Iray on AMD cards
Kaji
Posts: 21
I have a Mac Pro with dual AMD cards. nVidia cards are not available for this computer. Has anyone compared the render times in Iray vs Reality?
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Iray, without GPU acceleration will still be faster than CPU only Luxrender. It's about the same speed as a 3Delight render with similar specs A GPU accelerated Luxrender render will be faster.
And this is the one and only showstopper with Iray for me. GPU rendering only works with Nvidia cards. And additionally to that, not with all Nvidia cards. You need plenty of CUDA cores and plenty of VRam to work with Iray.
By the way, the Luxrender devs are working on an update which will make Luxrender CPU rendering much much faster.
These things are good to know. Thanks guys.
A 1 GB 430GT can handle a GPU render and show a definite speed up, over straight CPU...but that's pretty much the lower limit.
There are plenty of 700 series cards with 2 and 4 GB in the just under $100 to around $200 range that offer a substantial boost to rendering.
So, no, it's not a 'showstopper'. And don't let some of the times in the render threads fool you...some of the 'spectacular' times (under ten minutes for 'big' images aren't being done on 'average' cards...minimally to get things like that you'll need matched 'high end' cards...and a third card for just running your monitor. An average for GPU rendering compared to CPU rendering is around 5x with great hardware and 2x-3x with average. So, if a 3Delight render, done with just the raytrace hider and comparable shaders took 15 minutes, it would probably take 5 to 8 on GPU and about the same 15 in CPU Iray.
And how would such a card perform with modern games? Using DAZ Studio and rendering is not all I do. I also like gaming. Currently I own a very nice ATI Raedon R9 270x card, which performs very well: http://www.amazon.de/Club-3D-Royal-Queen-Grafikkarte/dp/B00FRCJHYG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1432691148&sr=8-3&keywords=club+3d+270x
So, what would be a NVidia card that performs as well in gaming, and what would it cost?
By the way, this is a serious question, because I really have no idea about NVidia cards and what all the product numbers are good for.
Is Iray rendering that slow on your PC without GPU?
I'm doing 98% of my Iray renders in CPU-only mode, as my graphic card is not really suitable to handle anything beyond a single G1. But I still get decent render times using OptiX in Advanced Render settings.
Granted, there are light yeras between when my graphic card actually does participate in the render, and when it doesn't... but it's not any slower than LuxRender.
A 1 GB 430GT can handle a GPU render and show a definite speed up, over straight CPU...but that's pretty much the lower limit.
There are plenty of 700 series cards with 2 and 4 GB in the just under $100 to around $200 range that offer a substantial boost to rendering.
So, no, it's not a 'showstopper'. And don't let some of the times in the render threads fool you...some of the 'spectacular' times (under ten minutes for 'big' images aren't being done on 'average' cards...minimally to get things like that you'll need matched 'high end' cards...and a third card for just running your monitor. An average for GPU rendering compared to CPU rendering is around 5x with great hardware and 2x-3x with average. So, if a 3Delight render, done with just the raytrace hider and comparable shaders took 15 minutes, it would probably take 5 to 8 on GPU and about the same 15 in CPU Iray.
It's a show stopper for people with AMD cards. I have two FirePro 700s. If they used OpenCL, it would be fine. I've used the GPU accelerated mode in Luxrender, but sometimes that gets a little wonky.
And how would such a card perform with modern games? Using DAZ Studio and rendering is not all I do. I also like gaming. Currently I own a very nice ATI Raedon R9 270x card, which performs very well: http://www.amazon.de/Club-3D-Royal-Queen-Grafikkarte/dp/B00FRCJHYG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1432691148&sr=8-3&keywords=club+3d+270x
So, what would be a NVidia card that performs as well in gaming, and what would it cost?
By the way, this is a serious question, because I really have no idea about NVidia cards and what all the product numbers are good for.
Nvida makes great gaming cards, here are some in comparison with AMD/ATI cards
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html
but as stated if you want to take advantage of Iray AMD is simply not supported and likely never will be since it's Nvidia's technology.
Quick question can one run Nvidia & AMD on the same machine? If so is there software that lets you pick what card runs with which program?
It's a show stopper for people with AMD cards. I have two FirePro 700s. If they used OpenCL, it would be fine. I've used the GPU accelerated mode in Luxrender, but sometimes that gets a little wonky.The only difference between CPU only renders and GPU or CPU+GPU renders is speed. The quality is exactly the same. So how is it a showstopper? We have quite a few Mac customers using it just fine. (With or without NVIDIA Graphics cards.)
Easier to do on Linux than it is Windows...but not easy to do at all, by any stretch of the imagination.
Driver conflicts are the primary problem...and so much so, that under certain cases will prevent Windows from starting.
Speed always matters. It is the impetus for purchasing new hardware and why people pick the hardware that they do. Nobody has infinite time.
Speed always matters. It is the impetus for purchasing new hardware and why people pick the hardware that they do. Nobody has infinite time.Of course speed matters, you can improve speed with hardware. And yes, there are NVIDIA card solutions for the New Mac Pro as well as iMacs and Macbook Pro computers with NVIDIA cards, and VCA render solutions (Cloud if you don't have the hardware) are not limited to Windows or OSX and should be coming into general availability once Iray 2015 is in more general use among 3D Software solutions.
And CPU only mode, with equivalent lighting, Iray averages the same speed as 3Delight.
And CPU only mode, with equivalent lighting, Iray averages the same speed as 3Delight.
There's no nVidia option for the Mac Pro (Late 2013) model. AFAIK the video cards are custom for the case. I suppose you could use a break out box and flash the chips to get them to work with it, but that's a lot more work than I'm willing to do.
And CPU only mode, with equivalent lighting, Iray averages the same speed as 3Delight.
There's no nVidia option for the Mac Pro (Late 2013) model. AFAIK the video cards are custom for the case. I suppose you could use a break out box and flash the chips to get them to work with it, but that's a lot more work than I'm willing to do.http://www.sonnettech.com/product/legacyproducts/echoexpresschassis.html Just one example.
And that presumes you can't cloud render from a company setting up VCA's.
Yes you can.
Only thing to be aware of is that with both drivers installed access to open cl on amd will be a problem.
I don't know about Mac Pro but my iMac is certainly not upgradeable. I'm stuck with my GPU for the life of the computer (and I can't afford to replace it). My GPU is an NVidia GTX 680M 2GB but not much use for something that needs at least 4GB. Also, I get my display messed up (blocky pixels all over the screen) if I use GPU mode. That requires a reboot.
I would really like to see how to get CPU mode working as fast as 3Delight. Some kind of tutorial would be wonderful. In my few tests, the Iray renders have been at least 3 times slower than 3Delight - almost as slow as Reality 2.5 (Reality 4 is slug-slow when SSS is involved).
My tests involved a character (or two), clothing, a room and some furniture. About 15 minutes is normal for me in 3Delight.
there are external gpu options though thunderbolt and thunderbolt 2, while they are not as specifically fast as a direct connection to a dedicated PCIe connector they do exist and obviously they're not cheap but they are less than a new mac.
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpress3d.html
Yes - I discovered them the other day when I googled "imac gpu upgrade". However, there seem to be lots of technical and marketing hurdles (Apple and Intel actively discourage them - well, they would, wouldn't they).
If I were really serious about upgrading (and I'm not going to just for iRay), I'd sell my iMac and build a Hackintosh. The last thing I want is to be forced back to Windows.
If DS had a native Linux version, I'd go for that.
Yes - I discovered them the other day when I googled "imac gpu upgrade". However, there seem to be lots of technical and marketing hurdles (Apple and Intel actively discourage them - well, they would, wouldn't they).
If I were really serious about upgrading (and I'm not going to just for iRay), I'd sell my iMac and build a Hackintosh. The last thing I want is to be forced back to Windows.
If DS had a native Linux version, I'd go for that.
on the mac forums they will effectively tell you those devices don't exist, and they're not even apple employees.
on the mac forums they will effectively tell you those devices don't exist, and they're not even apple employees.
I like my Mac but the fanboy culture is pathetic. I'm also not a fan of Apple's marketing policies, effectively locking their customers in to their products by means fair or foul. I sensed DAZ was doing something similar with the move from V4 to Genesis but at least they try to accommodate Poser users.
on the mac forums they will effectively tell you those devices don't exist, and they're not even apple employees.
I like my Mac but the fanboy culture is pathetic. I'm also not a fan of Apple's marketing policies, effectively locking their customers in to their products by means fair or foul. I sensed DAZ was doing something similar with the move from V4 to Genesis but at least they try to accommodate Poser users.
TBH Microsoft isn't much better. The UEFI secure boot effectively locks out a lot of Linux users. nVidia has proprietary drivers for Linux also.
Looking forward to cloud rendering using DAZ. Any timeframe or guess when that might be? Is there a company that exists that we can work with for cloud rendering using DAZ software? Certainly they exist for 3dsmax but I've found really nothing for Daz/Iray.
Except I had a Nvidia 730GTX and it only had around 93 cuda cores or something like that, tried to render a simple iray scene and my computer promptly laughed at me and gave me a BSOD, so the line of "you can get a cheap card and hang with the big boys" is only really about making the big boys feel as though their not complete eletists.
If you had a BSOD that sounds like a cooling or other hardware issue, not a reflection of the card.
How does UEFI lock out Linux users?
ATI and Nvidia can be used together. Just use the ATI card for Monitors and Gaming and the Nvidia for rendering. Have ATI installed and working in system first, then install Nvidia and install drivers for it.
As I understand it it doesn't lock Linux users out, but it does mean (if enabled) that Windows (if installed) is handling the BIOS settings - you can still have it pass control to Linux, though. A single-boot Linux system, as far as I am aware, remains no issue (subject to driver support).
I don't use dual boot; I find that power switches to the SSDs is the best way of managing the system; it also means that when there are issues, they are easier to resolve and for any re-installations to be completed.
Just be aware, that using OpenCL with AMD cards can be an issue when Nvidia drivers exist; presuming this hasn't been fixed.