hybrid render slave

[MaRo]

Right, you got me

Nice link, thanks Abel. I'll probably try it.

One additional question: do you know if it would be mandatory to put one of these on each card, or could I put only one the main card, and use a crossfire bridge between the two cards?

[Dade]

Nope. Dade provided some benchmarks in the GPU forum section -- the differences between 16x and 8x was negligible.

Yup, I have 2xHD5870 installed on 8x slots and 1xHD5850 installed on 4x slot. In the past I had the HD5850 installed on a 8x slot and I didn't lost any performance when I moved the GPU on the 4x slot.

BTW, I consider the HD5850 the best GPU of the HD5xxx family in term of price/performance/temperature ratios. The 5830 is a "savage" GPU (i.e. high-end gpu with multiple cores disabled) and in term of performance/temperature it has never been very good.

Keep also in mind that LuxRender v0.8 is not able to take advantage of multiple GPUs, you need to use SLG to really take advantage of PC with many GPUs (or wait for LuxRender v0.9).

[MaRo]

BTW, I consider the HD5850 the best GPU of the HD5xxx family in term of price/performance/temperature ratios. The 5830 is a "savage" GPU (i.e. high-end gpu with multiple cores disabled) and in term of performance/temperature it has never been very good.

Yup, unfortunately. I was initially aiming at two 5850 Xtreme, but couldn't find them. So I went for two 5830 Xtreme. We'll see how they perform. I'll try to have a case with proper ventilation.

Keep also in mind that LuxRender v0.8 is not able to take advantage of multiple GPUs, you need to use SLG to really take advantage of PC with many GPUs (or wait for LuxRender v0.9).

Not... yet?
I suppose that when you have achieved streamlining the architecture of SLG, support of multiple GPU will be ported to Lux, right?

[SATtva]

One additional question: do you know if it would be mandatory to put one of these on each card, or could I put only one the main card, and use a crossfire bridge between the two cards?

The plug have to be attached just to the main GPU (the one specified in X.org configuration for video output). However you don't need to link GPUs with Crossfire to use them in OpenCL applications. (Moreover there was some problems with Crossfire+OpenCL in the past. Dunno what's the current status.)

[Dade]

I suppose that when you have achieved streamlining the architecture of SLG, support of multiple GPU will be ported to Lux, right?

More than adding multi-GPU support to Lux (i.e. I'm working on hybrid rendering and I will add multi-GPUs support in the next days), it is about porting SLG's PathGPU2/PathOCL (i.e. 100% OpenCL renderer) to Lux. This is going to be a bit tricky because of the very limited list of features supported. It will be a bit like "hiding" SLG inside a LuxRender Renderer. However, such a Renderer will offer exactly the same performance (and platforms/devices support) of SLG (i.e. millions of samples/sec).

I don't know exactly when I will start that work, like I said, I'm working on hybrid rendering at the moment, I'm improving both the performance and the amount of memory used. This work is somewhat a first step toward the implementation hybrid BiDir. I have currently a pretty good idea how to write it so I think will first finish the work on Hybrid BiDir and than move on with a new PathOCL Renderer.

[SATtva]

Thanks for the heads up Dade.

[moure]

it is about porting SLG's PathGPU2/PathOCL (i.e. 100% OpenCL renderer) to Lux. This is going to be a bit tricky because of the very limited list of features supported. It will be a bit like "hiding" SLG inside a LuxRender Renderer.

dade, will pathgpu2 in luxrender be compatible with all materials/material settings? If yes does that mean that slg will in the feature support the same materials as luxrender?

[Dade]

it is about porting SLG's PathGPU2/PathOCL (i.e. 100% OpenCL renderer) to Lux. This is going to be a bit tricky because of the very limited list of features supported. It will be a bit like "hiding" SLG inside a LuxRender Renderer.

dade, will pathgpu2 in luxrender be compatible with all materials/material settings? If yes does that mean that slg will in the feature support the same materials as luxrender?

I think to leave SLG as it is but to change the code ported to Lux. The LuxRender PathOCL Renderer will have instead to match LuxRender materials, lights, etc. as match as possible.

It isn't a big deal for simple matte, glass or mirror. It is a lot more complex for mix material and other kind of "structured" materials. This is why I'm writing the first version of PathOCL Renderer will have a very very very small list of LuxRender supported features.

[Zalamander]

>The plug have to be attached just to the main GPU
I assume this is in relation to Linux, On Windows you need plugs on every card