New Titan X for Iray rendering in 3ds Max?

[SRPlus]

I was thinking about upgrading my 4x GTX Titan’s (2688 core) to 4x GTX Titan X for rendering with Iray, until I saw these benchmarks on TomsHardware Germany.

http://www.tomshardware.de/geforce-q...-241759-3.html

The benchmark’s for Iray do not make sense?

The Quadro M6000 and Titan X are essentially exactly the same GPU, with exactly the same estimated single precision performance at 7 Tflops, so this does not explain why the M6000 is 3x faster than the Titan X in the iray benchmark?

It cannot be about drivers otherwise the Blender and Octane results would be exactly the same with the M6000 3x faster, but the results for Blender Octane etc are exactly as expected with the Titan X a little faster than the M6000 because of the higher clock rates.

So why is Iray different?

The Maxwell Patch must have been applied otherwise the Quadro and Titan X would not work in 3ds Max at all.

This can have only two possibilities, one that the test is a rotten egg and needs to be performed again in 3ds max 2016, or two, Nvidia are purposefully crippling Desktop Maxwell GPU’s in Iray to promote their Quadro Cards! Nvidia Develop Iray, can cannot manipulate the results in Blender or Octane, only in Iray they can do this because they make the GPU’s and the software.

The Iray test should have very similar results to the Blender / Octane / RatGPU and Luxmark tests, with the Titan X slightly faster than the M6000 because of the higher clock rates.

If this is the case, that Nvidia have decided to cripple Maxwell desktop cards in iray to force people to but their extortionate Quadro cards, then I for one will not be upgrading.

Do Nvidia think that freelancers like me are going to spend around $24500 ( £16400 ) on Quadro cards instead of approx $5200 (£3500) on Titan X‘s? The majority of freelancers and small studios cant afford it, so if Nvidia are crippling the Titan X in iray, I am sure they will end up loosing tens of millions in sales from potential new sales / upgrades from people like me. I am not going to spend an extra $19300 (£12900) on what is essentially the same GPU’s just because Nvidia want to force people to buy Quadro’s by crippling performance in Iray, so if the benchmark is not a rotten egg, and Nvidia have crippled the Desktop Maxwell cards in iray, they have lost my money, and I’m sure once the word gets around, tens of millions of other potential sales. Freelancers and studios will just stick to their older Titans.

I am not sure what the exact statistics are, but I am sure that the millions of freelancers and small studios out there out weigh the larger studios that can afford M6000’s in their workstations and render nodes, so this would be a very bad business move from Nvidia.

Does anyone else know of any benchmarks in iray comparing the Titan X to the M6000? Hopefully this benchmark is wrong, but I would not put it past Nvidia to do this.

Anyone upgraded their old titan with a new Titan X and run benchmarks against new and old to see what the time improvements are?

If you are unhappy about Nvidia doing this, spread the word!

[kalniel]

This is the normal situation and has been the case for years. Quadro drivers are optimised/updated for these kinds of tasks, you don't want to run gamer cards in their place.

You can either wait for a driver update in titanX to fix what's presumably just a driver issue or pay the money for better support with professional products.

Or switch to a competitors software/hardware.

PS. One test, particularly from Toms, is not exactly scientific- can you replicate the issue?

[SRPlus]

This is the normal situation and has been the case for years. Quadro drivers are optimised/updated for these kinds of tasks, you don't want to run gamer cards in their place.

You can either wait for a driver update in titanX to fix what's presumably just a driver issue or pay the money for better support with professional products.

Or switch to a competitors software/hardware.

PS. One test, particularly from Toms, is not exactly scientific- can you replicate the issue?

In this case Quadro drivers and Titan X drivers are working exactly the same in Blender, Octane etc, but differently in Iray for single precision, so definitely a software issue.

I've been using 3ds max for over 12 years, and Iray for the last 3 years, and although Quadro cards may offer supposedly faster viewport performance, as far as pure CPU compute goes the older titans outperform their Quadro equivalent cards because they have faster clocks.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-w...-32728-18.html

you can see from the older benchmarks above, that when it comes to Cuda rendering, the Quadro's are slower. The other thing to note is that in Iray the Titan is fastest, and the same result is shown in Blender, Octane, Lux, Rat etc. But in these new tests on the German Toms' s site, all the other tests in blender etc are as expected with the Titan slightly leading the M6000, but the M6000 3x faster in iray, ( which is the only renderer developed by Nvidia) so it doesn't make sense at all, unless Nvidia have purposefully crippled the Titan X in Iray to promote their Quadro cards.

As I am, or was considering upgrading to 4x Titan X, I do not have a Titan X to hand or a Quadro M6000, so cannot replicate the results, and I think after using max for so many years and already investing in 4x Titans 2 years ago, its a bit late to be switching software, hardware, and having to relearn everything which takes years, not sure my clients would appreciate the wait either :-)

Hopefully as you say Nvidia or Autodesk will resolve the issue, as its clearly an issue with the software capping the Titan performance, and nothing to do with hardware/ drivers, or the other benchmarks would have similar poor results for the Titan X card.

[kalniel]

You're basing this on just one test, on one specific driver version with a new, gamer centric graphics card. You've not given nVidia any time to fix any driver bugs, which as I pointed out, are secondary priority for this software on a gamer card compared to their professional cards.

Just because a driver does work for some software, it doesn't mean it is optimised for another.

[SRPlus]

You're basing this on just one test, on one specific driver version with a new, gamer centric graphics card. You've not given nVidia any time to fix any driver bugs, which as I pointed out, are secondary priority for this software on a gamer card compared to their professional cards.

Just because a driver does work for some software, it doesn't mean it is optimised for another.

You are right that its just one test, and yes its probable that Nvidia will prioritise optimisation for their Quadro cards before gaming cards in professional apps, but seeing as Iray is developed by Nvidia, and other renderers are already work perfectly well on this brand new "gaming" card without having to wait for "optimisation", outperforming the M6000 in the tests, then I think I am right in presuming that this "crippling" in 3ds max Iray will be fixed, rather than left as it is.

Yes Titan cards are gaming cards, but they were definitely not marketed that way when they were originally launched, and categorised between a gaming card and a DDC card, and used in supercomputer clusters world wide. I am not the only one in the world using it for GPU rendering. Its one of the most popular cards amongst freelancers and Studios for GPU rendering, scientific computation, Bitcoin mining etc, and I have already had many discussions with other artists in the last few weeks about whether or not its worth the upgrade. If Nvidia do not fix this "problem" I am sure the majority of freelancers and studios around the world will be discouraged from upgrading their current Titans, once they learn of the performance hit, that is purely software based, as the Titan X and M6000 are identical in SP performance and perform the same in other software applications.

I am of course waiting for more benchmarks before deciding on the upgrade, and not going to base my decision on one test, but not so good so far.

[kalniel]

Well either way you get to judge nVidia by their performance in a task you have. If it's not good enough, don't use them.

[SRPlus]

Well either way you get to judge nVidia by their performance in a task you have. If it's not good enough, don't use them.

You seem to be quite negative in your replies. If I didn't like Nvidia products I would not use them FACT, I don't need you to tell me this.

I was using ATi/AMD cards, gaming and professional, but they always used to fail after a few years, so switched to Nvidia and never looked back.

I have used Quadro cards and gaming cards, and stay with NVidia because I consider them more reliable, plus the last few years need Nvidia for the Cuda technology in Iray. My current system has 4x GTX Titans (2688 core) and they are perfect for 3ds max and Iray rendering so I do judge Nvidia by the performance, and love my current Titan cards, but with the work I do, more memory and more speed means more renders per day and more projects finished sooner, and more room for more clients, so the Titan X is appealing as an upgrade.

What I am expressing is disappointment that the one reason for me to upgrade to the Titan X is the one reason currently not too, yet the right reason for others that don't use iray, so a little unfair, and Until the problem is resolved with I ray, I wont be upgrading, and I am sure many others when they hear of this software performance cap, though as I said before it could be a dud test! Iray for me still gives the same performance and this only effects Maxwell users right now.

What you are doing is having a negative attitude to anyone that says anything negative about Nvidia. Nvidia are not perfect, and do make mistakes, and I can list quite a few, some very recently, plus it is not unheard of for Nvidia to use tactics in the past to stop their Quadro users from switching to desktop cards, (Overpriced Titan-Z) so my arguments are justified.

I don't have to agree with the way nvidia does business sometime, to enjoy using their products which I currently do. Thankfully you do not represent Nvidia, or I would probably change my mind.

[SRPlus]

Before any AMD/ATI fanboy's start on the attack, I have not used ATI/AMD card in years, the last one was a Fire GL X2, so hopefully the reliability has improved since then, and I am sure it has.

[kalniel]

I'm getting lost with the number of negatives. Am I meant to be negative towards nVidia, or negatives towards those who are negative towards them?

[SRPlus]

I'm getting lost with the number of negatives. Am I meant to be negative towards nVidia, or negatives towards those who are negative towards them?

Why exactly do you feel you have to be negative towards anyone or any corporation?

I am not being negative toward Nvida or you, but you seem to like conflict. Maybe you need counselling? I am expressing my concerns about the benchmarks, nothing more and they are justified concerns, as the hardware choices I make directly effect my business, the same as all the other millions of freelancers and small studio's that will have the same concerns as me after seeing the bench marks.

If you cannot understand my concerns that are 100% justified, then why are you even bothering to post here?

Simply stop, move on and let someone else that has the answers I need reply. If you are capable of self control, or do you feel you must be right about everything and have the last say?

My original question still stands to anyone else but Kalniel,

Has anyone ran benchmarks between the old Titans and new Titan X on their system in iray to see what the speed improvements are, and has anyone found any other benchmarks with the Titan X in Iray, comparing it to older Titans or the M6000?

Cheers :-)

Would be very helpful in making my decision on upgrading.

[kalniel]

This is a discussion board, not a 'don't post unless you agree with my concerns 100%' board.

You posted one test and almost cried blue murder. I merely pointed out that you may have been hasty. You don't get to pick and choose which members of an open discussion board participate.

[peterb]

Thread temporarily closed while the flames die down .

I have removed one post that was verging the unacceptable.

[peterb]

OK, thread re-opened for discussions about the merits of graphics cards, not about the personalities of the participants!