GPU Rendering

An important rendering consideration is whether to run your jobs locally or on the network. The final decision can be personal, driven by costs or standards, or be the optimal choice for your organization. Before you decide, consider the following pros and cons:

Local rendering provides a known, reliable, dedicated rendering resource which may be ideal if you render multiple times per day and your jobs are not too large. However, a desk side, GPU rendering workstation limits the number of GPUs or CPU cores and may be too loud.

Network rendering is easily expandable and accelerates large scale, detailed renders. Although rack-mounted rendering systems are specialized and lack some of the capabilities of a desk side workstation, they easily make up for it in sheer density and power. Upfront system costs are also higher, but a network render farm holds the advantage in resource efficiency.

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When multiple users require rendering resources, a network render manager may be essential. These standalone software packages allow you to manage render sequences and prioritize jobs through pausing and resuming. They also support distributing render jobs across multiple desk side or rackmount systems. The management and automation provided by network render managers can be extremely beneficial in accelerating VFX production.

While free, open-source options like Alfanasy are available, most pros prefer to use more powerful, full-featured solutions like PipelineFX Qube! Or AWS Thnkbox Deadline.

Turing technology real-time ray-tracing offers a new level of realism, while NVLink Bridge doubles effective GPU memory (up to 96 GBs) for unprecedented performance.

See an updated list of NVIDIA RTX enabled applications

If you choose a rack-mounted GPU rendering system, consider NVIDA EGX Platform. This solution brings you a validated, proven solution for systems equipped with NVIDIA RTX 6000 or 8000 GPUs.

NVIDIA EGX Platform supports GPU rendering by combining NVIDIA software, such as NVIDIA OptiX and CUDA-X AI with third-party RTX-enabled software to render final frames and produce photo-realistic images faster than ever before. Click here to learn more.

Minimum Configurations: Multitasking or GPU Rendering Only

If you select a rack-mounted system, you are most-likely using it exclusively for GPU rendering. Even if you buy a desk side system, you may intend for GPU rendering to be its primary function. Regardless of your situation, in order to afford the most effective GPUs, it’s wise not to overspend on other technologies. This said, for GPUs to perform their best, you need to meet basic configuration standards.