Hi there.
I heard rumours, that cycles has slowed down over time, because of added new features.
Is that true? If so, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make builds with very old cycles versions, for those who only need the basic functions and can benefit from the improved performance?
I dont think so : https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?419704-The-latest-additions-to-cycles-has-made-it-nearly-real-time-in-certain-scenarios
Yeah, for those inexperienced or not that technical, it is slower. In such case, use older build for rendering.
edit:
WAS WRONG!
just did a quick test - blenchmark on a single GPU (Maxwell)
2.76 VS 2.78c>>> speed increase by 22.2’%
With respect to render times in stable releases, not slowness in my tests. CPU render times improved a lot, and CUDA render times improved, but not as much as CPU. But always improvements.
Maybe those rumors are a misunderstanding with initial Windows 10 issues that have already been fixed?
Regarding vRAM usage, there was a time with previous versions where vRAM usage exploded, but this has already been greatly optimized. I guess with CUDA split kernel it will still be more optimized.
Here’s the thing, Cycles is actually a lot faster than it used to be because it’s received far more than just new shading features.
Go to an old version and you would have to deal with a combination of worse sampling and less efficient BVH code (not to mention bugs that have long since been squashed). Also don’t forget that pathtracing speed is more than just how fast it takes to place samples on the screen, it’s also dependent on how many sample passes it takes to converge a scene as well.
Cycles today is definitely faster.
I have a GTX 980Ti and recent builds are rendering the BMW benchmark scene in around 55 seconds (I have seen render times well over 1 min 30 in past builds).
There are a whole host of new improvements on the horizon that (with slight compromises in quality) seem to take render times down to ~30 seconds.
yes, did test it
2.78c VS 2.76 >>> 2.78c Cycles is 22.2% faster on my system
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