GPU rendering is not the magic bullet it was promised to be

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acc24ex
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Chris_TC wrote:
havensole wrote:we are dealing with an unbiased engine versus a biased engine in lux (correct me if I am wrong on that).
[...]
I also don't have to spend time doing photon mapping or adjusting a ton of parameters to get something usable.
Come on now, have you actually watched the video?
They tested the modo renderer using Monte Carlo. Of course you need to compare unbiased vs. unbiased, anything else would just be silly.
richardyot wrote:I own licenses for Modo, Octane and Maxwell, and I did a test on the Luxology forums a few weeks ago (before I know anything about Luxology conducting their own tests), you can see the results here:

http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/t ... x?id=48218

I approached the testing with a completely open mind, I was pretty excited about GPU rendering in fact, but I came to the exact same conclusion that Luxology did
Since people have been getting incredibly defensive about their purchase, I assume you will be called dishonest or a shill for Luxology as well.
hey I went to that site.. and tested the octane scene, mine took like 5 minutes to clear up on gtx 480, his took 33 minutes on gtx 470? Someone is doing something wrong there..

But anyway, even if the luxology people are "biased" the fact is GPU is cheaper than CPU.. and the motherboards that support more than 1 cpu are even more expensive - I always wanted a 4 slot motherboard with 4x 3.2 ghz core i7 processors..
lets see how much is that around 999$ for 1 cpu and the motherboard doesnt even exist for multi socket core i7, only xeons which is even more..
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matej
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A fair comparison considering hardware would be to have a fixed budget and then go buy a CPU based system for Modo and a GPU based system for Octane...

How does a Quadro 5800 (they supposedly used), for $2k, compares to 4x GTX480 you could buy with that money? I mean speed-wise in Octane?

Two months ago I was just about to change my CPU with something new, ofcourse I would have to change the motherboard and RAM too (thanks Intel, for all your sockets :D )... Luckily I discovered Octane and can keep my lousy Core2... :mrgreen:
SW: Octane 3.05 | Linux Mint 18.1 64bit | Blender 2.78 HW: EVGA GTX 1070 | i5 2500K | 16GB RAM Drivers: 375.26
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acc24ex
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matej wrote:A fair comparison considering hardware would be to have a fixed budget and then go buy a CPU based system for Modo and a GPU based system for Octane...

How does a Quadro 5800 (they supposedly used), for $2k, compares to 4x GTX480 you could buy with that money? I mean speed-wise in Octane?

Two months ago I was just about to change my CPU with something new, ofcourse I would have to change the motherboard and RAM too (thanks Intel, for all your sockets :D )... Luckily I discovered Octane and can keep my lousy Core2... :mrgreen:
quadro 5800 has 280 cuda cores and price tag around 3000$, gtx 480 has 480 cores - quadro has 4gb gtx 480 has 1.5gb.. so far..
So it seems quadro is slower and 5 times more expensive?
Well anyway, I got my core i7 920 2.6ghz and overclocked it to 3.2, not much difference there, so I thought about getting something with more cpu sockets.. I mean it just costs a lot, and there is no end to that, GPU processing just makes more sense when it comes to rendering it's the graphic card doing the graphics, so same thing here, I stopped thinking about getting more CPU power to speed it up somehow after discovering octane
scratch33
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You can compare with ONE scene that they chose accurately to prove what they sai. Try to put a scene with dof in modo and in octane... then compare...

... And we are comparing the speed of a unbiased renderer and a biased render...
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radiance
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another thing to note is that per ray, octane needs to sample wavelengths, retrieve variables for them from 8 databases, make a lot of calculations and reinterpolate those varables at each bounce and finally co vert spectra to colour.
that is a lot of work, while they are only rendering RGB colour arithmetic. (which is cmpletely incorrect as it does'nt render metamerisms at all)

in fact, i've been thinking of making an RGB only diretlighting integrator, just for interactive scene editing.
it should be at least 1,5x as fast.

Radiance
Win 7 x64 & ubuntu | 2x GTX480 | Quad 2.66GHz | 8GB
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kubo
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if you make it any faster you won't be able to pay the mountain of speed tickets that are going your way! :lol:
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DayVids
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I was in the same boat, I spent 99 euro on Octane, and $140 on a new GTX260c216, and I can render my 3D models very interactively to set up my lighting etc..., and then let it cook, and it gives me better results for a sub $300 investment, and I was looking at new mobo, ram, and proc CPU route, without the speed increase I get from Octane in my 3D stuff.

My video editing would have been boosted, but I'm still able to get by on this rig for a bit with regards to video/graphics. If I wanted to use Premier CS5 (BLECH!) then I could even utilize my GPU in video work, of course the Premier work flow would kill my productivity and it would be a wash or negative :).
matej wrote:A fair comparison considering hardware would be to have a fixed budget and then go buy a CPU based system for Modo and a GPU based system for Octane...

How does a Quadro 5800 (they supposedly used), for $2k, compares to 4x GTX480 you could buy with that money? I mean speed-wise in Octane?

Two months ago I was just about to change my CPU with something new, ofcourse I would have to change the motherboard and RAM too (thanks Intel, for all your sockets :D )... Luckily I discovered Octane and can keep my lousy Core2... :mrgreen:
CPU - i7-950 3.06 Ghz, 24GB Ram, Win7 x64, 2 display monitors, GeForce GTX 580 3GB Classified. I'm glad to say I LOVE OCTANE!
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samartin
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Arrghhhh, use the tool that suits you! That's all you need to do...

I'm a user of both products and I'm very happy with both products, I hope one day that I can seamlessly use any piece of software to get the job done to a high standard and quickly!
Win 7 Pro (x64) | Geforce 295GTX | Quad 2.4GHz | 4GB PC-6400
havensole
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Same here. I invested a bit more money into Octane with my 2x gtx470's and will probably buy a gtx460 if a month or so to be able to work with octane without needing to turn on the cubix box. In all I have been completely happy with the money I have poured into everything. I checked out the demo for Bunkspeed Shot today and wasn't all that impressed. Their UI is lacking and navigation is sluggish at best. I have no clue how to specify GPU's to use yet either.
I am also a big Vegas user and hate Premier. I come from an audio engineering background and used the original Vegas when it was an audio multi-tracker and the interface has always just made more sense to me than any of the other "big boys." Can we get Sony to invest in some GPU video rendering? Both of my work editing systems have been completely bogged down for the last 4 months rendering HD videos. Its a lot of hurry up to wait.
System 1: EVGA gtx470 1280Mb and MSI gtx470 1280 in Cubix Xpander for Octane, AMD 945, 4Gb Ram
All systems are at stock speeds and settings.
cpember
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i dont know, I think the luxology guys may want to reconsider the whole gpu thing :)

http://vimeo.com/14013808

(14 minutes in the hardware stuff is enabled)

cheers

cp
win 7 x64 | 460 gtx | q6600 8gb ram
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