Just in case to test these Blender 2.78 builds, you try installing the latest nvidia drivers.
Edit:
In my case last builds from buildbot are about 15 seconds faster in BMW27.blend scene compared to 2.77a. But I use Linux, so do not make much sense to compare it with your case.
No, only if you like to compile Blender on your system.
I have tested this too but have same or slightly better performance with latest build.
Specs in my signature.
Well then, let’s just install the CUDA 8 toolkit and see what happens.
Without installing CUDA I can’t use CUDA at all, the CUDA version can affect the performance.
@dogdayfear. Have you done the test with the latest nvidia driver?
@cpurender. You do not need Toolkit if you use official Blender including precompiled CUDA kernels. When you install the nvidia driver, it installs the necessary CUDA runtime libraries (libcuda1 package in Ubuntu).
That is, in Windows you need the toolkit only if you’ve compiled Blender for yourself. In Linux you need the Toolkit if you have compiled Blender for yourself, or you are using Blender from Ubuntu repositories (they do not include precompiled CUDA kernels). Install CUDA Toolkit it is not required if you use official Blender, like those from Buildbot.
Installed latest nVidia drivers and results are even worse. (Just 1 second more than the worst result I had).
So I confirm 2.78 is round 8% slower. With a few minutes scene render should not seem a problem, but in renders that take hours 8% is too much performance fall.
Don´t give to much on BMW, Koro for example is a real production file.
Check Production Benchmark: https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/
I changed samples/dimension to keep render times low.
Hi, BMW is default.
Fishy cat is 500 samples
Koro is 200 samples but 100% dimension.
Doesn´t really matter when you compare two Blender versions on one system.
I believe there were some excellent tradeoffs between memory usage/features and render time for this release. I know render times are the sexy feature for people playing with Blender in their basement, but memory efficiency (especially on the GPU) and a small tradeoff for faster hair rendering are much more important for studio work so I’d understand why they’re prioritized.
With a few minutes scene render should not seem a problem, but in renders that take hours 8% is too much performance fall.