Okay, hopefully my last question, after lots of back and fourth with Vray, Chaos (whom have been great) and based on budget I have decided to purchase the following Mac given I have an external hi capacity raid system.
Hardware
3.0GHz 6‑core eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz)
64GB of 2666MHz DDR4 memory
Intel UHD Graphics 630
2TB of SSD storage
10 Gigabit Ethernet (Nbase-T Ethernet with support for 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 5Gb and 10Gb Ethernet using an RJ‑45 connector)
Thunderbolt 3
Chaos Group have come back and said the following GPU rendering is currently supported only by the CUDA engine in Kepler-, Maxwell- and Pascal- based nVidia cards.
The advice I’m seeking which CUDA engine is best for the Nvidia Cards:
Kepler
Maxwell
Pascall
To work with my Mac Set-Up.
I’m sorry if this is a silly question, but I’m a newby, ask me anything about Adobe Creative Suite or Final Cut Pro set-up and I’d be able to give you my opinion. But I’m out of my depth on this one, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Pascal.
But you will need to hack the eGPU to run an Nvidia card. Only AMD cards are officially supported. And only run high Sierra. As per my post in your other thread, there is NO Nvidia driver support available under Mojave.
Are Render Nodes a factor is this? I.E. do you need another render node to use an eGPU box or multiple nodes to use multiple cards (if that’s even possible)?
No, I don’t think so, Vray considers its origin node as the ‘machine’ I guess by MAC address (???) and supports multiple GPU’s out of the box, if you had another GPU onboard, Vray would just consider it another CUDA device and use it, just like it does for Hybrid mode rendering, where it treats your CPU as another CUDA device and executes CUDA code on it. That’s why even if you don’t have a compatible GPU, you can still select GPU rendering and VRay will compile a kernel and execute CUDA code on the CPU.
You can watch this process happening if you have the messages window open when you initiate a GPU or hybrid render. In my case where I have an Nvidia GPU, when I initiate a hybrid render, Vray reports 2 CUDA devices present (CPU and GPU)
Thanks everyone for your advice. I’ve made the plug into the most beefed up iMac Pro you can go. Wont eat for a while, but thats the cost of being dedicated to Macintosh if only they weren’t so self centred and shared the love.
I’ll let you know how I go, it will be sometime.
I just installed the demo of vray for SketchUp yesterday on my Mac. I like to work on my Macbook (connected to two 4k-Screens), because I like MacOS a lot. But now I´m considering moving to my existing Win10-PC. This PC did all my Lumion-Renderings, but I don´t like Windows10. So I do everything else on my Mac. But sometime this year I will purchase a new Workstation, and as I compare prices, I sadly realized that maybe it would be the best for me to move away from apple.
Cheapest iMac Pro: € 5.500.
Let´s say, the Screen, Keyobard and Mouse is worth € 1.500. What Win-PC can I get for € 4.000?
Found a pre-built PC worth € 3.400:
CPU: Intel I9-8-core. Benchmarks: Passmark (Singlecore-Speed, very important for SketchUp) & Cinebench (Multicore-Speed, important for Rendering): ca. 1/4 Faster than the Xeon in the iMacPro!
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2080Ti with 11 GB Ram. In Gaming (and I think also in GPU-Rendering) Twice as fast as the Radeon 54 in the iMac Pro.
Ram: Both 32 GB.
Harddisks: iMac Pro 1TB SSD. PC: 1TB SSD + 4 TB HD.
Faster Machine, for less money. And of course modular. And a CPU-Silent-Cooling. But with Win10
You could consider buying an extra Node for your Windoze PC, that way, you could still keep working on the mac, but when needed, get the extra render power from the windoze!
You should have got a cheaper Mac and just bought a cheaper Windows?Linux Machine for rendering. I do all my modelling, scene setups and materials on my Mac Book Pro and then render it on a PC when needed. Saves a bunch of money and does not interrupt my workflow. In fact it enhances it as I can keep working while the renders are going on.
As a freelancer I could not work competitively by rendering with a Mac and in work for my day job there is simply no high spec Mac that I could render with at all sadly. But I find PC rendering works fine. I have a cluster setup for Keyshot and in the process of setting up a cluster for Blender.
