Mental Ray and GPU vs. CPU

Hello,
I normally process several thousand frames across a render farm for my animations. I am in need of stronger and faster processing times. I have been trying to read up on GPU vs CPU. Up until recently, it all seemed pretty cut and dry. mRay = CPU and iRay = GPU.

Now it appears that mental ray can possibly use GPUs??? is this true or does metal ray still solely rely on the CPU? I need to know where to invest my money: Tesla GPU unit or Xcore 3.4Ghz processors.

I have no desire to switch my process to iray either, due to the versatility of mental ray.

Thanks in advance,
Rob

I have a couple posts on AUGI regarding GPU vs. CPU. On top of that I do benchmarking and I buy and experiment with different hardware solutions.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.ph...69#post1208969

Speed tests on GPU (with iRay vs. Mental Ray)
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.ph...42#post1247042


In all honesty, the best cards I've found are the nVidia GTX cards. With the new 1080 that just came out, pound for pound for the small amount of wattage required, it blows through renderings. I've tested GTX 760's and I even had a 980Ti. They were awesome, where as the Quadro's were twice the price and half the performance. The most fun I had was buying and testing a PCI-e expansion box. If you have the money, you could technically add a half dozen GPU cards to your rendering workstation without worrying about overheating or hurting your motherboard. Works like a charm!


My biggest comment of all is that I would avoid GPU progressive renderings for animations at all costs. They give that "peppered" look where as standard mental ray is still the go-to for animated renderings. You do not need to buy a Tesla card. GTX and Quadro's are just fine.

Thanks for your input. Even though it is a bit off the time frame, I found it very informative. Since my original posting, I have added 4 additional Quadro K4000's to my render farm. My employers chose the Quadro's because they have certified drivers for Autodesk. I personally would rather have the 980Ti or the newer 1080's (if the 1080's were available 4 months ago.) Thanks again for the info.

All new Quadro's just came out! http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-desktop-gpus.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rbcameron1

All new Quadro's just came out! http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-desktop-gpus.html

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That's great.
Sadly if you want to do distributed rendering now, you'll have to buy Mental Ray as it no longer comes with 3ds. Big Fail for 3ds 2018.
3ds has moved on to Autodesks newest acquisition Arnold. You'll need to install that separately as well. Oh and no free option for distributed rendering for that either. $65/mth/node.

I still have licenses for 2015...the last year Revit + 3dsMax actually worked well together. 2016 is Revit to FBX to Max. 2017 lost mental ray I thought? 2018 I haven't tried.
At that point, I'd buy Vray before Mental ray.