I’m still a beginner with Blender (been doing stuff occasionally for a year now), so I’ve got no knowledge about the intricate technicalities of rendering but this is the first time I’m really confused by render times.
My machine: i7-7700HQ (bench: https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/ed7a32d5-ed26-442c-a862-0165932cd1c3/), GTX1070 (bench: https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/eb64c3cc-aa67-4111-81c2-e7a09bfd93ca), 32GB RAM
So I’ve got two different .blend-files with heavy geometry: “A” has 1 mil verts, “B” has 2 mil verts, no simulations. Whenever I let Eevee render a 1080p/32samples-frame in project A it takes about .1 seconds whereas in project B it takes about 2 minutes (similar differences when using cycles).
My CPU is only working at 20%, my GPU is not being used at all. When rendering project B it’s stuck at 0% for most of the time, even becomes unresponsive, and then actual rendering is done in just a few seconds. So obviously there’s something going on while preparing the scene.
Now I’m really confused at why these two projects render at such vastly different render times. I think I’ve checked most of the relevant settings. The only major difference I see is that the geometry in project B uses 10 times the memory (6GB). Would this be the reason for the 2 mins of prep time?
Btw, everything’s running perfectly smooth in shaded viewport, but I’m assuming that has got nothing to do with my issue?