Help me DECIDE! renders TOO SLOW ---- Cycles? Vray? New Computer?

Hi,

my rendering is way too slow on cycles, and bottle necked. my current computer is running cycles animation frames at about 30 min a frame. Thats CPU.

Current one computer specs are I7-2.30ghz - 16 gig ram - Nvidia 675m { laptop }. 2gb vram.
Of course rendering, freezes the computer from any other use.

My scenes are too big for GPU.

conclusion: I need either

  1. New rendering computer with 580 gtx nvidia card. { cost $ 1400 usd ++ about } with 3gb vram
    or

  2. Change to vray for rendering { Cost $ 500 usd + } probably need second computer also.
    add $1300 + usd { so $ 1800. + }

3 render farm? Not sure how practical this option is, since you still need to render frames to
see what your even getting, Im also worried about render project security/ nda. and uploading
large files might take time.

Notes:

a. I read the 675m I have now, is about equal to the older 580 gtx card. so no change in speed
to a new SECOND computer with the 3gb vram option.

b. If 3gb vram in new card is still too small. I will have to use CPU in new computer. so second computer
about same speed as first. { so second computer would also have to be HIGH end }

c. cycles is supposedly in the future, gonna handle ram better, but I dont think now.

d. vray would be on biased settings, so results not quite as good. { my goal is realism }

e. Of quality renderers, I think only vray can be considered for any animation speedup. the others are
all slow, or slower

any opinions?

thanks in advance!

You shouldnt be looking at gaming benchmarks for GPU rendering speeds… the GTX580 will DEMOLISH a 675m in rendering speeds , if you want a idea as to how fast it will be, grab mike pans benchmark and compare it to this list

And no, AMD cards are not supported by Cycles, and will probably not be supported any time in the near future

You wouldn’t need a new computer to render with Vray and it can be unbelievably realistic if you want it to be. There is the hassle of learning all the settings to get good speeds with Vray though.

The absolute best would be to use an in-house renderfarm but if you go with the more popular renderfarms there shouldn’t be any security issues anyway.

VRay is an extremely realistic renderer and it can be very fast as well.

Get a good GPU if GPU rendering fits your needs or VRay

or maybe think about online rendering!

30 minutes per frame isn’t that much…

As you increase the visual fidelity of your scenes, be it via resolution, geometric detail, texture size, or all three, render times are going to go up. There’s really nothing that can be done about it. GPUs are not a long term solution right now, any mildly complex scene of production quality will eat more RAM than even the best GPUs currently have. As you get into very complex scenes, you’ll butt up against the 100 texture limit very quickly. Your only real options are to throw more CPU power at the renderer you choose. Renderfarms are pretty cheap, definitely cheaper in the short term than building your own.

thanks for all the great suggestions. yes I realize now the 675m isnt the best

Right. I think I may breakdown and buy vray - and can hold off on a second computer for a bit.

If I make a home renderfarm, does the memory increase for two nividia 580gtx on two separate computers? i guess probably not.

anyone recommend a good software for the home renderfarm setup?

VRay is an extremely realistic renderer and it can be very fast as well.

Yeah,
I had a brief period where I doubted it,

I thought the beginning of Archetype looked fake.

I’m pretty sure they used vray, but I suppose the first shot is a matte painting not render?

then third and seventh reinstated my vray faith.

yeah, Im thinking the CPU is really it for now, this GPU is all smoke and mirror talk.

Not sure about the farms though. I figure render all night, goal 100 frames plus ,
is workable for me.

but this farm …rebus farm calculated to about a hundred + bucks!? what?!

a hundred a night? In 2 weeks Ive paid for a system.

if you’re doing a render farm grab several of these while they are this cheap

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130765

here are the ti’s for $20 more…
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130763

i wouldn’t worry to much about them being “refurbished”

hey maybe this for a renderfarm?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227435

$4,374
(i see Mac Pro’s costing more than this…
this would out compute it easily)

you get 6 Computers with Windows 7 64bit OS
8GB RAM Each, and 1TB HDD each…
6-Core CPU’s (36 total cores)
Geforce 560 2GB (6 Geforce cards)


you can actually build better with the refurbished Geforce cards
and 8-Core AMD’s
5 Systems

5 Geforce 560 2GB (1680 CUDA Fermi Cores)
5 Geforce 560ti 2GB (1920 CUDA Fermi Cores) 3,600 Total
AMD FX-8320 8-core (40 Vishera CPU cores.)
5-990fx mobo’s i chose the gigabyte it had a bundle deal with the CPU to save $
G. Skill 16GB RAM per system
500GB HDD per system
Thermaltake 850 watt PS
Antec 300 cases

$4,210(With NO OS)

Post one render here I am curious about what the scene is.

Not a very good advice.
For ~700 Euro you get a used BladeServer for instance, with 12*DualXeon.
That’s what you use for a renderfarm, not buy a truckload of gaming systems…

And if you want to go for GPU rendering, you buy a BigBang Mainboard with 8 PCIe x16 slots, and just ram 8 cards in that one system.

I would not throw any money at render software to expect to gain significant speed. Yes, some software claims to be fast. They all do. That’s one of the ways they sell render software. “looks good and it’s fast!”.

That said, you will find some render engines faster at some things. Such as hair, bump maps, soft reflections and so on. But you have to evaluate this on a case by case basis.

Based on your computer specs it sounds like you should be able to get something like a new hexacore and drop your frames down to about 5 mins or so. You will see the largest increase in speed with computer hardware, not software.

Use Vray if you like it over Cycles. But not because it will 3x or even 2 x the speed. What you need is more like 5-10x the speed.

3delight, is quite nice. And in the same situation I was able to get it to render a scene about 2X as fast as Mental ray. This was an isolated situation.

Most of the hig hend software excels at scenes with high geometry and lots of detail. This is where it hits the hardest for serious work.

Right now I think the best money is spent on CPU power. That’s my take.

For software speed consideration, you must know the likely type of scenes you will throw at the engine.

As a very rough overview…In simple lighting cases (mostly direct light), Cycles and Vray should not be too dissimilar. In more difficult lighting situation Vray will flog Cycles considerably.

Don’t just think speed though, also think about the features and way of working you desire. Cycles would probably be more versatile with material setups and deeply supporting with blender features.

I don’t think so.
That might get you one, maybe two blade, with low ram and very old Xeons (ie circa 2005-7). Then you still have to buy the chassis and whatever else you need to run a blade system.

Cheapest way is gaming components, used or whatever. Not professional/specialist/server stuff.

Try a 3770, 32gb ram, $50 case, m-atx mobo, decent PSU and minimal HDD you can find (you don’t need 1tb to store temp data).

Skip the GPU for your render nodes-- save $$$$ they have too many limitations to bother with IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9rgG2vPAvQ<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9rgG2vPAvQ” target="_blank">
https://youtu.be/U9rgG2vPAvQ

Bladeserver actually implies the rack, :wink: and often enough in that price the 4 redundant PSUs are included.
RAM, HDD and RAID is usually included with the blades.

You get used Bladeservers with 8-12 blades, with RAM and PSUs, sometimes even small HDDs from 600 Euro upwards on ebay weekly. Granted, that’s a real bargain then and I used the 600 Euro to make a point.
Still I don’t see how a 600 Euro gaming system can deliver 50GHz+ raw CPU renderpower.

Even for 1000 Euro you get a lot more power than from a gaming system.

Random examples from ebay, didn’t bother to look longer:
HP Bladecenter with 8 blades with 2 x Xeon 3.4Ghz, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 72.8GB 15K SCSI HDD each, 600 GBP.
IBM Bladecenter with 14 blades HS20 8843, 2 x Xeon 3.6GHz, 8 GB RAM, 73.4GB SCSI HDD and 4 redundant PSUs for 990 Euro

Why would I buy a single 3770 CPU for 300 Euro, which has oversimplified said 14 GHz renderpower, when I can have 55 GHz renderpower in a ready to run system for double the money?
I buy a 3770 for a workstation, not a homeoffice/small-office renderfarm.

For rendering, it’s the quantity, not the maximum speed of a chip, and those old servers are cheap and have quantity galore, and on top of that stability galore.
Just remember that Babylon5 CG was rendered on an army of old Amigas. They where cheap and en masse they had the best price to performance ratio for the job.

Its not just quantity, but also chip / motherboard efficiency of power…

These are xeons from like 2005, single core and with maximum 8 maybe 16 gb DDR2 ram.

I can’t actually find any benchmark for these processors to compare performance/value with modern cpu’s. You should do that before considering any purchase on old hardware like that.

Sure having a blade setup with semi modern Xeons would be better than having a pile of gaming boxes but these you’ve linked to are very old and possibly useless considering they’re so old we don’t even know their performance.

GHz not equal render speed.
For example run a 3GHz Pentium4 and a modern i7 slightly down-clocked to 3GHz, I think you’ll find the results are not comparable.

old stuff from ebay has no warranty.

also, the old CPU’s you are talking abotu are weaksauce compared to what i listed…
to gave 8 Bladed x2 Xeons(dual core) that = 16 Cores Weak… @ 3.4GHZ for what they list as
54.4GHZ TOTAL(now that is OLD GHZ Power… no new instruction sets)


to get more that 54.4 GHZ of new power all you would need is 2 x 8-Core AMD CPU’s

AMD 8320
16 Cores x 3.5GHZ = 56GHZ

16 Cores x 4GHZ = 64GHZ… (or AMD fx-8350 Default speed)
Overclock them slightly…
16 cores x 4.4GHZ = 70.4

now you have more power,
and all the new instruction sets

2 of these systems can be built for way less than 900 Euros.