Déjà vu…
Reflection, not clearvoyance…
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Actually, that wouldn’t make any difference in the numbers I’ve reported, nor would it justify an expense (#350 - $1000+ for a “free” replacement for something that WORKED) that we shouldn’t have to consider. Trying to make a case for a situation that shouldn’t be, is well, ALL I’m going to say is THANK YOU for your work with NEON, and ALL the BEST to you going forward !
You haven’t given any information at all, far as I can tell, on how Nathan is supposed to reproduce the numbers you’re giving, which are absolutely crazy with no correlation to what “Des” posted or anyone else has seen either with GPU or CPU Cyles, and see what’s wrong. That would be helpful. Neon was nice, but it wasn’t the most amazing speedy thing ever–not without one of the Caustic accelerator boards anyway, those things were great, and I don’t think you have one of those or even Brazil which is needed to actually see what Neon can do.
NEON is GPU.
Holo -
THANKS for verifying my point !
Found a 1080 elsewhere for $699, COULDN’T find a 1090. Source ? Price ?
Shaming me for being right: TOO funny !
I’m running an OLDER GTX-550ti and I get ZERO-POINT-ZERO seconds at RENDERED MODE and ~30 SECONDS (no meaningless “pass-counts”, ACTUAL TIME IN SECONDS) NEON. Card cost me ~$225 new, and was solidly mid-stream when I bought it.
NOT interested in a THOUSAND-DOLLAR VIDEO CARD for a “free” plugin (Raytraced) and look again CLOSELY at your_best_EXAMPLE USING Raytraced. NEON: zero “NOISE”, ONE-THOUSAND DOLLAR CARD: UNACCEPTABLE noise level at the END RESULT.
Holo- THANKS AGAIN ! You’re the BEST !
Sincerely -
-C.
It wasn’t. NEON was CPU only - and the proprietary Caustic accelerator boards.
Unfortunately graphics cards are selling at highly inflated prices right now because of the cryptocurrency craze. Who knows when the prices will come back down, it’s simply a bad time to be buying a video card. You may want to to keep an eye on the market though, a 550ti is pretty old in the gpu world.
Otherwise, since Neon is dead, and raytraced doesn’t work for your needs, that leaves either rendered or arctic. Both of them get pretty darn good performance on my machine.
Look guys…
Neon was great - it really was. Quite honestly, as a piece of engineering, we may never see its like again. But it really has gone - the team that produced the core of that (who were not internal to McNeel btw) - have long since abandoned the software, and the company that owns the patents and the technology has been sold.
Running on the CPU, Neon was faster than anything out there - I think it probably still is. However, it was never written to take advantage of the massively parallel modern GPU compute units, so it would never be able to scale up the way Cycles will.
It was also based on an “old school” shader model. Something very similar to RhinoRender and Brazil. Powerful - for sure, but difficult to master and unintuitive to build correct shaders. Cycles is far better in that respect too.
I understand that it means that some setups that you have managed to get working in RR and Neon will not be replicated well in Cycles, and I’m sorry that’s the case. But we do have to move forward to something that’s much more modern and much easier to use.
Cycles is capable of producing fantastic imagery, very very quickly. How about this…if it isn’t doing that for you, let’s figure out why, rather than harking back to a distant past that we simply can’t get back.
- Andy
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I’ve been communicating on this subject since EARLY in the WIP process and have provided sufficient examples. No worries, tho, as I’m absolutely confident that these numbers CAN be verified by ANYONE actually making the attempt.
Consider: BONGO techs gave ~30 seconds as a recommended setting for their frame capture delay in animations, back when NEON was the flavor of the day, and it was easy to the point of nearly ecstatic ( 
! ) to replicate THEIR recommendations, and found the results ABSOLUTELY ON TARGET, exactly as THEY recommended, and look, we BOTH know a THOUSAND DOLLARS for a video card to justify what’s supposed to be a “free” feature is just, well, silly.
No animus intended, just frustrated at all the personal hurt apparently being suffered by those wishing to protect the feelings of their favorite baby. Look, I FULLY EXPECT “improvements” as time GOES ON … but there’s no denying that NEON offered ACCEPTABLE RESULTS for some purposes, exactly as I’ve described.
I’m running an NVIDIA GTX-550-ti which I purchased new for around $225 (if memory serves) -
It can be had now for around $150 for ANYONE not willing to spend a THOUSAND DOLLARS, but I’d recommend one of the newer 2 - 4 Gb Cards just because THIS particular choice is a bit dated. Nevertheless, I DO get numbers I’ve claimed, in Assemblies rivaling ANY you can point to in both complexity and part-count, so there’s that.
I THINK I’ve covered everything.
Any OTHER questions ?
You’re welcome -
C.
And let’s quit with the “$1000” straw man argument.
You can get a perfectly good modern GPU with plenty of CUDA cores - like the GTX 1050 for about $150. (640 cores)
In fact, pretty much any GPU that you can buy these days is going to run Cycles faster than Neon ever did. The problem comes if you have a 7 year old graphics card.
- Andy
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With EVERYTHING you mention well accepted and completely understood, if RH owned a license to include NEON in RH-5, why couldn’t it have been offered as an “option” in RH-6 until RAYTRACED had progressed sufficiently to overtake it as you HOPE it MAY, sometime in the future … ?
YOUR work with NEON was, if I may say so, NEAR-LEGENDARY, and if dropping it was just a “business decision” to clear a path for RAYTRACED development, well, its led to all of this. If its ACTUALLY not available any more, well, Hhmmmm…
If its just a “limited potential for future development” issue, it WORKED AS-IS at the time further development was ENDED, so would STILL be a reasonable option to offer for “free” with the understanding that it was “unsupported”, again until RAYTRACED progressed sufficiently to overtake it NATURALLY, sometime in the future …
Charles
Once we realised that Neon was going to be abandoned, we developed Cycles. That was the “business decision”.
Dropping Neon was not a “business decision”.
- Andy
And what’s with the “NEAR”?
Making sure the feet stay firm on the ground.
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Whoever liked Nathan’s post is now banned. 
Tsk, working on the weekend…
There’s nothing on TV
As a bit of levity, on the conundrum, to end the week on: HAS THE IRONY OF YOUR SITUATION DAWNED ON YOU?
You spend a career involved in the extraction of dinosaur juice and flatulence from the earth. Hard, dangerous, honorable work in difficult open water conditions. Said extraction gets utilized on shore into the current primary preferred resource to be cycled into the lubricant of computing. $hitCoin arseholes suck up copious amounts of the ultimate fruits of your labor, and to add insult to injury, leverage, and distort, the market in, the very future graphics card you need to stay current going forward, and earn, as the cycle repeats.
What crazy [bleeping] world, eh…
Ok, so I retract NEAR ! !
So- you DIDN’T make a decsion to drop NEON ? Hhmmmm… Ok.