What do I need to run Vred?

[fprico]

Hi,

I would like to know what do I need to run Vred professional. I am thinking of buying a core i5 3.2 ghz 64-bits with 4 or 8gb of ram, I also have a Nvdia Gtx 460. Will it work with this for normal usage.

[florian.dyck]

Hi fprico,

it will run with this hardware, maybe not too fast in realtime mode, depending on the polygon count you are using. Also for previewimg you can keep the renderview small so it gets faster. Anyway, I can only recommend to spend another 500 - 1000 € if you have them and go for a faster chip and more RAM

[michael_nikelsky]

Hi,

first of all, this is my personal opinion, not an official Autodesk statement. Autodesk doesn´t make any recommendations in terms of non workstation hardware so if you run VRED on consumer hardware you are on your own.

That being said, my personal opinion about your setup is that it will probably run VRED but I strongly recommend to get a faster machine, especially if you are planning on using raytracing. I actually would not recommend anything less than an i7, even though Hyperthreading only gives us about 20-30% more performance and usually I consider 16GB of RAM to be the mimimum for doing anything usefull. You can get a quite decent machine for about 1000€ (sorry if you have a different currency but these are just the prices I know) if you are tight on a budget.

Making a recommendation is difficult without knowing about your use cases. If I should make a recommendation for a consumer grade budget PC with acceptable performance I would probably get an i7-4790 (~270€), 16GB of RAM (~150€) and a Geforce GTX 760 with 4GB of RAM (~250€). And if you want to do yourself a favor get an SSD, at least for the operating system since this has a massive impact on overall system performance.

But as I said, this is just my personal opinion.

Michael

[Anonymous]

Does Vred run on GPU, CPU or a hybrid of the two? I'm curious about setting up a cluster that runs an on-board GPU from an intel Xeon E3 - 1245V3, thus making the cluster pure CPU based. 

[michael_nikelsky]

OpenGL rendering of course requires a GPU but I am guessing you are just talking about raytracing. The raytracing in VRED is completely CPU based, especially when you are running on a cluster. The rendernodes don´t need a GPU at all. If you are planing on doing interactive clustering the master should have a GPU to provide fast upload of the rendered images although the on-CPU Intel GPUs should be sufficient for this as well unless you are planing on rendering at 4K resolution.

Another aspect to consider when doing clustering is your network. You should setup your network to minimize the number of hops between the master and the render nodes since VRED is quite sensitive for latencies in the network, especially when doing interactive cluster rendering. 10GBit is prefered although 1GBit will work fine for most things as well.

Kind regards

Michael

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael,

This would be for home use, so a 1Gigabit switch with Cat5e or 6 should work fine for a raytrace cluster? The MBoard I'm looking at is 10/100/1000 Lan. I figure creating a 6-8 cluster for $600-700 a piece would yeild much better CPU performance for raytracing then building an O/C dual 4960/xeon desktop. The biggest issue would be power consumption, but I don't think I'll need more then 200-250W PSU. A 64GB SSD should be enough to install the cluster service on each node? does the cluster software store any files locally on each slave?

Thanks,

J

[michael_nikelsky]

Hi,

for a home network 1Gbit will probably work fine. 64GB SSD will mostlikely work as well, all you need to have installed is either linux or windows and the VRED Cluster software. There are no additional files stored during clustering, everything will be completely in RAM so you need to make sure your nodes have enough RAM, especially if you are planing on rendering large resolutions with many renderpasses.

Kind regards

Michael

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael,
Perfect! Thanks for the confirmation. I've itemized my parts list but it sounds like I need to make a modification to the amount of RAM. It is currently set for 8GB in each node. What is your recommendation? 16?
Thanks,
Jeremy

[michael_nikelsky]

Hi,

it depends a lot on what you are planing to do. Personally I consider 16GB to be the absolute minimum and would opt for 32GB or more. But then, it very much depends on the scenes and resolutions you want to render. If you are only doing "small" scenes with 1 car configuration and FullHD then 16GB will probably work fine for you. But if you are doing full 150% models with several environment switches and print resolution you should probably get 32GB or more.

Kind regards

Michael

[fprico]

Hi,

thanks to all for the answers. I am planning of using it for product design rendering. I think first I will focus on buying a good processor and then add more ram through the years, I don't know if core i5 3.4 ghz will make any difference with the 3.2ghz, if not perhaps I will go for an I7 3.4 ghz and with 4gb of ram. Also I think I could disable the ray tracing mode when it is not needed if it is possible in Vred.

I ve read in the system requirements that it recommends an Intel xeon processor which are the basic difference between i5, i7 and Xeon with the same clock speed?.

[michael_nikelsky]

Basicly the difference between the i5 and i7 are the hyperthreading cores. These are not full cores but when using the raytracing in VRED they will still get you about 20% more performance.

I strongly recommend to get a least 8GB of RAM though, 4GB is not enough for pretty much anything.

[fprico]

Hi,

Thanks for answering, As I mentioned I will use it for product design not for car rendering. Also I will use it for Autocad, Inventor, Alias, Vred and perhaps some occasionally rendering in Showcase. Now I am running on a 2.33 ghz quad core 32 bits, 4gb ram, with a nvidia gtx 460. It is not too old but have 5 or 6 years. The Autocad and showcase performance its not so good some times the programs shut down when have some objects in the scene not to much. so with a core i5 3.4ghz or i7 3.4ghz will I need another video card in some years or a fast processor could replace a video card. In other words, if I am not going to replace my video card will a core i5 3.4 ghz with 8gb ram be enough for normal usage at least for the next 5 years or will I be in the same situation?

Fernando

[michael_nikelsky]

Hi,

personally I wouldn´t bother getting anything less than 16GB of RAM, if you get less make sure you can upgrade later (so only get two modules instead of 4).

As a processor I would recommend to get at an i7-4790K which is clocked with 4GHz if you are planing to use the system for a longer time, even though it is the current top of the line model. You can get one at pretty much the same price you can get a i7-4770K which is only clocked with 3.5 GHz so it makes no sense to save money here. The fastest i5 is about 100€ cheaper but you can only get up to 3.5GHz as well, so compared to the 4GHz i7 due to the slower clock and the missing hyperthreading cores it will be about 35% slower (or the other way around, the 4790K will be about 50% faster).

Kind regards

Michael

[Anonymous]

I like the 4790 for desktop OC'ing. For rendernodes I like the Xeon E3-1246 V3 for cpu mark vs price, especially if you are buying a bunch of CPU's. I guess it depends on budget but if you build nodes you can always turn them into desktops later and for the price they will be faster at render time vs an OC'd desktop. 

Check out the comparison of the two cpu benchmark scores here:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2275&cmp[]=2279

My cluster comes in at a CPU mark of 60,000+ (6 Xeon E3-1246v3) vs a desktop with the best two Xeons on the market at 34,800. Those highend Xeon's are 2,580$ a piece, not including MB, RAM, etc. I built my whole renderfarm for 4k and it has 96GB of Ram on board. 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2275&cmp[]=2279&cmp[]=2009

Food for thought. Good luck!

[fprico]

Hi,

Does hypertreading have any other use apart from rendering?, does also programs like Alias, Inventor, take any advantage of Hypertreading for 3d modeling?. So a quadro is not really needed could I stay with the gtx 460 if the processor is good?. 

Are this combos ok or should I change something:

Core i5 3.4 ghz          
Motherboard Asus  B85m-G          

Memory Ram 8gb 1333 mhz   

Hard disk  500gb sata 3 hd 16mb wd blue   

Power supply 650W reals 

Core i7 4 ghz          
Motherboard Asus  B85m-G          

Memory Ram 8gb 1333 mhz   

Hard disk  500gb sata 3 hd 16mb wd blue 

Power supply 650W reals 

Regards.

Fernando.

[fprico]

Is the core i5 4690k the newest top of the line I can hardly find it available in my country I could see the 4670K. It seems they are at the same price with 1ghz difference.

[fprico]

Is it better a core i7 with no ssd hard drive or an i5 3.2 ghz with ssd? which are the recomended brands for ssd?, not the most expensives.

[michael_nikelsky]

Hi,

in this case I would recommend the i5 with the SSD, a SSD will make your system much, much, much more responsive. For brands I would recommend Samsung or Intel.

Kind regards

Michael

[fprico]

Hi,

thanks for answering, notice that I mentioned de i5 3.2 ghz as the ssd is much expensive. I would like to ask you if this motherboard Asus B85m-G will be ok for a core i5.

Also just in case I decide to go for the i7, if this hard drive is also good hdd  500gb sata 3 hd 16mb wd blue or if the same hdd with 64mb will be more suitable.

Regards.

Fernando.

[michael_nikelsky]

Yes, I noticed, but the thing is: The processor is, what, about 25% slower than the i7. A SSD on the other side is even in the worst case at least 10 to 100 times faster than a mechanical drive when it comes to random accesses. This will result in a much higher overall system performance especially when you are doing multitasking. Can´t say anything about the board though but usually Asus is a pretty safe bet. Kind regards Michael