GPU for iRay

[rbcameron1]

Has anyone tried connecting an external GPU render node to their computer to see if 3dsMax will allow iRay to take advantage of something like a Nvidia Quadro Plex 2000 or 7000? I've heard rumors of people getting this to work from legitimate sources, but Autodesk says no.
I currently have two Quadro 4000's on my Dell (512GPU cores) but would like to at least double that for rendering. Or is the limit how much one motherboard can handle?

Yes, I've heard of Reality Server and other cloud servers and its great, but I want my own, haha.

thank you in advance to anyone who can answer this!


rbcameron

[rbcameron1]

UPDATE:
In relate issues, I just discovered that iRay will only work as long as the scene fits onto the physical memory of your graphics card. So if you have a 2gb Quadro 4000 (w/ ECC off) you max out at 2GB or approximately 9 million triangles (plus/minus). However if you have a mix of say a Nvidia C2050 3GB card and a smaller card, it will default to the memory on the larger card. That makes the Quadro 6000 worth its weight in gold...unfortunately its literally that expensive!
This info came from Autodesk's website.

[rbcameron1]

UPDATE:
If anyone is legitimately interested in this, I did end up getting an expansion box made by Netstor. Haven't had time to benchmark anything, but so far the performance is pretty incredible. I can continue this post or just end it if no one cares.

[Wanderer]

UPDATE:
If anyone is legitimately interested in this, I did end up getting an expansion box made by Netstor. Haven't had time to benchmark anything, but so far the performance is pretty incredible. I can continue this post or just end it if no one cares.

I say carry on... you never know who might be looking for information and can't find it elsewhere.

[rbcameron1]

So after some initial testing I was pretty impressed. I had connected a Quadro 600 to my dual Quadro 4000 Dell T5500 through a PCI-e expansion box. Once that initial series of tests were done in 3dsMax 2012 with iRay, I decided to test out a bigger version. I put in my Quadro 5000 along with one Quadro 4000 on the main motherboard and proceeded to connect my remaining Quadro 4000 to the expansion box. The results...? I actually had the best performance off ONLY 2 Quadro 4000's w/o expansion box vs. 1 Quadro 5000 + 1 Quadro 4000 and then 1 Quadro 4000 in the expansion box. Why? because I believe I'm running into a bandwidth problem. 2 cards running at x16 performance will probably always beat 3 cards running at x8 or x4 levels. The minute you slap three pcie x16 cards into a board than only supports 32 lanes, at the very least all the cards will run at x8 performance.

I also believe there are still benefits to using an expansion box though. You can essentially offload the work to it so your cards on your motherboard can run cooler. Big advantage CPU wise if you can keep your tower cool.

I hope to post an update on this by running a test on only my Quadro 5000 + 4000. I am running 1 minute, 2 minute and 5 minute iRay tests and visually comparing the results. Rendered at 2560x1440 resolution of the same scene in 3dsMax 2012.

[stusic]

I haven't really used iRay, so this question may seem silly, but... are you trying to speed up realtime rendering? If not, I wonder how much performance you're really getting for your money (vs. just a cheap render box with a nice processor and a bunch of ram). I know that iRay leverages the GPU, but still...

[stusic]

I do have to say that I'm enjoying reading your experiments though

[JamesBaker]

It would appear he's trying to boost the performance of his current setup, albeit a dual-card motherboard that allows for an x8 pcie connection. Keep in mind once a card comes in through x8 then the remaining cards will run at x8 performance....which is technically a negligible difference. Have you thought about going on kickstarter to finance the research of this problem? I know I would throw in $50 - $100 just to see if its worth it! Anyone else?
Octane render is faster than iray BTW.

[rbcameron1]

Ha! If I knew people would sponsor me on kickstarter then I would start tomorrow. I wish it were that easy. Any takers? $100 donation gets you a remote login license to use this monster machine! I would need some good marketing people to spread the word. thanks for the heads up on pcie x8 connections.

Instead of just buying a really expensive BOXX, Dell Precision, etc... I can just supplement any current computer with an iRay render expansion box...REMOTELY. Yes, iRay (or Octane) is dramatically faster than anything else out there. It has been able to do in 5 - 15 minutes what would take my 24 processor Intel X5650 (3.06GHz boost) at least 2 hours to do in mental ray. "basically" same quality pound for pound.