General discussions about GPU, employment and prices

[Morbid Angel]

When installing redshift, they always recomend to extend the TDR value. It may be something that can help with your case as well. TDR stands for Time Detection Recovery, and it affects how gpu is preforming on windows desktop, see article below. But even with that setting enabled it did not help me much.

https://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/co...n_recovery.htm

[glorybound]

Interesting and thanks for the share. I am giving up on GPU right now, since it almost seems like an Alpha project. I got my scene to render in an hour, but it froze, calculating the glare. The next try it didn't render my rail clone siding, then it didn't render my rail clone roof. Another try I canceled the render and MAX froze. Now, it is showing 18 hour ETA, and has moved little in the last hour. CPU is slower, but predictable.

[glorybound]

From what I hear from others, both octane and FStorm are not plagued with these issues. It is rarely greener on the other side, so I am sure they both have their own issues, but every time I try to use V-Ray GPU, it is a poor experience.

[Morbid Angel]

If gpu is for example 5 times faster then cpu, but has 5 times more problems in my mind its not worth it. We kept the cpu adoption, and I occasionally render my scene on gpu to see what happens. In most cases it renders, but with some issues and I don't see a big performance difference. Not worth the extra problems.

[glorybound]

I think for my interiors GPU might be a good fit. I have a few that I am working on and I will test with my 4090 at the end of the week.

[seandunderdale]

I stayed with CPU after trying GPU rendering at a studio for 6 months. Ive never contemplated switching again. I got a 3990x and Ill get the new threadripper when its out. I had the same issues everyone else had and I hated worrying about Nvidia drivers also. CPU is predictable, as mentioned, and if you buy a fast one, I find I get all my high res stuff done with time to spare.

[dlparisi]

CPU is predictable, as mentioned, and if you buy a fast one, I find I get all my high res stuff done with time to spare.

Similar experience here with a TR3970x. Using with the Intel denoiser and a fairly high noise threshold (.015-.02),I can get most renders done really fast to the point where I don't think GPU would be any faster (short of something more realtime like Vantage or exotic mutli GPU setups), usually like 10-20 min for a final quality 4k image. Smaller test, WIP, and IPR images are done in minutes if not seconds. On the larger renders it really seems like the image has settled after just a few minutes anyways and the last half is cleaning up noise in foliage or other super small details that just never seems to make much of a difference, but I let it run. It's fast enough for me, your mileage may vary depending on your scenes. By keeping with CPU I feel like I've got the full range of tools available rather than having to think about what works in GPU and any limitations.

[fixeighted]

There's certainly a kind of deafening silence from Chaos about their GPU version...at least it seems that way.
At a certain time it was shouted about.
My guess is that tech has simply sped so far ahead that honestly, now, it's being superseded by other options, such as Vantage, UE and the like.

I 'did' buy into the whole thing a while ago, though dropped it, as every single time I thought I could leverage the card I bought specifically for it, it failed, for one reason or another.
The various pitfalls, traps and limitations inherent with its use make it a rarely used option for me.

I'm sure there are others that will say that they only use GPU, day to day, and it's marvelous. I'm happy for them but can't help but think that we were generally sold on a wish......

[glorybound]

I feel the same way. I could never use it in production. There were always two schools, though, and both sides fought hard. I remember when Corona wasn't Chaos, and they said that they didn't believe the future was GPU, so they had no plans to go in that direction.

[Morbid Angel]

So you've spent 8 hours to solve problems in the gpu render that took 10 minutes, or you had a cpu render of 2 hours and was done with it. Hmmm I also tried using redshift for interior, it didn't work so well, render time was really high or really noisy (that is not relying on denoisers) since I think using denoisers is a post process that does not influence the actual render performance.

[glorybound]

I ditched GPU because I am fine with 2-hours for a 4K image with CPU. I spent the better part of a day trying to get GPU to work (lots of crashes), and the render times were estimated to be 8 hours. I just dropped in a 4090, so I'll see how that works. When I work with people using a GPU render engine, I think they are not using any displacements, which might be the key.

[glorybound]

Even DR is a headache. Right now, it works 1/2 the time. 10 years ago I ditched DR for one 128 thread machine. I was tired of managing 5 computers, with dropped buckets, gamma issues, and all around a headache. I might return my 4090 and get a Ryyzen with more cores. This is my day with DR... Reboot MAX and it might work.



and then

[Morbid Angel]

I just got this one: amd 5995wx 64 core 128 thread cpu it has a good score.

[glorybound]

Crap, that is a $6000 chip!

[glorybound]

Funny.... $6000 at B&H and $2000 on new egg. (EDIT) I guess there are processors with the same name, but different thread.