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- In today's video,
we will take a look at the performance of this machine.
A workstation equipped with two Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280M
CPUs with 28 cores each,
resulting in 56 physical cores.
But first however,
the question arises, is CPU rendering still worth it?
And second,
why using Intel® Xeon® CPUs at all?
We will now deep dive into these questions.
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CPU rendering offers certain advantages over GPU rendering.
While initial rendering with GPUs is faster at first glance,
the limitations of GPU rendering become apparent
especially with very large 3D scenes containing
a lot of 3D geometry,
maybe lots of very large bitmap textures
or cache solutions
such as maybe subsurface scattering.
Here, GPUs quickly reach their limits,
due to their limited VRAM.
While since up to 24 or maybe 48 gigabytes
can fit on a GPU natively,
workloads with RAM requirements significantly above that,
can be a real problem because then,
the GPU has to outsource the workload,
which in turn slows it down considerably.
Besides the computing power,
the video RAM capacities on GPUs are quite expensive.
High-end graphic cards are currently ranging
from 48 to 64 gigabyte maybe,
interconnected possibly to 96 gigabytes.
However, the DDR RAM of modern workstations
can easily be brought
into the range of one terabyte for the same price.
Speaking of large workloads,
especially in the field of animation rendering,
CPU rendering offers another advantage
you don't want to miss, stability.
In the render node
you just install one or two CPUs, throw in enough RAM
and you're happy, you're done.
That's it.
This is especially useful
if you have to manage several render nodes in your studio,
grouped together to form a render farm.
Because CPUs don't need driver updates,
graphic cards do.
And that's where the trouble can start
because driver updates
are released in short intervals,
and they're not always a guarantee
for the stability of your system
let alone the executability of plugins of your 3D software.
For those who want to learn more
about the benefits of CPU rendering,
there's a link to a corresponding section
on the Corona Renderer's website,
in the description of this video.
CPU rendering is still a thing
and there are a lot of very good
and very capable CPU render engines out there.
Just to name a few, Corona Renderer,
Arnold, V-Ray, Mantra, Maxwell, or
Pixar RenderMan.
So, why using Intel CPUs?
Well, building a render farm
is nothing you do overnight.
A render farm is a quite large purchase.
It requires a certain infrastructure in your studio.
It requires a certain workflow in your studio,
and it's nothing you just buy and throw in.
It's not plug and play.
So it's much more something that builds up over the years
and grows with your studio and your business,
from the very beginning.
In my studio, renderbaron,
it all started with a Power Mac G4 back in 2001
followed up by Power Mac G5.
And these were replaced by several 12 core Mac Pros in 2010.
And with that, I moved to Intel® Xeon® processors.
In 2015, I finally moved the whole 3D production
to several powerful, capable HP Z workstations
and until today,
these machines are complemented by
more Intel® Xeon® machines, more Intel® Core™ i9 machines.
So over the years,
my studio's render farm built up step-by-step, bit by bit,
based entirely on Intel® Xeon® and i9 machines.
And why only Intel?
Well for the network based distributed rendering
in the render farm in my case, with Maxon Cinema 4D,
it is essential to use a homogeneous render farm.
For example,
the processors should be of the same type
to achieve absolutely equal render results.
For that, Intel® Xeon®
and Intel® Core™ i9 literally go hand in hand.
CPUs from other manufacturers on the other hand,
would bring in the unpredictability
of slightly different rendering results.
And believe me,
that's something you don't want to discover
in the rendered animation.
Over the last decade,
all Intel® Xeon® processors in my studio
have proven to be true role models
in terms of speed, stability and reliability.
The machines show absolutely no thermal throttling
and perfectly fulfill their specifications 24/7.
But now hands on CineBench.
CineBench is a test suite that benchmarks
the speed of your computer's CPUs or CPU.
It's the standard benchmark suite on the market
and it's free.
And by the way,
I created the living room test scene from Maxon CineBench
Here we are in CineBench release 23.
Per default, it runs a 10 minute render test
and repeats the rendering of the test scene
in several rounds.
Fast forward,
and we have a test result after 10 minutes.
Impressive. 48,000 points.
In direct non-stop use,
this dual Platinum machine demonstrates
an incredible speed and reliability.
In everyday practice,
it doesn't have a single bit of thermal throttling,
even during extreme rendering demands,
which can last for days or even weeks.
The machine just eats through render bucket
after render bucket bravely,
and impresses as the fastest machine
I've worked with so far.
By the way,
this dual Platinum machine is extremely powerful,
but its CPUs are also extremely expensive to buy.
Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs on the other hand,
offer an absolutely comparable rendering performance,
but at about 1/3 of the price per CPU.
So I think this is worth considering.
For now, I'm quite impressed by the performance
of this machine.
So all that's left to say is
thanks for watching,
and please don't forget to subscribe to this channel,
happy rendering.
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