Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 24, 2014. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
GPU render engines are increasingly being used and have more and more features. They are becoming increasingly popular for rendering because they are intended to save an enormous amount of time compared with conventional CPU rendering. The advantage of CPU rendering, by contrast, is the possibility of substantially higher resolutions.
Boxx Technologies therefore investigated whether switching from CPU to GPU is actually worthwhile, because this question cannot fundamentally be answered clearly with "yes" or "no" due to the many variables involved in deciding on one rendering method or the other.
White Paper GPU vs. CPU
The white paper examines image quality in relation to the rendering time of different render engines on different computers. As an example, V-Ray Advanced CPU was tested against V-Ray RT GPU from Chaos Group: at the same image quality, the CPU solution on a 3.4 GHz 8-core Intel Xeon required a rendering time of 19 minutes and 11 seconds. A high-end Nvidia GPU with 2,688 CUDA cores, by contrast, needed only 3 minutes and 4 seconds.
Here you can find the details of the Boxx Technologies investigation.
ILM has also long made use of the speed advantage of GPU rendering; its Plume solution creates fire simulations for feature films much faster in this way. Developer Olivier Maury received this year’s technical Oscar for the technology; in one of the next DP issues he reports on the advantage of GPU rendering and further options for a successful fire simulation.
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