Good afternoon, I’d like to enquire about the compatibility of rhinoceros with AMD. I’m considering buying a new computer and I have doubts about what’s the best graphic card for AMD RX480, since I saw on your website about the incompatibilities of AMD and Open GL. I’d like to buy the PC and the license but I need it to be compatible with the graphic card. Thanks a lot
I am also curious.
me too.
not sure if I should buy the RX480 next month or the GTX1060.
also - will rhino support vulcan instead of OpenGL with the next version?
I have the same question , buy RX480 or gtx1060
If you go NVidia, you will have the option of CUDA based rendering engines too. Octane is great…
Yes I already realized, that most of the renderers that do support GPUs, mostly make use of CUDA, not OpenCL. Hope It will change over time in order to give us more choices.
Is the new Octane 3 also only CUDA? - the press text reads a bit like it might be general GPU support:
The release also incorporates important industry standards for GPU rendering, including Open Shader Language (OpenSL) and OpenVDB for particle simulation.
LINK
anyway, I’m more interested in the general usage. Just normal viewport performance. will I benefit from a stronger GPU like the two mentioned?
are nividia or AMD drivers more favorable or do they both a good job?
will GPU hardware be more utilized with the upcomming version of rhino?
what about GPUs and brazil renderer?
I currently use a FirePro W7100 with Rhino and its great. Previously I used a Radeon 6950, no problems. That compatibility thing was written ages ago, something to do with anti-aliasing I believe. Not sure why they don’t update it.
Cuda is becoming irrelevant with the new Vulkan standard coming out. Faster rendering on BOTH AMD and nVid cards. https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/
Plus, AMD is developing a free renderer in response to nVids/cuda attempt to corner the market. http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/firepro-sdk/amd-firerender-technology/
I’m not a fanboi of either vid card manufacturer. I’ve owned many cards from both over the years and they’ve all been great. I am a fanboi of arming myself with good info and getting the best bang for the buck.
Right now, IMHO nVid cards are not priced competitively.
OK, thanks. to me that sounds like the development is heading into the right direction - for the users.
at the moment I only use the internal skylake GPU because I want to wait until all new cards are available for sale.
for basic use the internal GPU is actually OK. Its absolutely not as bad as it was a few years ago with onboard-GPUs
Actually it’s not.
AMD Radeon division has refused to fix the OpenGL support they broke back in December of 2013.
The FirePros seem good if you don’t care much about antialiasing.
I updated the Wiki pages with new warnings for Radeons because of conflicts with another application they install with their driver package.
We know some users seem to be happy with Radeons. That vast majority are not.
As a result, we still do not recommend AMD Radeon cards.
OK, thanks,
then I will go with a GTX1060
you write about "OpenGL support"
what about this new vulcan thing? isn’t that the new OpenGL?
Explain
Users complain that curves in Rhino look much smoother and cleaner on nVidia cards compared to AMD cards. A few years back, the FirePro developers sent some unreleased drivers to one of our graphics developers that supported nVidia quality antialiasing. For some unknown reason, I don’t think these changes ever made it into the released drivers.
Some Rhino users are not bothered by the difference. For others, it’s a huge issue.
I’m one of the group that is OK with it either way.
I think @Holo and the other people keen on hardware will have better feedback on AMD vs. nVidia antialiasing.
Hello.
Just a comment… Buy the fastest first clock CPU you can get. Then minimum 16GB RAM with low CAS Latency. And then, equip you rig with a GTX 980 Titan (you can choose one from Gygabite or MSI). They have better clocks and sometimes are more cheapest then Nvidia it self. Or if you can afford, go to new GTX 1070 PASCAL line (better GPU for it price/performance. But, honestly, i have read somewhere that all new GPU wont have their best performance on old softwares (old software i meant older then new GPU`s). I would love to find the blog were i read that, but i miss it. Sorry for that!
a GTX980Titan?
I didn’t render at all lately, I will need to render more again but I’m not a “heavy” user. So I think a GTX980Titan is overkill for me and its way to expensive anyway. I want to spend 300max.
Also all the reviews say, that the GTX1060 has the same performance like a GTX980, uses less power, runs cooler, is cheaper, has newer architecture. A GTX1070 would make sens if I’d actually needed the extra performance. But an old GTX980 Titan or normal doesn’t seem to make any sense at all, since the new generation is out now.
any more info about this “vulcan” thing regarding the future of rhino?
As i say before. It was just my opinion. If i was you i would prefer a mature GPU with it mature drivers than the new one`s. that is the main question for me. I would like to have a very stable work machine that some very new one with few stable tests.
But in the end. Money talks higher.
Hi John,
I read the wiki page where you WARN about AMD cards.
My last PC, (which I used for a long time until three months ago) had an AMD R9-270X. I never had any problem with Rhino5(64bit), not in Win8 and not later in Win10. I always used antialiasing - looked fine to me and never had any issues at all. It was also clearly OpenGL mode - not DirectX.
I guess it would have had look nicer with an Nvidia card?
A friend of mine also uses an AMD card (little older HD5750) with Rhino5, antialiasing, also no issues.
Since for me AMD+Rhino5+OpenGL+Antialiasing all together has always worked just fine, I’m again leaning more towards buying an AMD card again.
Could you please tell me what other problems there might possibly be with AMD?
You mentioned:
conflicts with another application they install with their driver package
you’re probably refering to this useless “raptr” app? I absolutely hated AMD for installing this app on my system - no option to uncheck while installing and it was also not “uninstallable”.
but there is a simple workaround for that. AMD driverpackage unpacks to C:\ before installing from there. after it unpacks there you just browse to the folder of the “raptr” app and just delete it. only then you hit “next” at the install program. this way the stupid app will not be installed. remember every time you update the drivers.
the new driverpackage is called “crimson” maybe the changed it.
Yup, and I am far into the group that cares 
nVidia’s AA is silky smooth and presents curves as crisp and accurate while AMD’s AA can almost make the viewport appear like it is in the wrong resolution. Curves are not supersmooth, so if you work with design where you have to evaluate and fine tune curvy shapes then you will probably regret going for AMD, but if construction is your field then you would probably not care since AA is all about eye fidelity.
Excellent description.
Thanks