Installing several GPUs in a machine / amount & type of system RAM

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello Jim and Armin,

I am “hearing” you. I think a significant part of my mindset in configuring a new machine was being governed by continuing along a path of a “traditional” workstation set-up. I believe that I am learning - from your help- and others that the hardware is changing so dramatically that so does your approach need to do likewise. I am still a little leery of moving to some “gaming” hardware but it seems like I am moving in a different direction with the configuration set-up I started this thread with.

Jim- I am certainly looking into having dedicated “display” and “compute only” cards.

For the monitors, I got the 2 Eizo FlexScan S2133 years ago when it was finally time to retire my 21 inch CRT monitor and planned to add a 3rd FlexScan now.

Way back then on the more rectangular shaped flat panel monitors I could see a slight skewing of the letters of text. This really bothered me and of quite importance this distortion of the text made it impossible to have really nicely crafted typography. For example, you cannot do kerning. The monitor expert agreed, the aspect ratio on these more rectangular monitors were to far form being square. Thus, the FlexScan monitors with a much closer to square aspect ratio, tilt to a portrait orientation that is great for document reading and creating and I think quite nice image quality. They have been wonderful. I had no idea how much GPU resource they use and I was just going on another “rule of thumb”, that as I remember, calls for 4 GB of GPU memory per monitor. Now, gee- 12 ish years later this text distortion might no longer be an issue ? So maybe a different monitor is in play to ? The FlexScans can easily be put to good use elsewhere.

Jim- As you indicate "…

@JimCarruthers

And frankly throwing all the GPUs you can at the problem will only do so much until the bottleneck becomes something else in your platform,

Yes, indeed, Brenda suggests:

@Brenda

I think that, with Cycles or any other realtime rendering, texture memory is something to watch. Unfortunately, I think that the time you run an A6000 out of memory, Rhino’s cache shaders/mappings to disk (SSD) will be a nightmare. I had even considered setting up a RAM drive to see if it would help. There is no reason not to do stuff like that on disk while system memory exists. I’ve asked for no-draw shaders that could be applied to unseen surfaces to speed that process.

I’ve noticed that doing 4K renders on Cycles, system memory usage tends to go up quite fast. Memory-wise, I am comfortable doing fairly complicated scenes 4K’s on my 32GB system RAM, with a 2X render, I would want 64GB.

Although I do not yet understand the technical issues she writes of.

Armin-

@seltzdesign

Number 2 can have a huge effect depending on the tradeoffs you are willing to take, etc.

That’s a big part of the “rub” Ideally, I do not want trade offs, I want my cake and eat it to. But perhaps the technology is just not at that point yet.

@seltzdesign

Also if you always want the fastest speeds possible, I would rather update the PC more often.

Only a fool argues with the truth. But you are getting at a cyclic issue. I get a new computer system that allows me to work effectively on the projects “of the day”. However, over not to much time passage, the projects and I change. Additionally, I become out of date with respect to computer hardware. And it is only when I can no longer do what I want to do and the efficiency with that I can work [and to an extent the quality of the work degrades- because there is now a difference between what I am doing and what I could do.] do I start the process anew of learning the attributes of the latest computer technologies [and now maybe also computer monitor technology] and then matching these to what I need for what I want / am doing.

But I do try to do my “homework” and get as far along as I can on my own before enlisting others and having as best an idea of what I will need. And if I am wrong well then I am in a pretty good position to learn. Another words; others and you are [I sincerely hope] not at all wasting your time in helping me because I am in a position to learn. Even if I am not so quick to get it, I do usually, finally get it, without needing an exorbitant amount of time to do so. I imagine others reading this tread will learn to.

Thank you,

Andy

[seltzdesign (Armin Seltz)]

@litwinaa

That’s a big part of the “rub” Ideally, I do not want trade offs, I want my cake and eat it to. But perhaps the technology is just not at that point yet.

That is fine too. Usually I use the totally unbiased mode in Octane as well and it is still pretty fast, even in my old setup that was using a nVidia GTX1080ti. The new cards like the 3080ti are more than 3 times as fast in Octane.

You can see it nicely here:

What it mainly shows is that the A6000, while costing 2-3 times that of even a 3090, is actually slower when it comes to raytracing. Especially now is a good time to buy GPUs as the 3080ti and even 3090 are heavily discounted everywhere after we had the last couple of years of just insane GPU prices.

So what you are after is still possible with a higher end but still reasonable gaming system.

Lastly here is a good comparison of the A6000 vs RTX3090 for rendering:

What is the best GPU, A6000 or the RTX 3090.The truth for rendering, Workstation GPU vs. Gaming GPU

[jeremy5 (Jeremy)]

@seltzdesign

Especially now is a good time to buy GPUs as the 3080ti and even 3090 are heavily discounted everywhere after we had the last couple of years of just insane GPU prices.

I’d just add the caveat: there are a lot of ex-mining RTX 30 series GPUs coming onto ebay right now as people try to stem their losses - I wouldn’t be tempted by their even lower prices as there’s no way of knowing how badly they’ve been cooked.

Also, the RTX 4090 is widely anticipated to launch this autumn and to be much more powerful than the 3090 (just to make the decision making process harder!)

[hitenter]

let me add that the 4090 is supposed to deliver almost double the performance of the 3090. no idea if this is just rasterization performance or rt-core peformance as well. will come at an insane power requirements though.

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello Armin,

Thank you and really helpful and interesting.

In the video we see render scenes where the two cards performance are essentially equivalent. Then some zooming / moving around in the view port on the scene in Blender with pretty quick redraw with the A6000. But I do not see that the host shows how the 3090 preforms in the same circumstance- an important comparison missed. Then we see a scene that the host indicates is quite complicated in Cinema 4D where the render time is about twice as long with the 3090 as the A6000. What is not clear to me is if all of these scenes in his video were rendered in Raytrace mode ? Were they?

Thank you,

Andy

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello Jeremy,

As you might have guessed, I did not have a clue of the existence of this new card.

@jeremy5

Also, the RTX 4090 is widely anticipated to launch this autumn and to be much more powerful than the 3090 (just to make the decision making process harder!)

Perhaps, but as a result of your post I am now much better informed and so with your help I am able to make a wiser choice.

@hitenter

let me add that the 4090 is supposed to deliver almost double the performance of the 3090. no idea if this is just rasterization performance or rt-core peformance as well. will come at an insane power requirements though.

hitenter- Thank you for the tip and insight.

Thank you both,

Andy

[TomTom (Tom)]

You can also rent a system and see what works best. I remember that my old company has done so for their 20k € PC’s. In the end, a benchmark is nothing more as a vague indicator. You cannot compare apples with peaches. What works great for Cinema4d, might not be true for Rhino. Driver version A, might not be like driver version B. Bloatware on system A slows down, maybe you even installed malware, doing some GPU-driven crypto-mining, without noticing. But one thing is for sure. Card A and Card B might only differ in 20% performance at best, but can also differ in pricing up to 300 %… That a price tag may not be justified at all, is rather a common rule, than a rare occurrence nowadays…

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello Tom,

Thank you and how does one get a feel for how the card (s) will work as you manipulate the scene in a Raytraced mode ? Or you want to produce a video with Raytrace images. A missed opportunity:

@litwinaa

Then some zooming / moving around in the view port on the scene in Blender with pretty quick redraw with the A6000. But I do not see that the host shows how the 3090 preforms in the same circumstance- an important comparison missed.

And if this was in Raytrace mode at all ? I cannot tell.

Thank you,

Andy

[TomTom (Tom)]

@litwinaa

Thank you and how does one get a feel for how the card (s) will work as you manipulate the scene in a Raytraced mode ? Or you want to produce a video with Raytrace images. A missed opportunity:

@TomTom

You can also rent a system and see what works best.

…

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello Tom,

If I can rent / lease a system that will allow me to get a much better idea of what seems most likely to work out then your suggestion is a wise one. It is the “long short” path to help in the configuring of he computer I need and will enjoy. There are many factors that underscore your suggestion including as Jeremy and hitenter informed, new hardware will be available soon.

Thank you,

Andy

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello,

In addition to great Jeremy and hiteter information about the new GPU cards.

I have read [based on the perhaps not completely accurate information]:

in 2023 there will be

• PCIe 5 with up to support for 80 lanes
  and
• support for fast DDR5

If you know of more accurate / detailed information it would be great to know. Thank you.

Below is related [but in the Render category] is what I found to be a quite helpful discussion and information about Denosiers:

Nvidia or [?] and Intel Denoiser use in an older Nvidia card

Hello, I am using a Nvidia p4000 [8GB] in a laptop with two attached monitors [both FlexScan S2133 in Portrait Mode; 1200 x 1600 resolution] . All of the rendering work is done in Rhino 7 Raytrace Mode with the UI spanning both monitors. Using the mm scale template a final render might be 600x600 72 DPI and Final quality. Often when I am modeling I will set one or more view ports to Raytrace Mode so as to get a better feel as to how the design is looking [and move it around] e.g. it is looking…

Thank you,

Andy

[hitenter]

@hitenter

let me add that the 4090 is supposed to deliver almost double the performance of the 3090. no idea if this is just rasterization performance or rt-core peformance as well. will come at an insane power requirements though.

following up on this, since the reviews are out…
I don’t care about game performance, but the rt-performance or optix has really doubled, compared to the 3090. you can already find results on blender benchmark.
the power draw turned out to be not as crazy, comparable to the 3090. overall a better performance per watt, especially when you lower the power target.

on 3000 gen nvidia had restricted nv-link to the 3090 and ti. I guess they didn’t want pro users who are looking for huge vram, to be happy with buying two smaller models. this time, not even the 4090 gets nv-link.

[litwinaa (Andy)]

Hello hitenter,

Thank you for the update. Appreciated. And as per Nathan:

[quote=“Rhino 7 not recognizing Nvidia RTX A4000 GPUs as render device, post:8, topic:135428”]
FWIW NVLink isn’t supported in Cycles rendering. It will potentially lead to crashes.

I am going to let 2023 roll in and see what transpires. It appears that a new generation of hardware is in the process of being released.

Thank you,

Andy