Nvidia 30 series cards

[Neilg]

What kind of specs are those sub 2K machines Neil?

This is the matching render node, we just picked up a few yesterday - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DsWf6R

Comes out to $1400 without a video card, recent workstations got a 2070 and a bigger HD.

[miro.digital]

Not for the faint-hearted 3090 mounted on motherboard. Or rather the motherboard mounted to the 3090 (source: reddit)

[Mokiki]

That poor mini ITX board ; ;

[glorybound]

Id be interested to see how a typical DBOX scene goes on GPU Neil. Arch vis scenes can get horibly heavy very fast.
Im looking at a renderbox https://renderboxes.com/ and trying to work out the NVlink and price performance of a 4x 3090 setup with them.

Let me know what you find out.

[francomanko]

that renderboxes website...oh my..

[Digital Magic]

It’s a massive update. At least on paper a single 3090 looks like it could possibly be faster than 4x 1080tis and it will easily outperform 2x 2080ti, possibly even 3 with the increases to the speed on RT cores in the 30 series. Looks like they haven’t released specs yet on the numbers of rt cores so that will be interesting to see. Though they did show this image I’ve attached which looks like they’ve made a lot of progress on their rtx tech

This looks interesting. Looking forward to seeing real world results as I might be interested in replacing my RTX2080ti with a 3090. My system is a Threadripper 3970x with 128GB of 3200MHz RAM so I am wondering if I will see significant reduction in render times? I am using 3ds Max 2020 and V-ray 4.3 and Phoenix FD

[glorybound]

I read that they only come with 10Mb of RAM, is this correct?

[glorybound]

I guess I read wrong.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce...ries/rtx-3090/

[squintnic]

This looks interesting. Looking forward to seeing real world results as I might be interested in replacing my RTX2080ti with a 3090. My system is a Threadripper 3970x with 128GB of 3200MHz RAM so I am wondering if I will see significant reduction in render times? I am using 3ds Max 2020 and V-ray 4.3 and Phoenix FD

I feel like that wont be a very good price / performance upgrade from what you are running at the moment given the 3970x is a good CPU and you allready have top of the last 20xx series
Depends on your work I suppose

[seandunderdale]

Will we have a Vray benchmark test that can run in RTX mode to really see what these 30 series are capable of? Id also love to see a scene setup that can compare CPU and GPU to see comparative speed between both methods. Id also love to know if Vray are bringing hybrid mode to RTX, and if so, when. It will really affect what type of system I invest in next.

[Digital Magic]

I feel like that wont be a very good price / performance upgrade from what you are running at the moment given the 3970x is a good CPU and you allready have top of the last 20xx series
Depends on your work I suppose

Good points. I heard the 3090 was better than two 2080 but guess will have to see future tests. Plus I don't know how the CPU and GPU leverage in the rendering equation whether it's all one or the other and what is best? I certainly don't want to waste $1400 on a GPU that doesn't help a lot

[BBB3]

Given that these will almost certainly require liquid cooling and perhaps a PSU and Board upgrade too, this looks like being a bigger investment this cycle. Especially since the absence of NVlink and low VRAM on most models presented so far mean that for rendering, the only realistic option will be the 3090.

[Alex_M]

Are these cards faster than a Threadripper 3970x?

[squintnic]

I think its unlikely they will outperform by much - and once you take into account the price for 2 x 3090s and the low VRAM limit and incomplete feature set on Vray GPU when compared to= Vray CPU you will be better off with a CPU I reckon...but again it depends on the work you do and how much you can make off each GPU / CPU

short story - if you are in a production enviroment that requires complex and heavy scenes and need surety that your renders will get done do not invest in GPU rendering. Its ok for hobbyists and instagram users though.

[^Lele^]

The algorithms aren't identical between CPU and GPU, and as such it's hard to compare apples with apples.
Very diverging tasks (f.e. very long path SSS, or volumes with multiple scattering events) are historically quicker on CPUs.
Most other tasks fall between the comparable (i.e. speed is cene dependent) and the favoured by GPU, provided the load fits in the card's ram.

OOC has been historically problematic (one can render a scene on GPU which otherwise wouldn't, but with a severe speed penalty.), but perhaps it may get better in the coming years, thanks to advancements in IO subsystems (f.e. the newly proposed directStorage API from Microsoft, coupled with fast m2 drives on PCI gen4).

I've worked for a company which delivered a whole movie done on GPUs (not with V-Ray either) in 2008, and the forums have users which make a very comfy living rendering with V-Ray GPU, so i am not sure about the technology being only good for hobbyists and instagram users.
It's a tool, it has its own ways to be used and its own set of limitations, like any other tool on the planet.
If there's a will, there often is a way.