Everything related to Maxwell Render and general stuff that doesn't fit in other categories.
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By Tung Ling Leung
#394622
Hi Everyone,

I am hoping experts advice. I am planning to upgrade to V4.1 and GPU workstation very soon. I have limited budget and I am hoping to go for ready made Desktop like Alien Aurora Desktop from Dell. In Dell web site they mention Alien Aurora series are for gaming. I wondering can I use that gaming desktop as my GPU workstation? Because it can be configured with Dual GPU NVIDIA ® GeForce video card.. I wonder is Dell Alien Aurora Gaming Desktop good for Maxwell 4.1?

Thanks!
Tony
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By Mihai
#394623
I'm no hardware expert but 2x Geforce 1070 cards will be plenty fast when Maxwell will support Multi GPU. Or if you can afford it 2x Geforce 1080 cards. But 2x 1070 cards will be almost the same price as a single 1080 and you will get about 1.5 or more speed from 2x 1070 cards than from a single 1080 card.
By medmonds
#395096
Ok, thanks.
Since the benchwell report doesn't appear to be keeping up with V4, is there another site that publishes hardware speed comparisons specifically for Maxwell?

I have to spec a laptop for VR and rendering along with a desktop for Rendering and Bim (Revit) and need to catch up on what matters in this age of GPU rendering.

Questions:
If I have a GTX 1080 8gig card in a laptop, does that diminish the importance of multi-core processing and mounds of ram?
If I put a Titan XP in a desktop, same question.
Would be be better to spec multiple GTX 1080 cards in the desktop for future acceleration instead of the Titan XP now as a standalone?

Thanks again!
By sinatropus
#395101
there's nothing on maxwell except this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=140&t=44642&p=393787&hi ... im#p393787
early results there are very promising except for the latest post where the mac GPU on Titan X (maxwell) is much slower compared to the windows counterpart. i hope it's the mac environment's issue, then we would really have exceptional speeds as the Intel Xeon E5-2699v4 is one of the fastest CPU-s available (2nd overall according to passmark). unfortunately i can't download the demo scenes as the links are broken for me on the maxwell support site. also i haven't purchased v4 yet and i'm not willing to take any chances to mess up my v3 license by installing the v4 demo as some have reported.
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/MR ... emo+scenes

i would go with the octanebench as octane render is fp32 (single-precision floating-point format, binary32) as is maxwell render (mostly). also you can download it for free and test your systems. i know it's not maxwell render but this is as close as we can get to comprehensive GPU overview at the moment.
https://render.otoy.com/octanebench/res ... ingleGPU=0

furthermore, i would wait until maxwell gpu is production ready. if it will take more than 6 months, which is quite optimistic considering current development progress, we might have Volta available which is next generation and 16GB probably. if nothing else, at least freshly announced AMD Vega will bring Nvidias prices down. GPU rendering uses only GPU ram so graphics memory might become an important requirement with high res renders and textures. so more the better. memory will be limited to the smallest ram available of the GPU-s used for the rendering. one just can't add up the GPUs ram. might change in the future? don't know.

if you really can't wait, go for 1080 Ti (30-40% faster than 1080 and around 95% of Titan Xp) or with multiple 1070 if the price is of the essence. I just bought 1080 Ti because constant issues with my FirePro drivers (wouldn't recommend a pro GPU after this for anyone, also no need for much of the dual precision floating point performance with GPU rendering, not mentioning the price). if GPU on maxwell is finally usable for work, i would get another 1080 Ti or Volta. the cards don't have to match. though i would need an auxiliary, external (with ADD2PSU) or internal (aka juicebox) PSU as my current dell precision t5610 has depleted all the 6-pin and 8-pin connections from the PSU to the GPU (2x 8-pin up to 300W, my 1080 Ti is 6 and 8-pin). not an issue with non proprietary PSU-s which are quite easy and cheap to swap out.

so the power consumption is something to consider. check your PSU wattage and available connections first. 1080 Ti is 250W, 1070 is 150W. 6-pin provides up to 75W, 8-pin 150W and PCIe socket on motherboard is 75W. some have also converted 2 molex connections to 6-pin or 8-pin.
Last edited by sinatropus on Wed Aug 09, 2017 4:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
By sinatropus
#395103
you're welcome. just went through the hassle to get up to speed with all the GPU-s so i'm glad to be of help.

it seems quiet here indeed. i hope it's not reflecting how maxwell render or next limit is doing in general. i wish them well though they have made terrible marketing decisions with almost every release.
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By Steve Jepson
#395643
Just got a new Dell 7720 Precision Mobile Workstation with NVIDIA P5000
Almost off the charts testing the Maxwell benchmark with GPU. This will be great when they get the bugs worked out of Maxwell Render and it is fully GPU compatible.
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By dmeyer
#395649
I know I have been less active here because I got out of habit of visiting when the forum was down for multiple months.

I do have a ton of new hardware coming in though so i can post some tests in the coming month-ish.
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By Steve Jepson
#395650
sinatropus wrote:
Wed Aug 09, 2017 4:29 am
you're welcome. just went through the hassle to get up to speed with all the GPU-s so i'm glad to be of help.

it seems quiet here indeed. i hope it's not reflecting how maxwell render or next limit is doing in general. i wish them well though they have made terrible marketing decisions with almost every release.
Except the fist one :) I think I remember paying $150.00 for it in a pre-release promotion for something.
By medmonds
#395652
How did you get the benchmark test to use the GPU? Every time I run it it reverts to the CPU. When I change it to GPU and click render to start the test over, it does nothing.
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By Steve Jepson
#395653
I rember fiddling with it...can’t remember for sure. Start, stop, change to gpu? Not at my computer now. Will do it again and let you know
Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

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