your existing PC along with the Quadro.
Best check that out first and also look to see what your power supply situation is re W and connectors.
Some cases won't take long cards either that are typical of the best performing ones for Octane.
You might be better to build a new render station from scratch particularly if you have a commercial need for arch viz stuff.
I think quite a few people would probably say to use a couple of GTX580/3gb or more for that type of use.
Time to render a frame cleanly depends on the materials/lighting and scales with image resolution but also it takes some small time to reload the geometry before the next frame. There is a handy 3rd party utility available to get around the reloading period by just moving the camera co-ords instead via the UI but this is being addressed now by Refractive themselves with more integration via application plugins like for 3d Max.
Regardless of this and whatever hardware you get 1 minute/frame for pathtracing is not really realistic.
A demo version of the 3dMax plugin ought to be available in a few weeks and a beta version is being tested by licenced customers presently. Other plugins for the main cg apps will follow in due course - can't say when.
The current beta 2.57 has moved on some from the demo 2.46b you are trying out.
For Octane the processor is not that important. Dual core would do - have one myself.
To be able to utilise fully 3gb cards you will want 64bit and 12 or better 16gb ram. For 2gb cards either 8 or better 12gb.
HTH initially

[naudofr]

Hi pixelrush,

thank you
a lot of information you gave me.
GTX580 is a GPU often quoted in the forums and seems to be accepted unanimously.
I think changing also the motherboard for the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro which seems great.

[pixelrush]

Ok, very likely you will need a new power supply as well for 2 GTX580 with 4 connectors and maybe 1000W or so.
Be aware that Octane makes intense use of the video cards ie they get very hot, so ventilation is important especially with 2 double slot cards placed close together.
Perhaps the Dell case is not the best in that regard? I am not sure. You should definitely consider it in your planning.
It may be better after all to build another pc and leave the Dell as it is.
The other thing is that running a Quadro and Geforce together might be a bit difficult driver wise.
People have different experiences of this. In my case I use a hacked Quadro driver for both.
If you build new using a basic low cost Geforce as the display card while Geforce run cuda/Octane it simplifies things.
Good luck. Feel free to ask any more questions beforehand. I am sure someone from the community will be happy to help.

[jurweer]

To the OP:
I can vouch for a pair of 580's (or more if you want

To pixelrush,
I was wondering what kind of hacked driver you're using for your quadro? I'm running a 4000 as displaycard and 3 580's as render cards, and they all have the GeForce driver installed according to the device manager. Tried installing then piece by piece, but somehow that didn't work...
Maybe you could PM me, as I don't want to hijack the post.

[pixelrush]

@jurweer
See this discussion of a year ago.
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... 66&start=0
The .inf file there is of course not right for recent drivers.
What I might do in the near future is post another one for a Quadro cuda 4.1 driver when I update for myself.
Unfortunately I can't find the one I used for my current driver atm.
One person did say this didn't seem to work for them in their case because the application specific optimisations were missing or didn't work.
I can't remember if anyone has said they used it for more than one geforce before but it ought to work the same.
If you like, download the .inf and use notepad to open it for interest. There are a few places through it where the lists have been modded but if you look at the bottom you will readily see some Geforce commonly used for Octane have been included.
Another source of modded drivers is http://www.guru3d.com forums. The community make and share driver .inf that have *every* card included in their lists but its really about them trying drivers for gaming. You could try Quadro 276.42 for Octane beta 2.5x - see post #9 here:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=355927
This is a bit of a workaround/hack to use the same driver for both so use at your own risk although its more likely not to work properly than to damage anything. Perhaps you end up with a lot of gaming stuff you don't want/need or...
Ideally you have all Geforce, all Quadro, or Quadro/Tesla combo.
HTH

[naudofr]

Thanks again for your help.
I tested the chess demo scene with pathtracing. Nice surprise with 10 min only to cleanup with my Quadro FX580, so with the GTX580, I imagine the render time.