Best/good hardware for rendering ?

[remi11]

I just bought my first graphics card GTX 1050 Ti but the rendering time is still huge, 30+ hours for 20 seconds of video

Motherboard
MSI B85-G41 PC Mate

CPU:
Intel Core i5 4570 3.2GHz

Powersource Super Flower SF-450P14P 450W


What set up do you guys have ? and what is your aproximate rendering time ?

[Svetlozar Draganov]

My response is not directly related to your inquiry but when we talk for hardware we have a tool that measures how fast is particular configuration with V-Ray.
The tool is called V-Ray Benchmark and it can be downloaded from Download page of our website, more information about it can be found on its Docs page.

It is even possible to compare where your hardware stands among other specifications:http://benchmark.chaosgroup.com/cpu

[remi11]

Thank you very much svetlozar

Would you recommend in the future i upgrade my
CPU to an i7 or
GPU to GTX 1080 ?
what would give faster/better renders ?

[Svetlozar Draganov]

ChaosGroup refrains from providing hardware related advises, that why we have developed a tool which will allow user to test any particular hardware and compare it with other available on the market.
In your case you are comparing CPU/i7 vs GPU/GTX 1080 hardware which suggest that you have to include other components into account not only which one would be faster.
GPU rendering still doesn't support all V-Ray Features and still doesn't have "unlimited" RAM and CPUs, this is one side of the whole thing.
From other side GPU rendering in general is faster than CPU and the good news is that you can attach multiple cards on the same motherboard and make the boost the render times even more.

[ted.vitale.jdk]

I'll make a suggestion here! When choosing hardware for V-Ray for SketchUp specifically, you want two things. High clock speeds, high core count and lots of ram (think i7 6950x, i9 7900 or Ryzen 17/1800x, some of the Xeon's have a high clock speed and core count as well). High clock speed is for the single threaded applications like SketchUp. The high core count is for V-Ray because it uses all available threads on a machine when rendering. You're also going to need lots of ram, minimum 32gb. To comfortably handle most arch viz scenes I would recommend 64gb or more.

As for GPU, a 1070 or 1080 is great, but if you're going to be doing Arch Viz, GPUs typically don't have enough vram on them to support dense scenes. I regularly go over 35gb of ram in larger scenes, so even my dual 1080ti's won't be much use, at least until they release the combined rendering update to sketchup. And don't bother with AMD GPUs.

So for you remi11, I'd say you have three options:

1) Upgrade to an i7 4790k (best cpu you can get for the LGA1150 socket), and max out your ram (32gb max - make sure your motherboard supports it) and render primarily off your CPU.

2) Upgrade to a 1080 if you do more GPU based rendering. Your computer will still be behind the curve for any kind of viz work but you can carry the 1080 over to a new system in the future.

3) Just save for a full new system, maybe a budget Ryzen build to get that high core count, high clock speed.

Hope that helps and I didn't completely confuse you!

[remi11]

Thank you Sveltozar !
And thank you Ted, that was very useful information. I have 16gb of ram and i though it is enough, i guess not
I think the best thing i can do right now is start saving for a 1080, and next year maybe a new CPU and more RAM

[ted.vitale.jdk]

remi11 16gb is a good amount if you're doing small scenes. But as you scale up you'll need to think about an upgrade. On the bright side, there's so much new hardware coming online in the next few months (EYPC, Threadripper, Ryzen, new i7 and i9 x series), it's a good time to be saving for hardware. As for GPU's crypto mining is pushing up the costs of all the GPU's on the market so, hold off on the GPU, or keep an eye on prices until they come back down.

[remi11]

Yes ted.vitale.jdk i noticed that the price of GPUs has gone way up, hopefully by fall they will come down

[delineator]

I'll make a suggestion here! When choosing hardware for V-Ray for SketchUp specifically, you want two things. High clock speeds, high core count and lots of ram (think i7 6950x, i9 7900 or Ryzen 17/1800x, some of the Xeon's have a high clock speed and core count as well). High clock speed is for the single threaded applications like SketchUp. The high core count is for V-Ray because it uses all available threads on a machine when rendering. You're also going to need lots of ram, minimum 32gb. To comfortably handle most arch viz scenes I would recommend 64gb or more.

As for GPU, a 1070 or 1080 is great, but if you're going to be doing Arch Viz, GPUs typically don't have enough vram on them to support dense scenes. I regularly go over 35gb of ram in larger scenes, so even my dual 1080ti's won't be much use, at least until they release the combined rendering update to sketchup. And don't bother with AMD GPUs.

??? Ted, we may need to talk. I would love to see the stats on the file that is taking up 32gb of ram. I'm sure your doing some huge renderings, but 64gb on a workstation seems like overkill to me, especially for most of the stuff our fellow SKP comrades are doing (interiors, residential, etc). We render on machines ranging from 8gb to 128gb, but not using the SKP gui. VFB and multiple channels along with a bad file (and progressive!) can tear through your ram. As an example, a large aerial with over 20k Laubwerk trees spread over several miles COULD take all my ram in my 128gb machine and crash it. However, it can also render out just fine on my 32gb machine sipping just 20gb WITH the vfb by making sure to use proxies, making sure skatter is working right, and using buckets. I'm sure we could break a $20,000 machine with half a TB of ram, however, that doesn't mean that the same model couldn't be rendered out using a more typical workstation rig.

I personally think Ryzen is the best choice for most users right now: fast, cheap, stable and isn't crazy power hungry.