GPU as a second floating point processor

[razz]

How about using the GPU as a second floating point processor?
Inspiration:
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/20...0419024803.htm

[Artizen]

mental ray now supports gpu rendering
i hope vlado will realise this huge potential for accelerating vray.

http://www.mentalimages.com/1_1_news...te/040419.html

[gafl]

Hi !

At least ! They think to use the graphic processor...It is so powerfull !
They should have done it earlier !!!!

This is not a surprise that we can use it in conjonction with the cpu.
But now, before we get something available in Vray...A long may pass.
It must be very complicated to incorporate, and Vray team may have
to make Vray more stable.

But, woww ! It would be so good in animation !

Bye !
Gaël

[Janus Rölder]

does this mean mental ray 3.3 can use the graphiccard GPU to render?
or does it only means some sort of active shade preview function.

i mean, is the GPU render quality the same as the CPU render quality?

i mean pixel shaders and all that GPU stuff is nice but there is a reason why a "real" rendering took so much longer (and looks better) then a frame of an ego shooter.

[Artizen]

the gpu isnt used to render the image alone,
but is used to aid the cpu in things like floating point operations.

so your render might take 5 mins instead of 15 at the same quality.
(render time is speculation)