I am currently using a radeon RX 570 and the drivers for it constantly crash my pc when using Rhino.
I understand this progrram was optimized for using Cuda cores but seeing an Arc A770 is as powerfull as a RTX3060 - 3070 for a much lower price point, would this also work well ? has anyone tested this yet ?
I havenāt seen anyone talking about it, but frankly unless you already have an awesome GPU and want to try one on a second PC for the kids just for fun, itās not worth even looking at. The most common support problem is āmy laptop with garbage Intel integrated video is crashing,ā itāll take a while to earn any trust on GPUsā¦
Reducing the OpenGl ālevelā under Options->View->OpenGl is supposed to help those AMD models.
Rhino is not optimized for using CUDA cores. The rendering with Rhino Render and Raytraced in Rhino 7 and later can utilize that, but it is not mandatory.
Based on reports by The Internet it appears that the drivers for Intels Arc GPUs has greatly improved in the last month, so maybe it is quite usable for Rhino?
I have no such card though, so canāt give any advice there.
So, after some consideration, I think Iāll have a go with an Arc 770/750, as they seem to have come on some way since their release last year.
I only do 3D as a hobby, so I am happy to experiment with new setups.
My only question regarding trying a new GPU like this is; does Rhino use a default set of instructions to send to a GPU? I understand this is a really thick question to ask, but I guess being on a new frontier, I wanted to sort of understand if I can even use things like the viewport? My new processor does have integrated Intel graphics (YUK!) as a backup, but as long as Rhino will just use the card for whatever generic āstuffā happens, then Iām happy to have a play and take a risk.
I expect nothing in Rhino, but I know Blender Cycles now has integrated specific GPU rendering for the Intel Arc series, using oneAPI.
Iām not fussed about GPU rendering, I just want to know if Rhino is likely to even work with an Arc A770/750 GPU. I.e., can I do all the normal things outside of formal windowed rendering.
Once again, I am sorry for a stupid question, but I have not had to consider a new brand of graphics card for well over 15 years.
David,
My friend has the Intel Arc a750 in one of his machines that he uses regularly with Rhino. He is using an older version of VRay which does not support rendering on the GPU and so he is doing mostly CPU rendering.
But yes, it should work fine for you in Rhino in general.
Stunning. Thanks for the swift response, this sounds positive.
As long as Rhino doesnāt try and revert to the Intel internal iGPU and then crashing, then I have no problem with experimenting.
Iām not convinced that the Arc series will last out the Nvidia dominance, but itās worth a try for something different. Especially considering the somewhat relatively remarkable progress merely made in the drivers.
Further to this, it is possible to conduct a partial run on Holomark 2.
However, I suspect that I am suffering the same Holomark issues as desribed in this thread:
Regardless, I can get Holomark to run on an Arc A770 LE.
In theory, the performance of an Intel Arc A770 can be now expected to sit between an Nvidia RTX 3060 and an RTX 3070 in many gaming applications, which have now been addressed by Intel (there or thereabouts anyway).
The only other benchmark which is easy available is from Guru3D:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/intel_arc_a770_review,8.html
Unfortunately, this test was conducted before the much improved 4091 driver (Guru3D used 3793, all the way back from October 2022), and the Blender result is quite poor compared to a 1080. In general, there is a focus on popular games rather than production/creative applications, so I am not sure this has improved all that much.
Anyway, the aim here was to check if Rhino worked funtionally with the closest benchmark I could find; and it seems to do so; acting at least as a kind of āstress testā to force the GPU to fall over. If I see anything abnormal when modelling, I will report back here.
For completeness, here are some scrappy results from the command window, if anyone can make sense of them. The failure as far as I understand is due to problems of Holomark, rather than anything to do with the GPU*:
*It may be worth noting that if Holomark is failing to close other windows, the possibly poor performance below may be expected, given it isnāt discarding previous results and is stacking infoirmation in the GPU(?).
- - -
Preparing Holomark 2 R6 v2,61
- - -
Rhino 7 sr 28 64 bit
Starting Holomark2
Rhinoās language is English
Time to regen viewport 10 times = 0.16 seconds. (64.10 FPS)
Time to regen viewport 10 times = 0.17 seconds. (58.14 FPS)
Calculating Contours
Contour: 1.60485 s
GPU_01 Cube 4 tests took :9.3 sec @ 930.2 fps.
GPU_02 Test took :0.68 sec @ 147.1 fps.
Time to regen viewport 10 times = 0.01 seconds. (666.67 FPS)
GPU_03 Test took :0.16 sec @ 625.0 fps.
GPU_04 Test took :0.09 sec @ 1111.1 fps.
GPU_05 Test took :0.63 sec @ 158.7 fps.
GPU_06 Test took :0.81 sec @ 123.5 fps.
Your system handled 269 units before dropping below 5 fps
Your system handled 66 units before dropping below 5 fps
Your system handled 15 units before dropping below 5 fps
GPU_10 Test took :0.28 sec @ 357.1 fps.
GPU_11 Test took :0.09 sec @ 1111.1 fps.
GPU_12 Test took :0.13 sec @ 769.2 fps.
GPU_13 Test took :0.03 sec @ 3333.3 fps.
*CPU_01 Booleans and Contours took :2.38 sec *
*CPU_02 UDT Shape took :0.6 sec *
*CPU_03 Meshing Rhino took :1.67 sec *
*CPU_04 ExtractRendermesh took :0.05 sec *
*CPU_05 Joining meshes took :0.02 sec *
Your system handled 63 units before dropping below 15 fps
Okay, so I have been working in Rhino for around 6 hours or so with zero issues from the GPU.
My early conclusion would be that Intel Arc GPU cards can function absolutely fine with Rhino.
However unlike Blender 3.3+, you will have no Cycles GPU rendering in Rhino until someone develops the capability (I see this as unlikely, given the dominance of Nvidia). So it is down to CPU renders only if you opt for an Arc card.
Work is being done to upgrade Rhino Cycles integration to Cycles 3.5.0
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Here is my Holomark2_R6 result running the Intel Arc a750. Should be on the latest drivers.
Iāve been running with this gpu since the beginning of November 2022 and havenāt had any issues in Rhino. Like others have said, Cycles (and other rendering software) doesnāt show it as a gpu render device, so you wonāt be able to use it for rendering, but other than that, It has been pretty good.
Thatās great. Thanks.
It seems that when the Cycles 3.5 is embedded into Rhino (is this expected in a WIP release?), then I suppose that the work Blender/Intel have done will immediately make Rhino able to Cycles GPU render on an Arc(?).
This would be quite novel given the (sort of understandable) lack of support for even AMD cards from many popular renderers and 3D softwares. Iām reasonably indifferent to GPU brands, but my first choice was a 3070Ti, which changed to an Arc, as I am only CPU rendering for now anyway.
It would be nice/fun to give it a try, especially as it could be useful for allā¦ 3 of us that publicly use Arcs with Rhino.
Thanks to some amazing work by @Holo, I now also have benchmark from the updated version of Holomark.
Not sure about some of the numbers, but if it is true, Iāll take it and run!
The numbers seem to be about where I expected when compared to something like an RTX 3050 (or A1000). I think the optimisation focus has been on gaming applications rather than 3D CAD applications, with the exception of Blender, so I am content with this.
Some interesting numbers compared with the A750 above too, but we must be careful of an apples and oranges situation. 
Only thing of note is that the VRAM appears to be incorrect for both tests (8, and 16 GB, respectively).
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Blender 3.6 has been released along with the corresponding Cycles 3.6, which now includes hardware acceleration in rendering (Embree, I think is equivalent solution to OptiX) in an Arc GPU.
I managed to get this working right away, using Techgage as a target.
They got an Arc A770 to render Secret Dear at 4000x2000 resolution in Blender 3.3 in Oct 2022, with the following setting:
Arc A770 (16 GB, oneAPI): 214 seconds
Today, I did the similar render test* on Blender 3.6 with driver 31.0.101.4369:
Arc A770 (16 GB, oneAPI): 187 seconds
Arc A770 (16 GB, oneAPI + Embree): 130 seconds
The Techgage test in May 2023 showed the following (Secret Deer with 2000x1000 resolution in Blender 3.5):
Arc A770 (16 GB, oneAPI): 65 seconds
My test at this resolution showed:
Arc A770 (16 GB, oneAPI): 62 seconds
Arc A770 (16 GB, oneAPI + Embree): 41 seconds
We can compare the above two results with thier result for the RTX 3060 +OptiX (Cycles 3.5):
RTX 3060 (12 GB, OptiX): 40 seconds
So it certainly is the case that it seems possible to meet the Techgage time of thier original dual October 2022 GPU setup (A770 + A750) or alternatively thiernewest RTX 3060+OptiX, using a single Arc A770 now, using Embree hardware acceleration for Cycles.
I think a respectable change really. It also bodes well if we do indeed eventually get this component as part of Rhino (WIP/8) Cycles; but I donāt know.
Stability wise, I have had one issue of closure under modelling operation. It was a crash, using only the Rhino shaded viewport (which I think was due to me dumping a silly amount of objects). I mostly use Bella including its IPR component most of the time, which has had zero issues so far. My only minor problem is that Fan Control cannot yet see the GPU temperature on an Arc, so cannot respond accordingly to GPU usage.
Just my update, for the tiny number of us with Arc GPUs + Rhino out there, who may be interested in longer term ownership.
*I understand their and my setup is different, and I am comparing different Blender versions, but they seem reasonable here to compare, I think.
As a note on the performance of Arc cards, I have had some odd experiences more recently on my A770.
The viewport, particularly when doing certain activities, experiences lockups and slowdowns. On occasion, it looked like there was a driver crash or something from Rhino didnāt agree.
Anyway, this is an example of what I caught before the display flickered off and on again.
I eventually figured that turning the āGPU Tessellationā off for my Arc seems to have resolved the problem for now, which is okay in my case.
I cannot directly reproduce the error easily, but I can usually get a similar result doing the same styles of modelling, repeatedly (MatchSrf, ShowCurvaturesā¦), and also having the ghosted display mode active also causes the problems eventually.
Now I have turned off āGPU Tessellationā, the problem seems to have gone away for now. I have no idea if this has been carried over from the older Intel GPU drivers (see the post below, I donāt know if it is linked though). Regardless, if your CPU is fast enough, then turning this off should help, I hope.
David.
For anyone with such a setup, the latest Chaos Vantage 2.1.0 update gives an experimental route for Intel Arc users on the Alchemist architecture. Iām not advertising, I am merely informing incase anyone wonders if they can use thier Arc cards for rendering in Rhino.
I donāt actually use (Vray) Vantage, so I donāt really know how it works. However, this is a reasonably major adoption of Intel Arc GPUs, and one of the few production renderers out there beyond Cycles to currently support Arc GPU rendering capability.
As far as I am aware, this does not mean that Vray GPU rendering is possible, and this remains an nvidia CUDA exclusive software as far as I would understand. I assume the difference is that Vantage (1 or 2) uses DirextX Raytracing (DXR), and Vray GPU uses only CUDA currently.