Hardware for 3D rendering

[Allen]

Have been trying to read up on this and have Google'd my backside off, but still not 100% sure. Even searching Hexus has brought up very little solid information.

Basically, if you use a PC for rendering 3D images, what hardware is used in the process (and therefore what could you upgrade to make it render faster)?

I was under the impression that it was mostly done on the CPU, therefore the faster the processor the faster the render, however, I read somewhere that professional graphics boards like the Quadro FX for example play a very important part. I thought the job of the graphics card was to display images on the screen, not assist in the rendering process?

So what could you upgrade to make rendering go faster? Would Quad Core be the way to go? Would 4GB of RAM be more than enough if the final images are less than 100MB in size? Would using a 64bit OS be better at rendering than a 32bit OS, or would that depend on if the software being used to render has been programmed to make use of a 64bit OS?

Sorry for all the questions, but some reliable answers would be most appreciated.

[Allen]

Bah, can someone edit the title to put the D in to 3D, thanks.

[Moby-Dick]

Done

rendering work can take advantage of GPU offloading where a GPU ( which is very very good at specific maths calculations ) can do work rather than a CPU. The quadro cards do this very well I believe.

its the same reason a PS3 is really quite good at number crunching , not because it has a good CPu , but because it has a good set of GPU's

[Allen]

Done

Ta.

rendering work can take advantage of GPU offloading where a GPU ( which is very very good at specific maths calculations ) can do work rather than a CPU. The quadro cards do this very well I believe.

OK, but I'm presuming it will only offload the work to the GPU if the system is using a specific card like the Quadro and not a typical "gaming" graphics card, right? If so, would the benefit of getting a Quadro (or similar) to render 3D images be noticeable?

[Moby-Dick]

I dont know a whole lot about the specifics but I'm pretty sure you can use CUDA ( or the ATI equivilent ) on a number of their cards. its more down to the software I think.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_what_is.html

[madman045]

Allen, what software will you be rendering these 3D images in?

What system are you currently doing this on and how long on average is the process taking (trying to help guage the performance increase that might be seen)

What sort of CPU/Ram usage are you seeing during the rendering process?

[Terbinator]

I would of thought the Quattro cards would be your best option but anything from the 8800 series and later from nvidia can power some applications in the same way a Quattro card can with nvidia's CUDA tech.

[Allen]

Allen, what software will you be rendering these 3D images in?

The program is called Virtual Worlds by a company called Logicom. http://www.logicom.com/virtual/product.asp?p=1

What system are you currently doing this on and how long on average is the process taking (trying to help guage the performance increase that might be seen)

It's a HP with a Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz, 4GB of DDR2 RAM (3.5GB used as only using XP Pro 32bit) and a GeForce 9600GT graphics card. To render an image of 300px x 300px took 26 seconds, but there is a need to render higher quality images which can be up to 4096px x 2732px which can take hours (sorry, can't give a specific time as last time it was left to run overnight and we forgot to check the rendering time).

What sort of CPU/Ram usage are you seeing during the rendering process?

CPU usage for both cores is at 100%, RAM usage from what I remember was either 1GB or 2GB, it defo wasn't using all 3.5GB available.

[shaithis]

From what I can see, the product only users DirectX. Your current machine is going to be pretty much as good as it gets from the looks of things.

[Allen]

I dont know a whole lot about the specifics but I'm pretty sure you can use CUDA ( or the ATI equivilent ) on a number of their cards. its more down to the software I think.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_what_is.html

I would of thought the Quattro cards would be your best option but anything from the 8800 series and later from nvidia can power some applications in the same way a Quattro card can with nvidia's CUDA tech.

I have had a brief look at the nvidia site linked by Moby, but as far as I can tell, it won't work with Virtual Worlds as when searching for it I got 0 results.

[Allen]

From what I can see, the product only users DirectX. Your current machine is going to be pretty much as good as it gets from the looks of things.

Do you mean Direct3D? If so, I'm pretty sure it has different modes as when I was last on it, it said that it was in OGL (OpenGL) mode.

[shaithis]

http://www.logicom.com/virtual/spec.asp

Very little information. You may need to contact them directly but I would really think CUDA and STREAM would be mentioned if they were usable.

[kungpo]

If utilisation on the cores is hitting 100% (on both), then it suggests the app is multi-threaded at the least, so a Quad Core or a faster processor should make a difference. The WW site also specifically mentions NVidia or ATI GPUs, so a faster GPU should make a difference too.

[Allen]

I think I will get in contact with them to see how we can get our renders to take "just a few minutes"...

A typical print at 720 DPI (dots per inch), which is a good quality, takes just a few minutes.

[Pob255]

After a quick dig around.
For doing still renders it's old school redndering so it's almost all on the cpu and memory (mainly cpu)
For "producing ‘live’ 3D walkthroughs." the gpu shows it's self but not by a great amount.

However the main area that the gpu will be of any real benefit is in the design stage, the simplified rendering structure when you're actually makeing things is the only thing that will get any major benefit from a gamer level graphics card.

The final rendering can be improved by a "proffesional" level card, however low end pro cards generally stink, decent cards like the tessla C1060 or FirePro V8700 are going to cost £1000+

I'd definately look at a quad core cpu

[kungpo]

Another thought....

When you check CPU utilisation, is it the WW process taking all the CPU time? Small things to try is disabling the AV software. Also check the size of your pagefile and see how much disk activity is taking place. Also how much memory is being used by the processes?

I agree Quad is the way to go. The HP should be easily upgradable to take (at the very least) a Q6600 or Q6700.