I'm thinking about buying a new computer. Most of the work I'll be doing is AutoCAD for drafting Rhino for modeling and V-ray as rendering engine. My old computer had an AMD Radeon HD 6900 and it was very slow whenever I opened the materials editor. I tried the same model in another computer with an NVDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and it did ok in terms of rendering speed but it would slow down a lot when I modeled in 'rendered' view. The model is a classroom about 15mb Anyone know what the best affordable GPU or combination GPU+CPU is best for modeling in Rhino w/vray and autocad?
Please comment and thank you for your help! While it's true that Quadro cards have benefits, they are also significantly more expensive. My guess is that if OP's asking here about what to buy, then they don't have the budget to afford such a high-end professional solution as a Quadro card. I had this same question for computers I've built as an architecture student, but I couldn't find any useful comparisons of Quadros versus GTX cards. If anyone knows where there are benchmarks comparing Rhino performance with a Quadro and a GTX card, I'd love to see them.
Quadros are of course the 'professional' solution, but for the same budget you can get a GTX card with much more raw power, if you don't need pro features like error correcting memory or native 10-bit video output. As for rendering, this is an instance where you'll benefit from more cores rather than a faster speed. Of course both help, but six cores at 3GHz is better for rendering than four cores at 3.5 GHz, for example. You can't exactly just add up the total GHz (6x3=18 or 4x3.5=14), but that's kind of the idea.
Vray splits the rendering into buckets and gives one to each core. This, unlike many computer processes, is easily divisible into distinct parallel tasks, allowing the extra cores to benefit you. Wait, I reread your post once I realized this was not, and I'm wondering if you're planning to build a computer or buy one outright?
There are advantages to both options, with the main advantage of buying one being that you can make someone else (like Dell) fix a prebuilt, but main advantages of building one being that you can more specifically meet your needs (which aren't really the same as most users have) as well as get more power from your budget. The disadvantage of course is that in the rare cases where there are problems, it may be a little harder to repair it; every individual component would be warrantied, but you couldn't just call Dell and ship your machine off for repair. Building a computer now is a lot easier than ever before, and it's honestly about as hard as asembling a LEGO set.
The hardest part is selecting the components, and there are several subreddits who are happy to help with each step of the process. I went through a very similar thing recently. My parts are actually shipping right now. I'm not sure if OP is familiar with the concept of threaded vs multi threaded, so I'll ELI5 it quickly.
Imagine I asked you to sum the numbers 1 through 100. You could do it as: 1+2 = 3 (3)+3 = 6 (6)+4 = 10 And so on. Doing this would require 100 calculations. But now imagine there were four people and each added together an interval of 25. With four people doing 25 calculations each, it takes 1/4 the time that the initial way does.
The ability for your cpu to ask more 'brains' for help is based on whether there are more brains around and whether the software asks for help. The two CPU's I decided between were: Intel I7-7700k (4 core, 4.2Ghz) And Ryzen R1700 (8 core, 3.0GHz) Most modeling software doesn't take advantage of multi threading, so your single thread speed (the GHz) is more important. As mentioned above though, rendering does.
So ideally, for heavy modeling the 7700k would be better and for rendering the R1700 would be better. My choice was the R1700 because it is very easy to overclock to 3.8GHz, which compared to an overclock of 4.7GHz on the 7700k seemed acceptable.
Hell, my laptop is 2.2Ghz and handles anything I through at it model wise. The GPU I chose was a GTX 1060 6Gb from nvidea.
During my internship the tech guy at our firm said that a decent gaming card would be plenty, plus I wanted to play Witcher at some point. I avoided Quadro and Firepro because of the price, and I didn't feel it necessary to go any bigger on a card because of the lack of benchmarks.
The incresed vram of the 6gb model is good for dealing with textures in games, I hope that translates to my workflow. As for the prebuilt vs. Build yourself debate mentioned above, I'll weigh in with why I chose to build. First of all is the price.
It works out to be about 30% cheaper than a prebuilt with the same components. Second is prebuilt computers often try to save money by installing minimally adequate power supplies and other components. The ability to just upgrade parts as they fail or become obsolete makes this investment now quite appealing; dealing with proprietary hardware would be a pain in the ass. Thirdly, it is tough to find a prebuilt with what I want.
Workstation pc's cost a fortune, and anything with a good processor comes with a GTX1080 because they target gamers, not architecture students. Finally, it sounds like fun.
I like building shit. Hence my career choice.
Hope this helps, let me know OP if you have questions. Great post, but whoa whoa whoa lol I just have to point something out: We can't compare clock speeds across different generations, and especially not different companies. While clock speeds within a generation are going to be fairly directly comparable, you'd need to compare benchmarks to see different generations or manufacturers. AMD has had chips with many more cores for a while, but even for multi-threaded applications they've underperformed Intel chips.
I'm not sure how Ryzen is looking though. From one generation to the next, you also gain some performance increase. In other words, a 4GHz 4xxx CPU core is going to be weaker than a 4GHz 7xxx CPU core. Maybe only 5-10% percent each year lately, but it's still worth knowing. Intel might have fewer cores for the same price, but as your example if Intel CPUs know how to pattern recognize that 1+99=100, 2+98=100.
While AMD CPUs only know how to add, an Intel CPU might still outperform the AMD CPU. Obviously both can do that question extremely quickly:p but that's an example of how the instructions per clock work, because they can't all do the same things at the same speeds. I overlooked the affordable part. I use dual 980ti myself and octane render with raytraced in realtime. However, if you want fast update in the viewport, native opengl cards win. For $700 you get a decent one which is what a 1080 costs. There is a lot of changes to rendering and how the viewport is rendred in Rhino 6 so you might want to check that out too (discourse.mcneel.com).
Cycles (gpu rendering engine from Blender ) is native in Rhino 6 and I gotta say it's looking pretty nice. Cycles is gpu based, so gaming cards like gtx 1080 are great rendering value.
A detailed rendering job can make your building models look more realistic and professional—and help sell clients on your ideas. This course teaches everything you need to know about rendering interior and exterior architectural scenes with Rhino and V-Ray.
Using a pavilion of his own design, author Dave Schultze shows how to set up Sun, Sky, and V-Ray lighting systems; apply glass, metal, stone, and wood materials; and insert trees, grass, and people for additional scale and interest. Plus, learn how to use cameras and compositing techniques to add a sense of depth and realism to your designs. Instructor. Dave Schultze is an industrial designer and notorious 3D geek.
As an industrial designer, he has developed products for Microsoft, LG, Umbra, and Hasbro. He has won multiple industrial design awards and his work has been recognized in media coverage worldwide.
Most recently, his 'Philco PC' concept computer was featured in more than 20 magazines. Dave is a dedicated educator who has taught a 3D visualization class at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles for the last 10 years. In recognition of his unique design, technical, and communication skills, Dave has been contracted by Fortune 500 manufacturers to inspire their staff and train them in the latest 3D tools. By: Dave Schultze course.
2h 45m 58s. 2,720 viewers. Course Transcript - Voiceover Hello, this is Dave Schultze and welcome to Rendering for Architecture with Rhino and V-Ray. Using my personal design research project, the Zoomerang Pavilion, we'll learn some powerful techniques for creating beautiful renderings. These techniques are all designed to help you communicate your ideas to others who may help it get sold or approved. I'll start off by covering how to use all kinds of lighting types, including the sun, sky, and man-made lighting fixtures.
We'll then review how to quickly and easily tweak your image with the exposure tools. Then, I'll highlight the various kinds of building materials used in architecture, and how you can customize them for your projects. We'll then dig deeper and explore making grass, trees, and people, all designed to add scale or context to your buildings.
We'll be covering all these features plus lots of my personal tips and tricks while actually making rendering a 3D architectural model cool and fun. Alright, let's get. Practice while you learn with exercise files. Watch this course anytime, anywhere. Course Contents.
Introduction Introduction. 1. System Setup 1.
System Setup. 2. Terminology and Strategy 2. Terminology and Strategy. 3. Lighting and Exposure 3.
Lighting and Exposure. 4. Basics of Building Materials 4. Basics of Building Materials. 5.
Adding Exterior Items: Trees, Grass, and people 5. Adding Exterior Items: Trees, Grass, and people. 6. Camera and Rendering 6.
Camera and Rendering. Conclusion Conclusion.