Neon vs. ? (now with no Caustic acceleration board)

Hello strangers, been awhile. I was sad to see the Caustic card die as a product, I have one in my old machine and it really made Neon fly. I have a newer machine now and I was going to install the card in it, but alas there’s no drivers available any more, either. Fast neon renders were a key part of my workflow… what are people using now? Is there something faster? Or am I just stuck with a slower Neon now? I love having real-time rendering in a work window, but without the acceleration card, it’s just not the same. Thanks…

Dang, that is a shame. I just got my new graphic card a GTX 780Ti for about $350 that I will use for GPU rendering with Octane. Would have hate to make an investment in the Caustic card and have it end up orphaned. Give Octane a try Heath, really fast and the best part is that you can go on working in Rhino and not have the CPU have to share resources.

Luckily I got my card free (as a beta tester)… feel bad for those that got abandoned. Neon with the card was great since it was all free. :wink: Looks like Octane is about $350US. I have a GeForce GTX 970, will that be fast with this? How do the speeds compare to Neon (without the accelerator)? Neon is ok without the card, but it was 2 to 4 times faster with it, which I really miss. Thanks!

Hi Heath,
I’ve no advice on the card but just wanted to say hi.
Good to see you around.
We are still stuck in this bug infested place :wink:

-Willem

Heath,

That 970 will render pretty fast in Octane. Here is a clip of the Octane Benchmarks for the top end cards.

Otoy has a cloud rendering for Octane in the works that you might check into. I’m real happy with the speeds I get with an old GTX 460 so the 780 should really fly.

Howdy @Willem! And Jody, thanks for the info. I just got this machine, and on most things I saw the 970 was nearly as fast as the 780ti but used a lot less power, and about the same price, so I went with the 970… looking at this makes me reconsider! Oh well. I’ll give the Octane demo a try soon. Thx

Heath, also look at the WIP and render with Cycles. As one of the oldtimers I’m sure you qualify :wink:

There’s a new WIP? I’m majorly out of the loop. What is Cycles? Thx…