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Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:44 pm
by Dez!
The more I work, the more I notice that only my work at Luxcorerender goes through my internal quality control.

I decided to build a computer that is 100% Lux-oriented.

This computer should be able to render 9600x9600 px sizes continuously, round the clock.
This computer should provide comfortable work with CAD models containing many small details.
This computer should allow easy adjustment of complex light, complex materials.
This computer should be comfortable in modeling.
This computer should be fast as a rocket.
This computer should do all listed simultaneously.

Here is my typical work scene:
https://mega.nz/#!xpxlmICa!sQ9AW96nImtU ... LTSztmmgR8
(now forced to work at Cycles, as Blender 2.8 hasn't released Lux)

I think it's necessary to use two computers for continuous rendering. One for work, one for rendering.

My electricity is cheap.

Who will advise me what?

On the computer that I have now, I can not run Lux render such a scene. And I need them 10-30 daily.

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 10:18 pm
by zeealpal
I'm happy to give some advice, here are a few questions that will help:

- What kind of budget are you looking at? Even a rough estimate will help
- How large are your scenes in memory usage, are they all likely to render on GPU or will a number of them be CPU only?
- OpenCL compilers can sometimes struggle on very complex scenes with complex materials, although LuxCore doesn't usually require the same complex nice set-ups that Cycles does; CPU rendering can be beneficial there.

The two styles you can go for is generally a high clockspeed Intel CPU with 2 high end GPUs, or a high core count threadripper, depending on your use case and budget

Edit, I'll have a look at the scene when I'm at a computer

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 10:21 pm
by Fox
Yes, seems like even the new Blender 2.8 is very CPU hungry when there are thousands of objects.
When i CPU render on 14 threats and keep 2 free, the Blender ui is 1 - 3 fps with your scene, sometimes 3 - 8 fps, that at 4k with GTX 970.
But when CPU is 100% free for Blender ui, the fps is 60 (my monitor max).

I have another scene with 30 000 objects and that one is even too much for all my cpu threats. It does not matter if box view mode and all objects hidden. The fps in blender is below 1. But if i join all objects in to singular mesh, it's back to silky smooth.

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 10:49 pm
by FarbigeWelt
I have Installed Blender 2.80, LuxCoreRender 2.2 beta 3 first time this evening only because I was curious about 9600*9600 resolution.
My 2 weeks old AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, 8 GB VRAM renders the scene in this rather high resolution. LuxCoreRender uses 3630 MB VRAM for your scene with openCL. Session init is in less than 30 s but image appears first after 2m30s, the approx. the time every screen update takes for this resolution. Blender does not respond to any mouse click during rendering. After a few attempts rendering stopped by hitting Esc key several dozen times. Stop took about 2 minutes. 114 samples have been rendered after 13m10s, i.e. 13.3 MSamples/s with. 1.8 Rays/Sample. RAM use has been close to 24 MB, old intel i7 4770K CPU had a load close to 100%.

I am not sure if a high end consumer PC meets your requirements.

What you wish sounds more like the request for a professional workstation equipped with intel xeon or AMD Epyc many dozen cores CPU on a double processor boards with at least one of Nvidia's best Tesla cards.

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:19 am
by Dez!
FarbigeWelt
That's a very interesting result you have.
Thank you for testing.

On the Discord channel SiddhantRane user has tested the scene on i9+Nvidia RTX 2080 and its result is 500 samples in 37 minutes. He was free to use the computer during the rendering process. The rendering speed was 9.2 million samples per second. Of these, 8 million were owned by RTX 2080.

I am fully satisfied with the price of the RX 5700 XT. Now I see that the speed is really higher than that of Nvidia.

Can you check whether the mouse cursor will freeze if you do not use the CPU? And how many millions of samples per second will the speed be?

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:47 am
by Dez!
That's how I came up with the plan of action:
Based on the results of the FarbigeWelt test, I will choose a processor.
That is, it will be either an analogue of i5 or an analogue of i9 from AMD.

RAM will be 32 GB.

I will take the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 570 from the very beginning.
In my city it now costs 215 dollars.
So I can start working with 8Gb VRAM.

Gradually I will accumulate money and will buy 5700 XT for 430 dollars.
I will use it exclusively for rendering.
Gradually I will save up more money. I will buy another CPU. I will make two computers - one with 5700 XT for rendering, the other with RX 570 for work.
The next step is to add another 5700 XT to the rendering computer.

That's the plan.

I can save a maximum of 75 dollars a month, so this process will be a long one. But in about a year and a half or maybe even earlier, I will have two computers and a perfectly configured system for Lux-class rendering.

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:22 am
by FarbigeWelt
Hi Dez!

Without CPU render speed dropped to 10.0 MSamples/s. Because this speed depends on the time it is recorded the value should be used carefully actually only at render‘s end. 120 Samples finished in about 14.5 minutes. Because of session init and post render processing time you cannot calculate time for 500 Samples based on my information. I may render a 500 Samples image if you need its overall time. There is a chance for amd openCl driver improvements improving 5700 XT speed at least 25% (personal opinion).
During rendering I was able to work with the computere as usual. I have started a second Blender instance, loaded your scene file, changed shading to texture (or what ever the button is called to the left of the one for view port rendering). Your model was drawn after about 10 seconds in a very nice way with rich details. I was able to rotate or zoom your large object in that shading mode instantly. This means even on my 5 years old PC modelling beside rendering on 5700 XT is possible. It is only the rendering Blender version that does not react on any mouse click. I think this is a LuxCoreRender issue and should be addressed because I think it’s quite easy to be solved.

Today, I would recommend a 7nm amd Ryzen 3000 series CPU, the one with 12 cores, a X570 chipset motherboard, a 4.0 PCIE 1 or 2 TB SSD, one or two graphic cards like the amd 5700 XT and at least 32 GB 4.0 DDRAM ~3000 MHz using two slots only, to be able to extent RAM later.

In one or one and a half year things may look a bit different but not much, i.e. 16 or 20 CPU cores instead of 12, noise and speed optimized versions of graphic cards.
What will change a lot: drivers, Blender (stability) and LuxCoreRender (released version, more features, stability).

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:41 am
by xlxs
SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RADEON RX 570 seems to have 4GB (and maybe it can allocate 4GB more from system's RAM) source=> https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/s ... -570.b4445

(systems ram is very slow compared to gpus internal memory)

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:59 pm
by Dez!
FarbigeWelt
You ran a very important test.
Thank you very much!

Conclusions:
i9 + RTX2080 give out 9.2 MSamples / s
RX 5700 XT One Without Processor 10 MSamples / s

You convinced me once again that the Radeon 5700 XT would be the right choice.
You have made me very satisfied that you can work at the time of rendering if you use only the GPU.

I also read that the RX 5700 XT drivers will soon be improved and will give a performance boost of 25%.

So I chose the right development strategy.

At the end I will have a rendering computer with two Radeon 5700 XT

xlxs, thanks for the warning. It's okay, the main thing is to launch renderers.
Now I have Nvidia 1050 in my laptop using memory in the same way.
When it's time to buy this video card I will try to take one so that all memory would be VRAM.

Re: Computer for Luxcorerender

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:08 pm
by provisory
Dez! wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:59 pm At the end I will have a rendering computer with two Radeon 5700 XT
As far as I know, LuxCore supports equally AMD and NVidia GPUs, but unfortunately there are softwares that require NVidia, so in your place I'd rather buy one AMD and one NVidia card.