GPU vs CPU. Who's using it?

[Streetwise]

Does anyone have information on the % of GPU users? Is it 50%? 25%? I'm wondering just how popular it is at this point in time. Thanks.

* of course placing a poll in the GPU only forums may skew results :/

[super gnu]

i was leaning towards gpu rendering before, despite lots of annoying limitations. since my gpus were much more powerful than my cpu... however ive now got a new machine with the same old gpus in, and the cpu is faster than both gpus together]. so in that case, it was actually a great pleasure to go back to cpu rendering, cos it "just works"

[Joelaff]

CPU Rendering most of the time. When something is taking terribly long to render (like millions of particles) we try GPU, which is sometimes much faster. However there are still many annoying limitations. Note it is almost always Hybrid (using CPUs as CUDA cores as well as GPUs) when using the GPU.

[BBB3]

Only GPU. Haven't used the CPU for anything other than small R&D for years.

[racoonart]

I tried to use GPU a couple of times but always ran into issues. First of all, osl didn't work (and still doesn't, as reported in the 5 beta). I also regularly have inexplicably long prepass/acceleratior-building/etc times that just makes it impossible to work with. And then there are still some compatibility issues (aside osl) that just force me back to CPU for any production.
Aside from that, I run a 3950x and a GTX 1080, GPU speed advantages were always rather slim in my case, and due to the longer prepasses it rarely makes sense to render with GPU. Redshift, for some reason, is much much faster in terms of raw speed (but of course, that can't be compared directly). I'm also aware that my GPU isn't the fastest one these days.

[Joelaff]

I am *guessing* that GPU is more popular with users with a single machine (or a couple machines). With a farm so often it is just easier to hit Net Render and be done with it than to deal with the GPU limitations. But on some scenes, like Phoenix Particle Shader rendering particles numbering in the hundred of millions to billions the GPU is soo much faster. If they can just get motion blur working in GPU on Bubbles and Splashes...

Needless to say a lack of motion blur makes a renderer useless for animation. (Scenes these days are typically far too complex for post Vector motion blur or RSMB to look good.)

[fixeighted]

Well, I wish I could use my new 2080ti but sadly there are issues with it and Max 21 - support have a scene but no response as yet.
Like supergnu I first found that my cpu was faster than the card - however I've since been told that the benchmarks say that is wrong.
So I can only wait until the issues are resolved in order to re-test that. Quicker is better but yes there are seemingly so many limitations that
I tend to agree with Joelaff and stick to cpu as at least it is more widely capable and relatively problem-free - it's not quicker if we spend more time troubleshooting than we do actually rendering

[Joelaff]

Is there a thread about your 2080Ti issues? Been using one with Max 2021 with no issues here, but everybody uses different features. I am curious what is broken for you.