Octane X™ PR 2: Faster! Big Sur: Intel+AMD Polaris Support!

[bepeg4d]

Hi James,
please note that we are still in the first public beta versions of OctaneX, so some glitches are expected, and it cannot be consider stable for production yet.
But it is getting better and better at each update, and there are already some users that are using OctaneX in production
For example, c4doctaneX PR1 was very unstable with node editor, but now PR2 is very stable with it.
For me, it is a pleasure to work with it, and what is impressive to me is how OctaneX better handles VRAM memory compared with CUDA PC.
For example, 8GB of VRAM are ~8GB of available VRAM in OctaneX, not less than 6.5GB like on Windows!

ciao Beppe

[james_conkle]

Thanks Beppe! From my understanding you're a long time Mac user as well from some screen shots I've seen on the form here, glad to know it's getting plenty of attention. I'll definitely wait until the production ready build in this case, especially for the network rendering with my existing windows machine, but it's great to hear about the improved stability, node fix and VRAM performance!

I have some friends in the photo industry that are looking into 3D design but some of them use 2013 Mac Pro models which for photo they still kick butt but I imagine the OB score of the D700 would be sub 100 points? And sorry if this question has been asked before but is the plan for Octane X to be able to use both GPU and CPU when rendering? I'm thinking performance gains from that might be negligible but maybe necessary depending how Apple silicone and discrete GPU are handled in the future... but that's a rabbit hole no one knows about

[bepeg4d]

Hi James,
yes, my first Mac was from 1993, and I fell in love with Octane with a Mac Pro 2009 with an Nvidia GT120 512MB in 2010, so I have followed all the Mac Octane development from the beginning. I have installed in my Mac Pro during time something like 6x Fermi, 4x Kepler, 2x Maxwell, 4x Pascal different Nvidia GPUs, and it is still running

Now in 2020, we have finally a native Octane version for Mac with AMD/Intel support (no need to waist time with Nvidia/CUDA drivers), and already deigned to work with Apple Silicon GPUs, so roughly any relatively recent Mac will be able to run OctaneX natively with Mac Os 11 Big Sur new Metal driver

About Mac Pro 2013, I doubt that FirePro DX00 series will be supported in future, and if supported, the performance cannot be similar to a GPU of seven years later, I guess
So you are forced to use Thunderbolt 2 connection with eGPUs, slower than TB3 in loading the scene to GPUs.
Please also note that in OctaneX, the AI Denoiser is performed via CPU, not GPU, but you should need a CPU from 2015 or newer for performing AI Denoiser with OctaneX.
Older CPUs do not have the necessary instructions for AI Denoiser.

In my opinion, better to have an iMac or MacBook Pro from 2016 or newer, with Thunderbolt 3, and AI DEnoiser supported, than a Mac Pro from 2013

Happy Mac GPU Rendering,
ciao Beppe

[itsallgoode9]

Hey guys, I ran into an issue with displacement on Mac, in PR2 (not sure if this is present in earlier versions). Triangle lines (which look to align with the polygon subdivisions) are showing up with displacement--both vertex and regular displacement. I opened the exact same scene on my PC and the issue is not present.

As you can see in the below screenshot, it appears to be pulling color from the background surrounding the text for some odd reason (it's not the polys physically breaking apart). As well, the top and bottom screenshots are set at different subdivision labels, so you can see that the triangle lines change with respect to the subdivision levels.