Do new Radeons RX6000 will work in GPU mode?

Started by Radace, November 01, 2020, 01:20:36 AM

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Radace

As in title, do new RX6000 will work in GPU mode? They are a lot better than nvidia crap with poor 10gb memory rtx3080, we got 16gb at start
Come on Keyshot make them work with GPU mode

andy.engelkemier

Be careful spec shopping your cards. Example: the RX 6000 is nearly 300% slower than the RTX 2070 when rendering in Cycles. But it blows the 2070 away in specs. And I'm sure it blows it away on benchmarks. But you don't want a card based on benchmarks. You want it to Actually be fast and useful.
Right now, keyshot uses Cuda, so the answer will be no, unless they switch to something like OCL. But even still, a similar looking Nvidia card will likely blow a radeon away at this kind of task.....for now.

Eugen Fetsch

I've heard that Radeons are powerfull in computing mass on polygons but not shaders. It becomes very handy in games, but not in rendering. I would never concider a Radeon for rendering, because of the points mentioned by andy.
I would rather like to have more developer capacities invested into improving the GPU performance on CUDA, instead of splitting the manpower to develop for two systems. This is one of the reasons we don't have KS for Linux. It takes manpower to maintain and support.
Ask yourself. Do you like to spend +500$ on NVIDIA every 3-4 years or +500$ each year for the KS license? Just because Luxion has to develop, maintain and support all the systems available.   
If you have to do the job, this price doesn't make the difference. 500$ in a 3 years investment means -0,10$ from a working hour. Does it really matter?

ak666

It matters for mac users as NVidia is not supported on recent systems.
As I remember when GPU rendering was introduced to Keyshot last year someone from Luxion (I could be wrong here) stated that Radeon is not supported due to lack of hardware raytracing.

Eugen Fetsch

If Mac matters, so maybe it's better asking Apple for NVIDIA support? It would be much easier for Apples big dev team to create hardware drivers, in comparison to the "small" Luxion team that has to write new shaders/kernel for AMDs OpenCL.
Apples market share is about 10%? Would be interesting to know, how many useres from those 10% are PRO users and petential KeyShot users? This question is more complex, than just the lack of hardware raytracing. It is more like - how many KS licenses do I need to sell, to break even with my development, maintanance and support expenses.

ak666

I think that it is even less than 10% but this market is quite saturated with creative users (I am not saying that macs are better).
I agree that it would be easier for Apple, but it should be in interest of Luxion to support and stay competitive on the system popular with creatives/designers.

andy.engelkemier

Keyshot is likely an exception, but in the 3D world Mac is less than 10%. Just head over to something like Siggraph. The only Macs there are at their own booth, which will probably be focused on Final Cut, probably wacom, and a couple other "graphic design" softwares. Everything else is Windows and Linux.
Oh, and C4D. I always forget about that. It had the best GI solution at some point, but since it was Mac based it kind of went in the oo-graph only direction.

I'd be interested to see how many keyshot users are mac, how many are ID, engineers, jewelers, and 3D content creation artists. But based on the questions they ask when you install, I'm not sure luxion even knows the answer to that.

mattjgerard

Long time 20+ year mac user here, and yeah. Macs are out of the high horsepower computing game. I mean, they can do it to a certain extent but until they 1) stop charging insane amounts for the hardware and 2) get on board with the rest of the world and allow NVIDIA GPU's- they will ever be passed over for people that just need tons of HP and aren't irrationaly married to the OS (like I was)

I will most likely always have an iPhone, and I will most likely always use OSX for my personal stuff, but no realistic person that just needs to make money will rely on macs for computing power alone. If they even dropped their prices by 30% and allowed NVIDIA GPU's I'd make the investment just because I like the OS and the Apple ecosystem.

andy.engelkemier

Well said Matt. I am the same. I'm not really married to anything. I have probably the last macbook pro with an nvidia graphics card at home, and a microsoft surface, because I basically wanted a cintiq...in a laptop. The surface books are Way overpriced, but the surface pro isn't. And Mac isn't Always overpriced, but they definitely make really dumb decisions, just like everyone else. I like how some of the OS is put together, and hate other aspects. I hated when MS started annoying us with a pop-up every time you went to install something. And then they started popping up things left and right, but then they backed off again. And now Mac did the same thing....only it's Worse because you have to actually open preferences, find the tab to unlock it temporarily, Then install. And yes, you can probably turn those off on both systems. But I can't on windows because of work, without editing the registry, and at home I share that with my wife, so I don't like to mess make the computer not standard...in ways she would notice.
But at work, every mac user has a bad experience....other than they like the OS, and their keyboard preference, and that they are familiar with the shortcuts. Although, if you use both then you just instinctively go back and forth. At my first industry job, in 2003 I had a mac and a PC at my desk. I basically just went back and forth doing renders on one, then the other. This was back when it took an hour to render a sphere on a sweep with global illumination if you wanted a 2K image. Ok, maybe not Quite that bad, but it was at least close. I ended up with a bit of a hatred for mac because of the simplest thing also. I was trying to copy a large number of files from one place to another. The connection was interrupted, so I wanted to copy it again. At the time, the OS only had three options. Overwrite all, keep both, or cancel. There was not Skip existing files! I had to pay 9 dollars to add that. Windows Did have that option, And there were 3 free software that accomplish that with a better UI. Not saying windows is better. Each OS has things that are better than the other. But that was definitely the straw that broke the camel's back in my decision to stick with PC for work. Honestly, if I could run all my software on linux I'd probably just use that, even though the user experience is Way worse. But I doubt creative suite or rhino will ever be on it, unless mac and/or MS does some really stupid things. I do wonder about the speed of keyshot on linux though. Blender is quite a bit faster there, even with nvidia GPUs, which surprised me. But keyshot already has some issues with network paths vs. drive paths and permissions. I really wouldn't want to add a different OS in the mix.

Eugen Fetsch

#9
Quote from: mattjgerard on November 04, 2020, 06:46:46 AM
If they even dropped their prices by 30% and allowed NVIDIA GPU's I'd make the investment just because I like the OS and the Apple ecosystem.
By 30%?  ::) ... Comparing the benchmarks I would say they need to drop at least by 50% to get me back as a client. My TR2990wx gear (from 2018) is comparable to the 2019 Mac Pro 28-core. I've spend around 6k on the Threadripper. To get the same power on Mac I would need to spend 18k (now). I don't even speak about new AMD and NVIDIA models.
Basicaly speaking, you can have 3x more computing power for the same price.  :o

P.S.: I've exaggerated a bit. The TR 2990wx is not really comparable.  :-X  But if you use the TR3960x to compare you should have the same numbers in price and power. 

andy.engelkemier

That's really only at the extreme end of things. I don't think I'm going out on a limb here in saying that most users have somewhere between a 1500-3500 total budget for their machines. IT would likely say that anything above 3K would be considered a "specialty" budget. And I would agree. For an entire project, if you give me a machine from best buy that cost 1500, and you give me a machine that costs 20K, the total project time is probably only effected by a few hours total since only about 20% of the tasks are actually GPU/processor heavy. Fixing CAD, layering things out, creating materials, tweaking lighting, environments, etc. Those all use the processor, but it really doesn't make it That much faster? Once it's fast enough to make a change and see that change in near real-time and see the result in a couple seconds, anything faster is really only improving render time. And Yes, it depends on your work. If you are doing interiors in keyshot for some reason? Maybe. Yeah. But I'd say you'd be better off spending your time on some training for software that would handle interiors Much more efficiently. But it'd understandable if you use keyshot, and just do interiors occasionally I suppose. But still, probably not worth the cost at some point. It's pretty difficult to find that point, in my opinion. How much of my day, on billable projects, is actually spent waiting for processing? And how much would that be effected by hardware that costs 8 times more than my current hardware, vs 4 times more?

Eugen Fetsch

#11
No extremes here. There are so many jobs that need a lot of computing power. Somebody who renders simple stills will not relate.
It matters a lot, if you can render a frame of a 6 minutes (9.000 frames) animation in 3 minutes instead of 9. Will it be ready in 56 or just 18 days?
Animated displacement, caustics, translucent materials, subsurface scattering, depth of field and motion blur can lead to crazy render times for a 4k image, even on a high-end machine.
If you work for automotive and need to render hundreds / thousands of images for a 360° car web configurator, a 20k gear will be standard on your desk.
etc. etc.
I have started to get more profit of my projects after investing into a 10k machine. This machine gives me such extreme boost other artist cannot compete with and it costs just 2$ / hour on a 3-year write-off. Havier scenes, complex alembic mesh deformations, faster decisions, faster throughout, faster delivery, happier clients.
Considering render farms for heavy projects? KeyShot render farm prices are crazy – up to 60$ / hour. Rendering 48 hours on your own machine, saves you already over 2,700$.
The internet connection will be always a bottleneck. Uploading a 3,6GB file to a farm and downloading 400GB EXR frames with multiple passes can lead to longer file transfer time than render time used.
If somebody would ask me where to invest, I would say - in the tool of daily use. But must admit, that I do a lot of KeyShot animations.

andy.engelkemier

Incredibly heavy scenes, then I suppose it makes sense. For just general animation though, I think just building your own small farm makes more sense? 6 fairly capable machines, or 1 Very capable machine? If I get my render from 6 minutes down to 3 minutes by spending 10K on a machine it Seems great. But 6 machines times 6 minutes still gets your job done 3x faster than the single machine that cost 10K, making that single machine difficult to swallow.
Now, if you're animating displacement, using caustics, translucent materials, etc then you might just need that machine to be able to preview those things efficiently. If I'm doing those things, I just wouldn't use keyshot anyway. Keyshot has it's place, but really as soon as I need to do displacement, pretty much at all, I either model it in, or I do it somewhere that has microdisplacement options, AND caches it. I'm Definitely not calculating displacement Every frame if it doesn't actually change on every frame. For single renders? Sure, I'll use it in keyshot.

I'm just thinking that each user should calculate their own cost of efficiency. In your example, I think multiple computers is definitely more cost effective, especially when you calculate in the cost of one machine being down for a week. If you only have one, you just cut off your income? But it's definitely worth it if you need the machine that powerful to actually get through the setup stages. The render stage, for animations, multiple machines is difficult to compete with in terms of cost effectiveness. And in office environments, multiple users can use the farm.

Eugen Fetsch

#13
That is why I have two of them ;) The dual Xeon is used as a farm, the TR (working gear) kicks in additionally, after the working hours.

Regarding the multiple machine setup:

One "6 minutes gear" will still have a price around 3k ... so, 6 x 3k = 18k ;)

Running those 6 machines and cooling down the room can be expensive too. Those ones will need 0,24 kWh ... x6 + 1kWh for air conditioning = 2,44 kWh
A Dual-Xeon runs on lower temperature rates and uses far less kWh. You can run one TR at 0,38 kWh or one Dual-Xeon at 0,35 without air conditioning. That makes a big difference on the electricity bill. For me it can be 1,5k on electricity savings per year.
Looking for 5 years of running this gear may be around 7,5k. And my farm runs just 8 hours per day (in average).

The next point is noise...
Can you imagine sitting in a room where 6 machines are running at full load? You can put it in a different room, but then you must calculate the rent for the additional space. The investment pays off for sure, if you look at the whole picture.

P.S.: And the green foot print of one machine will may be better than of 6, if the owner cares about the environment and the emissions. 

andy.engelkemier

Aaaaand, what's your secret for getting enough work where your running your farm for 8 hours every day? lol
So yeah, for you, that Totally makes sense. I end up doing a mix of work myself, where one job might be mostly video, one is package renders, another is a 2D mograph animation, 3d animation, etc. So I wouldn't keep it busy. When I was at whirlpool we Did have to add a farm of 16 computers to get all the animation work done, and it was all stuck in one room, so we had to add AC. But here, the computers are all spread out, and the ceiling is 30ft high. My "farm" machines are just at the end of each row of desks, so it's really just making a couple people's feet warm (which is welcome 5 months out of the year here in Michigan). But that Giant airspace around the computers makes the heating effect fairly negligible for us, and we don't rent our space.  But that is definitely something to consider for many people. The high ceiling also causes the noise to not be so noticeable. The more noticeable noise Here is the shop upstairs one, non-insulated wall away. Heaphones hide the sound of render machines well enough, but doesn't hide the sound of someone using a cuttoff wheel on metal, then using the grinder to get rid of burrs or reshape an end of a bracket for their physical prototype. I work with industrial designers and engineers. But, noise is also a good point. I'm still not sure a Real render farm, like yours, makes financial sense for many keyshot users because they aren't full time keyshot users, or they don't stay 80+% busy working on billable animations. Really if I was keeping busy with that much animation work I wouldn't be using keyshot, unless a client was specific about it for some reason.

I appreciate your arguments, and thank you for being so thorough. You have definitely thought out the additional variables that come with the cost. For me, since my actual render setups aren't as high a percentage as you, I don't think i could sell anyone on a 10K machine. I do a lot of work for internal projects as well. So the "time is money" idea doesn't always directly apply. But using your same arguments, I think I could probably make good arguments to jump up to put together a much more capable machine. I should get a KillaWatt and hook it up to a few different machines rendering at 100% and put something together around the cost of running things.

I also work from home And work, so I currently use a laptop with an external graphics card. But I plan on looking into figuring out a way to make a full tower more portable, because I would love much more power for the same cost even. It's that mac/pc argument. For work like keyshot, I'd much rather be a little annoyed at how someone changes how I get to my bluetooth settings in my OS and have a much more capable computer for the same cost. I'm just making that up. I don't really know why someone likes one OS over the other. I find them equally annoying at times. lol