AFAIK, Cycles can do it on other…implications. Given that it would still need cores to feed the GPU, it would give me 50% more performance, on my AMD 3900x and my aging GTX 1080.
From what I understand, AMD has given up on GPU rendering tools. Only NVidia has it working.
A few weeks ago, there was some discussion around te new Intel Arc GPUs, of which I have one. I built a new system and had to choose between the GPU and CPU, so I went with CPU.
Last year OneAPI rendering was introduced into Cycles 3.3 nearly a year ago, and has been updated in 3.6 for including hardware acceleration.
I know Nathan has given some information around the new Cycles integration. I am unclear if this remans just CUDA/Optix or if we will have non-accelerated OneAPI (Intel Arc) GPU rendering in the new Cycles. The Cycles mentioned was 3.5, which has CUDA/Optix and OneAPI I am not implying OneAPI will be carried across, just that it is at least there and functioning apparently fine for Blender, as far as I see on the forum.
But one also has to be aware that this can be (or is) a trade off. Even the mighty Vray has differences in what it can and cannot accept on the GPU. It is not universal, and they make users aware that you can only have a limited set of materials or conditions on pure GPU renders.
Maybe there is hope for not just the green machine rendering. 
Well, the AMD 3900x is a CPU, not a GPU.
That stated, historically nVidia’s hardware has been faster, but for compute they intentionally slow down their GTX/RTX cards to make a better market for their Quadro lineup. This has the effect that often AMD’s compute performance is sometimes better. Though, in the far past AMD’s rendering has had quality issues. I have not gotten opinions on modern AMD drivers, lately.
With my 3900x and GTX 1080, I find the Cycles is almost exactly the same on either, with the video card edging it out. Though the GPU can get it done quieter.
I have also found, that with big, complicated renders, I need to use the GPU for stability. I don’t think I’ve run out of VRAM.
I am sorry, but Cycles on Rhino continues to horrid and unstable with large textures. The disk caching must go!
Thumbs Up!
in Rhino WIP Rhino procedurals are no longer baked to images, fyi.
2 Likes
I am cautiously optimistic. Thank you!