Which is better for rendering gpu or cpu

[Esports Ready]

i might build a new computer made for blender

[Capt Fuzzy]

I'd have to go with CPU, however, having a strong GPU is never a bad thing...

[Sean]

Originally posted by AtomicThaGamer:

i might build a new computer made for blender

It's the GPU.

My GPU that if you were to buy the same power card today would cost the same as my processor, yet it crushes render times.

I would say get a good Ryzen as it will help you with Blender, especially for simulations, but a GPU will always win in price to performance (assuming you don't buy a $9000 GPU that is only 1% faster then a $1000 one). I got the 2700x and it has served me very well, but the 1800x costs about $230 and has the same number of cores if you need a budget option.

For a dedicated Blender machine, get a Vega. People say they are bad, but they slaughter every GTX GPU in Blender rendering. an RX Vega 56 which costs about $520 outperforms the GTX 1080ti which is considered the God tier of desktop graphics cards. I would say get the ASUS Strix Vega 64. It costs $589 on amazon and newegg and it is 20% faster at rendering then the 1080ti which costs $800.

For ram, get 16 gig. No excuses, this is 3D software. I need to upgrade to 32 gig for my workloads just because of how heavy they are, but 16 gig works just fine. 8 gig will run out too quickly.

If you want more tips or this doesn't fit your budget, feel free to add me on steam. I'll make something that works for what you can afford. And if you can afford more, there are much better options. *Cough chough* Threadripper.

[The Renderer]

GPU is faster but has less memory. Meaning you cannot render really big scenes on it and need to fall back to the CPU. Plus the CPU is used (I think) for stuff like physics. GPU on the other hand is also important for the viewport when e.g. modeling with high poly counts.

So basically you need both. Don't worry about a few percentages here or there, it doesn't really matter if a render takes an hour or an hour and 5 minutes. For really large stuff (like long animations) where a few percent really matter, you'd want to use a render farm anyways.
So just buy/build a decent allrounder. Basically a good gaming PC with additional memory.


Edit: Small addendum: There is also the hybrid render mode (GPU+CPU) which will be available in the future but I don't know whether this can use all of the system memory. And even so, you'd want a good CPU and GPU for it.

[Esports Ready]

okay thanks everyone

[KAT_Editor]

What do you mean by better? Something you cant render with GPU, like volumetric light in cycles.

[Mika]

Why not use CPU + GPU?

I use this function to render and I have obtained in some cases up to 70% faster than just the GPU. That's right, just using one processor core instead of all. (Its very unstable so Blender closes very often with beta 2.79 "I don't use 2.80 because it fails a lot more") (I do the work in Blender 2.79b "steam" and render with the Beta)

Current processors render much faster than graphics. For example, the new i9 7980XE is equivalent to using 2 GTX 1080 Ti SLi.

Which is faster? Before there was a difference between CPU and GPU but now, they are very much the same, I'm going to save money for that i9.

The problem of memory, NOPE, If I have learned something using low power HW is to OPTIMIZE. If you optimize your project very well then you don't have to worry. Until recently I used a GTX 660 and at some point I had problems with renders that exceeded 2GB, however after optimizing I managed to reduce that amount to less than half (of 2GB), one of my projects used 2.4GB and I almost lost one month optimizing and reducing it to 700MB without losing quality and is not only the memory used but also the time to render was greatly reduced. Right now I have a GTX 1060 6GB and I haven't yet exceeded 2GB in any project, in which I work now is large, a scenario of 27KM and I have already reached 2.8 million vertices and only uses 1.8MB the .blend file but uses 6GB of RAM and 1.2GB of VRAM (I think my PC is going to die when I finish it and have to render).

Another detail: There are many features that don't work with the GPU (fire, smoke, liquids, particles, bump, normal maps, etc ...) all that using the GPU don't work so you are forced to use the CPU.

[KAT_Editor]

Function GPU + CPU, it's not what you think. In this case, Blender use CPU graphics core, not the CPU itself. I dont have graphics core in CPU and dont have GPU+CPU functoin.

"Another detail: There are many features that don't work with the GPU (fire, smoke, liquids, particles, bump, normal maps, etc ...) all that using the GPU don't work so you are forced to use the CPU.", thats work with GPU, which version of Blender are you using? Or you watch old tutorials?

[criticalphil]

Originally posted by KAT_Editor:

Function GPU + CPU, it's not what you think. In this case, Blender use CPU graphics core, not the CPU itself. I dont have graphics core in CPU and dont have GPU+CPU functoin.

"Another detail: There are many features that don't work with the GPU (fire, smoke, liquids, particles, bump, normal maps, etc ...) all that using the GPU don't work so you are forced to use the CPU.", thats work with GPU, which version of Blender are you using? Or you watch old tutorials?

errrr smoke, fire, liquids, particles, bump normal maps do work with GPU everything that you can render with CPU you can render with GPU.

[KAT_Editor]

Originally posted by criticalphil:

Originally posted by KAT_Editor:

Function GPU + CPU, it's not what you think. In this case, Blender use CPU graphics core, not the CPU itself. I dont have graphics core in CPU and dont have GPU+CPU functoin.

"Another detail: There are many features that don't work with the GPU (fire, smoke, liquids, particles, bump, normal maps, etc ...) all that using the GPU don't work so you are forced to use the CPU.", thats work with GPU, which version of Blender are you using? Or you watch old tutorials?

errrr smoke, fire, liquids, particles, bump normal maps do work with GPU everything that you can render with CPU you can render with GPU.

Did you see " in message? Did you read previous message? Ans show me how you can render volumetric light with GPU.

[Sean]

Originally posted by KAT_Editor:

Originally posted by criticalphil:

errrr smoke, fire, liquids, particles, bump normal maps do work with GPU everything that you can render with CPU you can render with GPU.

Did you see " in message? Did you read previous message? Ans show me how you can render volumetric light with GPU.

Dude, I just spend 80 hours rendering smoke with my GPU. Ever since Blender 2.77, you can render smoke on the GPU. Maybe even earlier. If you can't, you probably need to enable the GPU in the system tab for user prefrences. But yes, you CAN render smoke with a GPU. I hope people don't believe you.

[Sean]

Originally posted by criticalphil:

Originally posted by KAT_Editor:

Function GPU + CPU, it's not what you think. In this case, Blender use CPU graphics core, not the CPU itself. I dont have graphics core in CPU and dont have GPU+CPU functoin.

"Another detail: There are many features that don't work with the GPU (fire, smoke, liquids, particles, bump, normal maps, etc ...) all that using the GPU don't work so you are forced to use the CPU.", thats work with GPU, which version of Blender are you using? Or you watch old tutorials?

errrr smoke, fire, liquids, particles, bump normal maps do work with GPU everything that you can render with CPU you can render with GPU.

Thank you. Someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

[KAT_Editor]

What wrong with you 2? Text in " is a quote.

"Another detail: There are many features that don't work with the GPU (fire, smoke, liquids, particles, bump, normal maps, etc ...) all that using the GPU don't work so you are forced to use the CPU." < is a quote.

thats work with GPU, which version of Blender are you using? Or you watch old tutorials? < my answer.

thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU thats work with GPU

Now much better? :)

[Mr Chappy]

Hi all,

This is getting a little bit heated... You are all regulars on here so there is no need to fall out :)
KAT_Editor was quoting information given by @Mika and saying that it was wrong when you read their original comment fully.
The old/miss-information was by @Mika in this case not @KAT_Editor...

Bump and Normal maps have worked with GPU rendering for as long as I can remember, it would be pretty useless if these did not work...
GPU rendering used to have limitations with volumetrics but, AFAIK, it works now and has done for some time, assuming I've remembered this correctly... I almost never use GPU rendering as I always seem to go way over the VRAM limitations(of my card) when using 4k PBR textures.

Thanks all :)

[Sean]

Originally posted by Mr Chappy:

Hi all,

This is getting a little bit heated... You are all regulars on here so there is no need to fall out :)
KAT_Editor was quoting information given by @Mika and saying that it was wrong when you read their original comment fully.
The old/miss-information was by @Mika in this case not @KAT_Editor...

Bump and Normal maps have worked with GPU rendering for as long as I can remember, it would be pretty useless if these did not work...
GPU rendering used to have limitations with volumetrics but, AFAIK, it works now and has done for some time, assuming I've remembered this correctly... I almost never use GPU rendering as I always seem to go way over the VRAM limitations(of my card) when using 4k PBR textures.

Thanks all :)

Oh, I see. thanks for clearing that up.

[Mr Chappy]

No problem :)