AMD Threadripper 2 & V-Ray - Has anyone tried yet?

[glorybound]

I was reading about NVIDIA's next GPU's, which are 24GB GeForce RTX 2080 (or RTX 2080 Ti) that will cost around $1200. With a few of these, I might start using V-Ray RT. For around $5000 I might be able to build a good rig, maybe with the AMD Threadripper 2.

[Alex_M]

Hey Alex, what cooling solution are you using for your 1950x? I am using two fans and couldn't pass 3.8GHz while keeping it under 95C Tctl.

95C Tctl is very high. I wouldn't run my CPU even close to this. Is it hot in the room where this PC is? I'm using a Noctua NH-U14S air cooler so nothing special like AIOs or custom water cooling. The ambient (room) temperature, PC case design and number of case fans are as important as a good CPU cooler. At 3.9 Ghz (all core OC) and 1.328V CPU core voltage, in long rendering session (40-50 min) CPU temps get indeed a bit toasty - up to 80-82°C but the CPU should handle them fine. The room is kept at a constant temperature of 23°C at all times. My case also has 3 low noise 140mm intake fans in the front to help bring fresh cold air inside the case and a rear fan taking away the warm air as quickly as possible which is controlled by the CPU temp (revs up into high RPMs if the CPU temperature rises and barely spins if the CPU is cold). Not to mention that even exactly the same model CPUs can be different in their capabilities. Some can overclock higher without producing that much heat and some can't overclock very high without producing lots of heat. This is known as "the silicon lottery".

I was reading about NVIDIA's next GPU's, which are 24GB GeForce RTX 2080 (or RTX 2080 Ti) that will cost around $1200. With a few of these, I might start using V-Ray RT. For around $5000 I might be able to build a good rig, maybe with the AMD Threadripper 2.

I'm waiting to see how these new RTX GPUs perform too but I'm also keeping an eye on the 2990WX. About a year ago we were about to switch to GPU rendering, but after upgrading to 16-core CPUs, which seem to be fast enough for us for now, this idea faded away. And now with this 32-core CPU it makes it even harder to consider moving to pure GPU rendering unless the new RTX GPUs are cheap enough and offer something like at least 2x improvement in speed and RAM capacity over 1080ti. I just can't be bothered to adhere and work around the limitations of GPU rendering if speed and ease of use don't compensate for all of this. Not to mention that last time I tried GPU rendering its IPR didn't produce accurate representation of the lighting (especially for interior spaces where bounced rays are very important), since it didn't support light cached secondary rays in IPR. At least with CPU rendering I know that every feature is supported and I can fit almost anything into the RAM.

[jasonhuang1115]

Thank you Alex_M . My issue might be the room temperature as I am using the exact same air cooler and actually I put two there to do a push-and-pull, but the temperature is still high. My room ambient temp is probably around 28C. What is your motherboard? Do you OC through the BIOS or the utility that comes with AMD?

[Alex_M]

The motherboard is AsRock X399 Taichi. I overclock through BIOS. Also check if the PC has enough free space around it because if it's blocked by a desk or a wall the cool air won't have anywhere to come from and the hot air won't have anywhere to escape. Also if possible keep the case on the ground since the air there is colder (cold air is denser/heavier and tends to fall to the ground).

[DPS]

Sorry I meant tdie temps. And the safety feature I mentioned due to the wattage arrose from this AMD response - I was asking them why my clock speeds were 3.4GHz whilst using Vray when I’d sometimes see all core running much high clock speeds.

“The throttle temperature is around 85c, however if you are running stock settings then you will most likely be limited more by power draw (wattage) than temperatures. For example, once the power draw exceeeds 180W, the clock will drop to keep things in check.

Your temperatures are good, but using a custom water cooling block will definitely help and will give you a bit more headroom for higher clock speeds at stock settings. That said, if you were to overclock manually using Ryzen Threadripper Mastertool (which we recently updated on our website so a newer version) then the power draw limitation, along with other power saving features like C States etc, are completely disabled. In this scenario, you would only see a clock frequency drop if you saw temperatures in excess of 85c or thereabouts.

I hope that helps.
“

[jasonhuang1115]

The motherboard is AsRock X399 Taichi. I overclock through BIOS. Also check if the PC has enough free space around it because if it's blocked by a desk or a wall the cool air won't have anywhere to come from and the hot air won't have anywhere to escape. Also if possible keep the case on the ground since the air there is colder (cold air is denser/heavier and tends to fall to the ground).

I am using AsRock X399 Fatal1ty but it should be fairly similar to the Taichi. I recall I was fiddling with the BIOS settings for a while but fail to make it stably running above 3.8 GHz without Tctl hitting 95C after rendering for like 10 minutes. Now I am running it at 3.75Ghz and still can see it pushing close to 90+C Tctl.
My room temp is probably 5C higher than yours and the space around the PC isn't super open for air flow. A bit against the wall with some room inbetween.
Did you follow a specific guide for OC? If you have your OC setting documented somewhere, I'd love to follow your settings to give it another go to see if I can push it toward 3.9GHz.

[Richard7666]

There are a few more V-ray bench results in now. The median seems to be about 26 seconds. So while a lot faster than the 45 seconds of the 1950X, it's still not twice as fast. Not far off though.

Considering it's only 5 seconds slower than a lot of these 128+ core Xeons and Epycs, it's pretty impressive.

[Alex_M]

There are a few more V-ray bench results in now. The median seems to be about 26 seconds. So while a lot faster than the 45 seconds of the 1950X, it's still not twice as fast. Not far off though.

Considering it's only 5 seconds slower than a lot of these 128+ core Xeons and Epycs, it's pretty impressive.

This is to be expected. The clock speed of 1950X with all 16 cores working is 3.40-3.50 Ghz however, the clock speed of 2990WX with all 32 cores working is only 3.00 Ghz or ~15% lower than 1950X. Nothing that 15-20% overclock wouldn't "fix". Because of the power draw and heat, it's a lot harder to keep high all-core frequencies on a high core count CPUs than let's say 8-12 core CPUs. I'm actually very impressed that AMD managed to even do 3.00 Ghz all-core clock on a 32-core CPU considering that the best and the highest core count Xeon (8176 Platinum) is 28 cores and has an all-core clock of only 2.10 Ghz.

[Syclone1]

if anyone is interested here is a real world test on a current project, I only changed the names of the computers to reflect the processors in them.

-dave

[baastyan]

if anyone is interested here is a real world test on a current project, I only changed the names of the computers to reflect the processors in them.

-dave

HI Syclone1,

Thanks for sharing this!
Are your computers overclocked in this test?

[Syclone1]

NO they are all running at stock speeds, also the 1920X and 1950X have NZXT X62 AIO coolers and the 2990WX is air coold with a Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 cooler. I also do have the memory in each bumped up to 3000 to 3200.
Lastly because of NDA's I cant share or even show the file rendered above but here are a couple specs from it:

About 1.38GB in file size
Objects: 7016
Cameras:6
Helpers: 145
Spacewarps:2
Polys: 7,197,086

[baastyan]

Syclone1

OK. Thanks.


I am considering buying 2990WX and use it as a server machine for Distributed Rendering.
However my workstation is i-9 7980XE. So my question is: did anyone notice any issues while rendering with DR: intel workstation (e.g. i9-7900 series) and AMD Ryzen server (e.g. 2990WX)?

[Alex_M]

However my workstation is i-9 7980XE. So my question is: did anyone notice any issues while rendering with DR: intel workstation (e.g. i9-7900 series) and AMD Ryzen server (e.g. 2990WX)?

There are 2 Intel based PC (i7 4930k) that I'm using for DR with my 1950X without any issues. I think you should be fine.

[baastyan]

There are 2 Intel based PC (i7 4930k) that I'm using for DR with my 1950X without any issues. I think you should be fine.

That's good. Thanks.

[askhamdesign]

Thanks for sharing these Dave, out of interest how much memory are you running with your 2990 machine?