Dual GTX 590 experience so far

[renderfarmer]

I just got my second GTX 590 up and running and wanted to share my experience so far. Benchmark results are posted in the benchmark sticky.

1-Stupid fast.
2-Had to disable SLI for all 4 GPUs to be used at 100% - with SLI on I was getting around 30% on each GPU.
3-270.61WHQL are the youngest drivers that will work with VrayRT/GPU.
4-Max GPU temp reached 94C - Idle GPU temp between 45-40C.
5-Max total system wattage reached 902W - measured with P3 Kill-A-Watt, not including Display, CPU was around 15%.
6-Did I mention stupid fast?

[chris-x//]

Hi,

when you say stupid fast, is that an instant update of the activeshade for example when orbiting around the scene ?
I have a lot of troubles with vray RT. I just bought a new GTX580 with 3GB on board, I tried with older drivers like 270.51 and when orbiting around my objects, it takes about ten 10 seconds before the active shade updates... Creepy... Scene containes only a simple teapot...

When using CPU, I get instant update but on GPU it's a total waste of money for me right now... The GPU doesn't even seem to be busy as the ventilation remains quiet. I tried octane demo, or games, ventilation of the GPU gets active directly...

There is something wrong with RT for me.. maybe i'll try 270.61... Latest drivers from nvidia, beta or not, didn't change anything. I did not expect GPU rendering to be hyper reactive but at least faster than the cpu.

My workstation is an intel i7 920 2.67 Ghz with gtx580 phantom 3GB + 24 gig of ram...

Let's try some other drivers.

Enjoy your GPUs

[Alan Iglesias]

Yes, please do try other (perhaps older?) drivers, Chris. Your system should really be much faster than that to update the Activeshade window. I'm running a 460 along with a 560ti, and the update is pretty dang quick, and only slows down when the scene is rather large.

I hope you can get to the bottom of this because you really should be having more fun than you're having. If there is anything I can do to help, I will.

I'm trying to think of other things that might be slowing down the window update...let me ask you this, once it updates, does the scene render as quickly as you would expect? Use the GPU performance table (http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...GPU-benchmarks) to see if you are rendering at a speed which one should expect with your GPU.

Have your Ray Bundle Size or Rays Per Pixel amounts been radically changed? It it perhaps looking for off-machine GPUs because the DR box is checked?

I'll keep thinking about it and perhaps Vlado has some suggestions...

-Alan

[chris-x//]

Hi Alan,

Thank for your answer, Ray Bundle Size or Rays Per Pixel haven't been changed, DR is unchecked.

It seems installing 270.61 solved the problem, it's much faster now... at least when it starts.

It often hangs at "waiting for image data" and I have to restart it 2 or 3 times before it works, even after waiting several minutes for that opencl compiling thing.

Strange the graphic card still never seems to be on heavy load...
BTW CPU load in the task manager is always used @ 100% when rendering on the GPU, thoug openCL is well selected in RT. Shouldn't the cpu be less used ? I'll recheck all of that tomorrow..

EDIT : I just tested the benchmark scene, behavior was totally different...

Facts :

* graphic card doesn't even seem to be working, no noise, nada.
* 77,655Kpaths/s
* Scene hangs at 32 path/pixel reached
* Nothing has moved for 15 minutes, and it eats all my ram ??? 23gig out of 24...?!

It begins to be supernatural I think a good format + fresh reinstallations wouldn't be a bad idea...

Thank you very much for your help anyway,

chris

[Alan Iglesias]

Yes, definitely someting wierd going on there. You seem to have involvement with the native CPU and RAM that doesn't make much sense. And the fact that GPU is hanging also is very suspect. Is V-Ray Standalone actually crashing? Have you deleted the .clbin file when changing drivers? Can you find some older drivers like back in the 160's (before 170.00)?

My CPUs go to about 14% when GPU rendering and the RAM usage is goes up .3GB.

I'm gonna keep thinking about this, but it really sounds like a job for Vlado...you out there?

-Alan

[vlado]

* graphic card doesn't even seem to be working, no noise, nada.
* 77,655Kpaths/s
* Scene hangs at 32 path/pixel reached
* Nothing has moved for 15 minutes, and it eats all my ram ??? 23gig out of 24...?!

This means it is rendering on the CPU, not the GPU at all. Have you looked at the V-Ray RT render server output to see if there are any errors?

Best regards,
Vlado

[chris-x//]

Hello,

well it seems I have solved my problems. For some unknow reasons, the VRAY RT license server didn't register correctly and won't register as a service (adminitrator rights or not), so it was all cpu based. After fresh reinstall + nvidia 270.61 + correct registering, I really get decent speed compared to the benchmark threads. I know understand where my bucks went with that 580 GTX .

I tried some other scenes, nothing like before, really fast. The only problem remaining is a total system freeze with a scene with the VrayCarPaintMaterial appearing as a solid uniform yellow color. Maybe it's not supported, will try other scenes. Or maybe the card gets too hot as direct reboot results in no display... hmmm computers...

Anyway, thanks again for your help Alan & Vlado, much appreciated.
Regards,
Chris

[Alan Iglesias]

Ah, it was a license thing? Interesting. I recommend staying away from the whole register-as-service-permissions thing if possible. Glad you got it going and thanks for the information...

And yes, the Car Paint material (along with other materials that require a significant set-up time like blends and composites) is not yet supported by RT/GPU.

-Alan

[renderfarmer]

Hi,

when you say stupid fast, is that an instant update of the activeshade for example when orbiting around the scene ?

Enjoy your GPUs

Hi Chris, sorry for the late reply and thank you. I'm glad Alan was there to respond and I'm happy you were able to resolved your issues.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Memory question

3 GB - mean u can pack in 3 gb scene or 1.5 gb / per core max?

Can u try simple mesh with loads of poly and let us know pleaseeeeeeee thanks...

[renderfarmer]

Memory question 3 GB - mean u can pack in 3 gb scene or 1.5 gb / per core max?

It's 1.5GB/core max. The card has 3GB on it but it's evenly divided between the cores with no possible overlap as far as I know.

[vlado]

I tried some other scenes, nothing like before, really fast. The only problem remaining is a total system freeze with a scene with the VrayCarPaintMaterial appearing as a solid uniform yellow color. Maybe it's not supported, will try other scenes.

Yep, the car paint is currently unsupported.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Oh god... WHYYY WHYYYY kill the limit ! Let us use more memory

Well thanks for ur info ! Now I know I have to w8 even longer to get next GPU :s

[Alan Iglesias]

They didn't kill anything this time. The board is actually two GPUs SLI-ed together, each wth it's own physical 1.5GB of RAM.

You can get the 580 with 3GB of RAM. Two of those will give you over 1000 cores and you'll have a 3GB RAM base...

-Alan