Keyshot 9: Quadro RTX VS GeForce RTX

[BoazD]

so we all know some programs like Solidworks and other CAD solutions greatly benefit from Quadro cards over their higher-spec / lower cost GeForce counterparts, while other programs like the Adobe Creative Suite runs perfectly fine on the "gaming" GeForce variant.
Where is Keyshot 9 going to land on this? Will it be optimized for and require Quadro RTX or will "gaming" RTX graphics fair just as well?

[Liam Martin]

Judging by what I've heard about other GPU rendering programs, I don't think Quadros are going to make a big difference. Apparently Luxxion were previewing GPU rendering on a 2080 Ti when they showed it to the public so clearly they're ok with promoting GeForce. I think the important thing is going to be VRAM -  they mentioned 8GB and up in the release article. I know for most of my scenes an 8GB card will do, but I've worked on interior scenes that would definitely require the memory capacity of a higher end Quadro.

I think you'll see the vast majority of Keyshot 'power users' opting to go for GeForce cards for the extra cost to performance. With the Super releases as well, there are/will be some big deals on non-super cards around Black Friday and Christmas. GeForce looks good.

Liam

[wolf]

yes I think that this is an incredibly important question and I hope that Luxion answer it thoroughly. I run Solidworks which means Quadro by default.

[BoazD]

Judging by what I've heard about other GPU rendering programs, I don't think Quadros are going to make a big difference. Apparently Luxxion were previewing GPU rendering on a 2080 Ti when they showed it to the public so clearly they're ok with promoting GeForce. I think the important thing is going to be VRAM -  they mentioned 8GB and up in the release article. I know for most of my scenes an 8GB card will do, but I've worked on interior scenes that would definitely require the memory capacity of a higher end Quadro.

I think you'll see the vast majority of Keyshot 'power users' opting to go for GeForce cards for the extra cost to performance. With the Super releases as well, there are/will be some big deals on non-super cards around Black Friday and Christmas. GeForce looks good.

Liam

if VRAM is king then it would be much more cost-effective to get dual 2080ti cards with NVlink than to invest in even a Quadro RTX5000.
Not only would you get 22GB of memory VS Quadro's 16GB, but you gain almost X3 more RTCores as well.
With NVlink (unlike SLI) the GPU resource pool scales very well and we should see real-world benefits here..

[Liam Martin]

Judging by what I've heard about other GPU rendering programs, I don't think Quadros are going to make a big difference. Apparently Luxxion were previewing GPU rendering on a 2080 Ti when they showed it to the public so clearly they're ok with promoting GeForce. I think the important thing is going to be VRAM -  they mentioned 8GB and up in the release article. I know for most of my scenes an 8GB card will do, but I've worked on interior scenes that would definitely require the memory capacity of a higher end Quadro.

I think you'll see the vast majority of Keyshot 'power users' opting to go for GeForce cards for the extra cost to performance. With the Super releases as well, there are/will be some big deals on non-super cards around Black Friday and Christmas. GeForce looks good.

Liam

if VRAM is king then it would be much more cost-effective to get dual 2080ti cards with NVlink than to invest in even a Quadro RTX5000.
Not only would you get 22GB of memory VS Quadro's 16GB, but you gain almost X3 more RTCores as well.
With NVlink (unlike SLI) the GPU resource pool scales very well and we should see real-world benefits here..

There you go then. I'm not sure they'll be any reason to go Quadro unless you need the best silicon, longevity or guaranteed compatibility with other software. Like I said, I think the vast amount of Keyshot users will go opt for GeForce Can't wait to see it in action!

Liam

[TravL350]

I finally got everything all set up on my new CAD / Render workstation and installed KS9 today. I built this machine for my freelance industrial design work, which is mostly in Solidworks, Keyshot, & Adobe CC. I had a really difficult time finding info out there about this exact PC setup as I was building it, so I thought I would post here to try and help others & at least provide a starting point for someone trying to build a similar system.

I'm not going to claim this is the absolute best possible configuration, nor am I attempting to convince anyone of GeForce vs. Quadro, Ryzen vs. Threadripper vs. i9, Intel vs. AMD etc...simply an example of what I personally decided to do for my work, on my budget (~$3000)
First, here are the relevant PC specs:

- AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8GHz 12 Core
- Quadro RTX4000 [GPU button was greyed out at first, had to download the latest Nvidia driver (as of today this was R440 U3 (441.28)). Installed, restarted, then it worked.]
- 64 GB RAM DDR4-3600
- KeyShot 9 HD

The following impressions are my very un-scientific real world perceptions. I hope this is helpful if you're just trying to get an idea of how much gain you will see in upgrading hardware or software or both like I did...

Both scenarios below are using some large, complex CAD models (Zero-turn Riding Lawnmower, Solar Panel Array Tower, numerous light sources, transparencies, etc)


Viewport mode: @1920x1080px (HD) Elapsed time from model spin to a clear, smooth image I would screenshot and send to a client:
1. GPU off, denoise off: 90-120 sec works exactly the same as before with KS7/8 with CPU render only.
2. GPU on, denoise off: 45-60 sec This raised an eyebrow, not bad! Obviously that will save me time...
3. GPU on, denoise on: 3-5 sec.    this made my jaw drop!  THAT'S what I was hoping for!

Now let's get down to business:
Render Mode: @3840x2160px (4K UHD) Elapsed render time start to finish (an image I would use as a final deliverable, or for print etc):
1.CPU Render, Ryzen 9 24 Core w/ Realtime checked, to 128 Samples: 388 sec (6 min 28 sec.) this CPU is a beast, my previous computer would have taken an hour 
2. GPU Render, Quadro RTX 8GB w/ Realtime checked, to 128 Samples: 35 sec  OK! Thoroughly convinced...

Other impressions;
- With GPU off, and Denoise on, spinning the model in the viewport is still very fuzzy, but then you get a clear image in just a few seconds.
- WIth GPU on, and Denoise off, spinning the model in the viewport is much clearer, then the image gradually improves over 10-12 seconds (and on and on)
- With GPU on, and Denoise on, spinning the model in the viewport is clear, and the image is almost totally clear as soon as you stop moving the mouse.

Conclusion - I was pretty skeptical and was really hoping I did not waste my money on the RTX GPU & upgrade to KS9, but I could not be happier with the results. This is truly a giant leap forward for Keyshot!

Again - I wish I could directly compare Quadro to GeForce, Ryzen to Threadripper, AMD to Intel etc, but I am just a regular guy who had to ultimately just pick one and go for it. All I can say is, I'm pleased and I think anyone would be with the improvements!
Hope this is helpful to someone!

Travis

[Mario Stockinger]

I got a Quadro RTX6000 for Testing i will do a compare RTX6000 vs RTX2070 super with the Demo Models from KS9 and will post my System Infos amd Demo Settings

[Jesper Mosegaard]

KeyShot GPU rendering will run well on both Quadro and GeForce cards. We develop and test on both kinds of cards. Nvidia's intent with the Quadro lines is to give guarantees on build quality and robustness of driver releases. Important to KeyShot is also the added memory. Memory is critical to larger scenes of course

We are currently doing some benchmarks internally. Some preliminary facts:

• GeForce RTX 2080 is on par with a Quadro RTX 5000 in KeyShot GPU rendering
• The GeForce RTX 2080 is on average four times faster than the GeForce GTX 1080!
• Quadro RTX 6000 gives you another ~35% in performance over Quadro RTX 5000
• Quadro RTX 4000 is ~90% the performance of the Quadro RTX 5000
• Adding a GPU to your system will give you 75-85% of that GPU in added performance. There is some indication that an upcoming driver release might give you the full 100% of the added GPU performance

NVLink was mentioned above as a solution to adding memory through multiple GPUs in the same system. We are currently working on adding that capability to KeyShot. Be aware that extending memory like that will (probably) come at a performance penalty. In any case, it's not in 9.0 and it will most likely not be part of the 9.1 update.

And just to re-iterate; GPU and CPU performance is not directly comparable. We have implemented two different algorithms to utilize the strength of each compute architecture respectively. So although the images will end up looking the same given time, the particular noise patterns along the way might differ a lot.

GPUs are awesome for simple materials and images where the lighting is smooth, and the first bounces of light are contributing most. The brute force power of the GPU is simply staggering in those cases.

CPUs are awesome for those advanced material graphs or scenes characterized by smaller amounts of light bouncing multiple times and contributing a lot to the image. This is especially true of the interior mode rendering that is almost magic in difficult lighting scenarios.

With KeyShot you simply get both options

[Prof]

KeyShot GPU rendering will run well on both Quadro and GeForce cards. We develop and test on both kinds of cards. Nvidia's intent with the Quadro lines is to give guarantees on build quality and robustness of driver releases. Important to KeyShot is also the added memory. Memory is critical to larger scenes of course

We are currently doing some benchmarks internally. Some preliminary facts:

• GeForce RTX 2080 is on par with a Quadro RTX 5000 in KeyShot GPU rendering
• The GeForce RTX 2080 is on average four times faster than the GeForce GTX 1080!
• Quadro RTX 6000 gives you another ~35% in performance over Quadro RTX 5000
• Quadro RTX 4000 is ~90% the performance of the Quadro RTX 5000
• Adding a GPU to your system will give you 75-85% of that GPU in added performance. There is some indication that an upcoming driver release might give you the full 100% of the added GPU performance

NVLink was mentioned above as a solution to adding memory through multiple GPUs in the same system. We are currently working on adding that capability to KeyShot. Be aware that extending memory like that will (probably) come at a performance penalty. In any case, it's not in 9.0 and it will most likely not be part of the 9.1 update.

And just to re-iterate; GPU and CPU performance is not directly comparable. We have implemented two different algorithms to utilize the strength of each compute architecture respectively. So although the images will end up looking the same given time, the particular noise patterns along the way might differ a lot.

GPUs are awesome for simple materials and images where the lighting is smooth, and the first bounces of light are contributing most. The brute force power of the GPU is simply staggering in those cases.

CPUs are awesome for those advanced material graphs or scenes characterized by smaller amounts of light bouncing multiple times and contributing a lot to the image. This is especially true of the interior mode rendering that is almost magic in difficult lighting scenarios.

With KeyShot you simply get both options

Is there any news on the implementation of NVLink?

[KeyShot]

NVLink is working and we are refining it. We are planning on supporting NVLink in KeyShot 9.2