Vray Rendering CPU or GPU

I have just downloaded vray extension and am amazed at some of the results. I have been using my desktop which has a pretty powerful i7 9700k. I was curious to note what were the benefits of getting a graphics card (if any) presently I dont have a graphics card.

I was imagining faster render times but after trying to find info on this I’m not entirely sure this is true? I mean I dont want to forkout $500 for an entry level card and then only get say a 20% speed efficency (or is this not how it works).

Any info would be helpful. I cant post this on the vRay forums as I am still in trial mode.

Thanks

I render with Lumion, (if you want to take a look at my thread in this forum: My Architectural Drawings, Renderings and Animations - #49 by Peter_B), but I purchased Vray for SketchUp and I am a beginner with it, and noticed:
A Architecture-Scene, that I rendered with the same resolution on CPU and then on GPU was rendered with the GPU much, much faster.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2080Ti

I am not at my PC with SketchUp/Vray right now. I post exact results of my experience later…

GPU (or Hybrid) rendering is significantly faster on Vray. It is very useful for interactive rendering.
You can assign solely GPU rendering for interactive purposes, which leaves your CPU free for simultaneous editing and amendment taks.
You can put Vray into a hybrid rendering mode where it will use the GPU and CPU in conjunction.
You will need an Nvidia card for GPU rendering as Vray uses Nvidia CUDA. AMD cards will not be able to contribute. So, yes a decent GPU will transform your rendering workflow. Vray will also now take advantage of Nvidia RTX (Ray Tracing) cards for additional performance (mileage will vary depending on the scene).
I’m on a Mac so cant use those but my 1080Ti still has a great deal of bang.

I rendered a architectural scene, medium quality, small resolution just for the test (1200 x 675)

Results:

Progressive turned on:
Rendered with GPU: 2:36
Rendered with CPU: 2:36

Progressive turned off:
Rendered with GPU: 0:52
Rendered with CPU: 2:22

i.e. with a GPU you can save plenty of time!

Greetings, Peter

Hi… thanks for all your comments. Its a little confusing to me. For me I guess its only a hobby not a profession and looking at the price of those gpu’s it wouldnt be an option. I was looking at spending around $500 so not sure if this was going to get me enough of a benefit.

Please update your profile, the graphics card is MIA.

Link to Microcenter This is the card I am currently running. Very pleased with it.

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If you’re planning yo upgrade just for faster render speed in Vray then I recommend you try Chaos Cloud (Vray Cloud) instead. It’s just way more convenient. Especially when you can render up to 10 renders at a time, and this is all cloud based so you can still use your computer. 100 credits are $100 I believe. My 1920x1080 renders with 10+ render elements take anywhere from 1 to 3 credits to render. So that’s only 3 dollars per render which is worth it if I do it for clients. Plus I don’t have wasted time that I can work on something else while waiting for the renders
Edit: here’s the video on Vray Cloud if you’re not sure what it is.