Page History

This document offers a comparison between the V-Ray and V-Ray GPU render engines. 

Overview

...

Users often ask themselves which render engine should they use - CPU or GPU, after seeing the latest trends in graphics hardware.

...

This document answers questions such as:

Which render engine is faster - V-Ray or V-Ray GPU?

...

How V-Ray and V-Ray GPU utilize hardware?

Hardware Utilization

...

V-Ray

Rendering with V-Ray uses the CPU device. Features like the V-Ray Denoiser and the V-Ray Lens Effects can utilize the GPU independently of the renderer, as they are applied as a separate post-process. To render on a CPU, your PC should meet the minimum System Requirements.

V-Ray GPU

V-Ray GPU takes advantage of the graphics card, but it relies on the CPU to feed it with tasks. This means that CPU performance also impacts GPU rendering.

Check the V-Ray GPU Setup page for more information regarding supported devices in V-Ray for 3ds Max. Supported devices information is available for all V-Ray integrations on their respective GPU pages.  

Hybrid rendering (CPU + GPU)

Hybrid rendering is a mode of the V-Ray GPU engine that utilizes both the CPU and GPU devices. This way, the rendering performance benefits from all the available hardware on your workstation. 

For additional information on how V-Ray utilizes computer hardware, check the Hardware Recommendations article and the Understanding V-Ray Hybrid Rendering article. 

Performance

...

The advancement of GPU hardware increases performance at a lesser cost. This makes V-Ray GPU increasingly popular.

...

Chaos offers V-Ray Benchmark - a performance measurement tool that assesses the hardware's speed specifically when working with V-Ray. The benchmark includes two test scenes: one for V-Ray and another one for V-Ray GPU. It can quickly and easily evaluate a user’s machine capabilities when running V-Ray and V-Ray GPU. The results can be compared with other users' data and help when looking at specific hardware.

A huge advantage of V-Ray GPU is that it utilize multiple graphic cards installed on a single machine. Setting up additional GPUs is effortless and their pricing reasonable, in contrast with CPUs installed on a multi-socket motherboard. This also scales the performance almost linearly with GPUs. For example, with two identical GPUs, a user may expect to see the render times to be twice as fast, compared to a single GPU.

...

V-Ray GPU is constantly updated with more features with each new release, bringing it closer to the V-Ray engine. See the list of V-Ray GPU for 3ds Max supported features (see the respective page for other V-Ray integrations).

Faster Feedback, Faster Decisions

...

V-Ray comes with its own Distributed Rendering feature that allows splitting a single render job within a single frame across many computers in a network. See the Distributed Rendering page in V-Ray for 3ds Max or the respective page for other V-Ray integrations. 

Chaos Cloud is Chaos's proprietary rendering service and it supports both V-Ray and V-Ray GPU.

...