Blender does support OpenCL, although it may not be available for all rendering engines. A quick search shows that Cycles supports it.
You have a fast CPU though, why not use that? I haven't seen how much faster a GPU renders though in comparison.
Cycles (which is the main rendering engine, as the other one is deprecated) barely works with OpenCL, but it does with CUDA. The problems with OpenCL:
It's too damned slow
It crashes
It doesn't support half of cycles' features, and they can't be added without making crashes even more likely.
This means that in 90% + of cases, CPU rendering is a better choice.
Problems with CPU rendering:
It's even slower
The CUDA renderer supports all cycles features just a few revisions after they're released, doesn't crash, and is 32x faster on a GTX 760 than my old CPU, and more than 20x faster (but I'm not sure by how much more) than my current CPU. Me and a friend did some testing with the same .blend file.
Anandtech Wrote:The fact that AMD is mostly replacing old cards with new cards based on the same GPUs as those old cards does put us as reviewers and enthusiasts in an odd spot though. Despite the fact that GPUs like Tahiti and Pitcairn are coming up on 2 years old there’s no sign of retirement for the GPUs themselves, only the first generation of products based on them.
Well this is confusing. >_< I was kind of expecting new GPUs, considering how long the 7xxx series has been around. Interesting move AMD... They must be getting pounded by the GeForce 7xx and are trying to launch "new" GPUs to compete even though they don't have any new tech to put out there. They compete very well though.
Interesting. That will definitely save a lot of time rendering. Though AMD is luring me with their rebranded GPU's with Mantle support and better OpenGL support soon.
Quote:Well this is confusing. >_< I was kind of expecting new GPUs, considering how long the 7xxx series has been around. Interesting move AMD... They must be getting pounded by the GeForce 7xx and are trying to launch "new" GPUs to compete even though they don't have any new tech to put out there.
They did launch two new GPUs: the R9 290 and R9 290X. The rest are basically rebrands. They're actually better than NVIDIAs 7xx series. Check the benchmarks I posted before. They both trade blows, but performance price wise, as always, AMD delivers.
Notice what hasn't been mentioned AT ALL in this release? OpenGL. Mantle is built from (or is) the Xbox One low level API. Furthermore, the Xbox One is a Microsoft console so it uses DirectX. And Radeons have well known performance problems with OpenGL, competing only in DirectX performance while letting Nvidia take the OpenGL crown.
Weeeelll, the PS4 is built around OpenGL, and Steam is heavily leveraging OpenGL (and Nvidia GPUs) for SteamMachines. It sounds like AMD is putting all it's eggs into the Microsoft basket, relying on the Xbone and Windows to be the mainstays for the next five to ten years. If the PS4 or the SteamMachines take off, or BOTH, then OpenGL will become the favorite method of going between consoles and PCs, giving Nvidia a BIG advantage.
(10-09-2013, 05:57 AM)MaJoR Wrote: [ -> ]Notice what hasn't been mentioned AT ALL in this release? OpenGL. Mantle is built from (or is) the Xbox One low level API. The Xbox One is a microsoft console so it users DirectX. Weeeelll, the PS4 is heavily built around OpenGL, and Steam is heavily leveraging OpenGL for the new Steambox it's pushing. It sounds like AMD is putting all it's eggs into the Microsoft basket, relying on the Xbone and Windows to be the mainstays for the next five years. If the PS4 or the Steambox takes off, or BOTH, then Nvidia kicks their butts.
Opengl has been mentioned however there is really no point of trying to take over opengl. The Mantle announcement was just to say that now Windows gamers (they haven't said whether linux will get this or not.) can use a low level api. Most games are of course using the DirectX api. The PS4 doesn't need Mantle because it has it's own low level api. Plus when does the PSx ever let PC get it's exclusives anyway? There's no way the Steambox will take off if the average consumer of Steam products is educated about Linux. I'm going to guess most are and that most will not pick up a Steambox. There's really no point of a whole Development team to learn a whole new api (Opengl) for a very small group of people. The amount of non server users of linux are already pretty small (not counting android) and the people who game on linux are even smaller because most people who want to game have a windows partition.
lol, if you haven't realized it, OpenGL has been gaining ground on D3D for a long time. Whether you like or not, Valve pushing everything to linux has given developers a lot more motivation to use OpenGL. And guess what? Games in OpenGL have been getting better performance in their ports to Linux. AMD cards barely work in Linux, I've seen it for myself, I've seen it from others; it's just ridiculously bad. Of course they'd want to avoid OpenGL and make their own thing! If the Steambox succeeds, AMD will be in trouble.
Source: I own AMD and NVIDIA cards.
And, if you're convinced that the Xbone will succeed, I won't change your mind. That's a valid speculation that I can't completely disregard.
(10-09-2013, 06:37 AM)MaJoR Wrote: [ -> ]While it is speculative at this point, all of the data currently available gives the PS4 a significant lead. Considering the Xbox One's many blunders and the PS4's lower price, how could it not?
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/survey-on-next-gen-console-purchases-may-spell-trouble-for-xbox-one/
With the PS4 and SteamMachines pushing on both ends, DirectX is being squeezed like never before. If they both take off, Radeons are going to be in a tight spot.
I still don't get what you're trying to say. AMD has already said their working on their opengl drivers for the gcn architecture. Plus steammachines = pile of fail. It's like a pc version of the dreamcast.
I'd written a response refuting the wrong things you just said, but because the textbox isn't labelled properly as a textbox, when I accidentally pressed the back button on my mouse, it was lost, so instead I'm going to write this here so that someone fixes it and then when I press back accidentally Chrome says "Are you sure you want to leave this page" like it does on any form, and any other forum I've used, and even Facebook. Someone should do something.