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Yea, i lean Nvidia - because i hear more consistently that they behave well in Linux, and doubly so with Blender. AMD seems to either be more hit or miss, OR i

Yea, i lean Nvidia - because i hear more consistently that they behave well in Linux, and doubly so with Blender. AMD seems to either be more hit or miss, OR it used to be, and a lot of that is just a poor history. Either way the GPU buying landscape is difficult for me.

dantondwa 6y ago
I was in the same position as you a few months ago. I believe that currently Blender provides a much better workflow on Nvidia cards. The reason is simple: Optix. The speed advantage over CUDA (and openCL, of course) is really, really impressive. With Optix, I think I've seen the greatest performance improvement I've ever witnessed on Blender. Here is a Linux + Nvidia + Optix benchmark from 2019: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-281-optix&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-... And with 2.92 it's even faster and it now supports CPU+GPU rendering with Optix. Unfortunately, AMD doesn't have such good Blender support. You're stuck with OpenCL and slower rendering time. You could try using their Prorender renderer, but to be fair, it's a closed source and non-native to Blender. I'd rather stick to Cycles+Eevee. I wish one day AMD will work with Blender to better support it, as I much prefer them as a company and I like their opensource drivers. But really, Nvidia RTX cards with Blender at the moment are fantastic.
- my123 6y ago
  ProRender render quality was sadly sometimes pretty close to garbage. (I heard that ProRender 2.0 changed that, but didn't get the chance to test it yet) https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-290-rtx3080&num=3 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-... and Ampere is _fast_.
- smcnally 6y ago
  Blender runs like a champ with my nVidia Quadro 3000M, though I've had no success getting Ubuntu or Blender to avail of the CUDA cores. Will check out OptiX based on your comment. Blender System Preferences for CUDA, OpenCL, and OptiX all report "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing. Cycles will render on CPU." I'm using nVidia's proprietary driver and NVIDIA X Server Settings reports 240 CUDA Cores. No Joy w/ nvidia's cuda packages, either. Blender's been running well on this workstation since ~2.7x for video editing work, so further system tweaks have been low-prio. Will revisit to look at OptiX.
  - my123 6y ago
    Your card is based on Fermi, an architecture that's no longer supported by NVIDIA since a long while now (last drivers in 2018, you're on a legacy branch). That means that apps using newer versions of CUDA will not work, and your hardware is also far too old to use OptiX. Put in another way, your current GPU is slower than the one in a Nintendo Switch...
    - smcnally 6y ago
      Much obliged — > Fermi ... (last drivers in 2018, you're on a legacy branch). IYO, is there any value to using legacy nvidia-driver-390 over X.Org? > apps using newer versions of CUDA will not work, and your hardware is also far too old to use OptiX. Will look to see if apps I use avail of my CUDA cores, else I'd prefer to remove this sole proprietary driver from my old-and-busted workstation. Thanks again for saving me time. I’ll re-de-prioritize further GPU config hacking, though if you have suggestions for a Nintendo Switch-to-FireWire 800 interface, please share.
      - my123 6y ago
        > IYO, is there any value to using legacy nvidia-driver-390 over X.Org? nouveau doesn't support compute at all on those... (as in OpenCL). Also, as far as I remember, rechecking work on Fermi didn't seem to be implemented the last time that I played with one (it is implemented for the later generation, Kepler, though) > Will look to see if apps I use avail of my CUDA cores If your app is compiled against CUDA 8.0 or earlier, targeting compute capability 2.1, it'll work on Fermi. That excludes any kind of modern binaries. (the newest compiler that CUDA 8 supported was GCC 5.3...) More recent apps can either be built with an old compiler + C++ library... or use OpenCL instead.
        smcnally 6y ago
        Thanks again - I appreciate these details. Blender's not seeing cores available for OpenCL, either. >> "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing. Cycles will render on CPU." I'll research Fermi for OpenCL and Cycles Render Devices. Blender's working well, so I'll resist the urge tweak until that's no longer the case, and hope to spend more time exploring 2.92.
garaetjjte 6y ago
Nvidia on Linux is massive hassle, between poorly working nouveau and nvidia annoying blob driver. AMD should work just fine.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  When does Nvidia become a hassle? I've been using my 1060 on NixOS for a while with no issues so far. Everything has just worked. Are there edge cases i should consider?

dantondwa 6y ago

I was in the same position as you a few months ago. I believe that currently Blender provides a much better workflow on Nvidia cards. The reason is simple: Optix. The speed advantage over CUDA (and openCL, of course) is really, really impressive. With Optix, I think I've seen the greatest performance improvement I've ever witnessed on Blender. Here is a Linux + Nvidia + Optix benchmark from 2019: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-281-optix&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-... And with 2.92 it's even faster and it now supports CPU+GPU rendering with Optix. Unfortunately, AMD doesn't have such good Blender support. You're stuck with OpenCL and slower rendering time. You could try using their Prorender renderer, but to be fair, it's a closed source and non-native to Blender. I'd rather stick to Cycles+Eevee. I wish one day AMD will work with Blender to better support it, as I much prefer them as a company and I like their opensource drivers. But really, Nvidia RTX cards with Blender at the moment are fantastic.

my123 6y ago
ProRender render quality was sadly sometimes pretty close to garbage. (I heard that ProRender 2.0 changed that, but didn't get the chance to test it yet) https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-290-rtx3080&num=3 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-... and Ampere is _fast_.
smcnally 6y ago
Blender runs like a champ with my nVidia Quadro 3000M, though I've had no success getting Ubuntu or Blender to avail of the CUDA cores. Will check out OptiX based on your comment. Blender System Preferences for CUDA, OpenCL, and OptiX all report "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing. Cycles will render on CPU." I'm using nVidia's proprietary driver and NVIDIA X Server Settings reports 240 CUDA Cores. No Joy w/ nvidia's cuda packages, either. Blender's been running well on this workstation since ~2.7x for video editing work, so further system tweaks have been low-prio. Will revisit to look at OptiX.
- my123 6y ago
  Your card is based on Fermi, an architecture that's no longer supported by NVIDIA since a long while now (last drivers in 2018, you're on a legacy branch). That means that apps using newer versions of CUDA will not work, and your hardware is also far too old to use OptiX. Put in another way, your current GPU is slower than the one in a Nintendo Switch...
  - smcnally 6y ago
    Much obliged — > Fermi ... (last drivers in 2018, you're on a legacy branch). IYO, is there any value to using legacy nvidia-driver-390 over X.Org? > apps using newer versions of CUDA will not work, and your hardware is also far too old to use OptiX. Will look to see if apps I use avail of my CUDA cores, else I'd prefer to remove this sole proprietary driver from my old-and-busted workstation. Thanks again for saving me time. I’ll re-de-prioritize further GPU config hacking, though if you have suggestions for a Nintendo Switch-to-FireWire 800 interface, please share.
    - my123 6y ago
      > IYO, is there any value to using legacy nvidia-driver-390 over X.Org? nouveau doesn't support compute at all on those... (as in OpenCL). Also, as far as I remember, rechecking work on Fermi didn't seem to be implemented the last time that I played with one (it is implemented for the later generation, Kepler, though) > Will look to see if apps I use avail of my CUDA cores If your app is compiled against CUDA 8.0 or earlier, targeting compute capability 2.1, it'll work on Fermi. That excludes any kind of modern binaries. (the newest compiler that CUDA 8 supported was GCC 5.3...) More recent apps can either be built with an old compiler + C++ library... or use OpenCL instead.
      - smcnally 6y ago
        Thanks again - I appreciate these details. Blender's not seeing cores available for OpenCL, either. >> "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing. Cycles will render on CPU." I'll research Fermi for OpenCL and Cycles Render Devices. Blender's working well, so I'll resist the urge tweak until that's no longer the case, and hope to spend more time exploring 2.92.

garaetjjte 6y ago

Nvidia on Linux is massive hassle, between poorly working nouveau and nvidia annoying blob driver. AMD should work just fine.

adkadskhj 6y ago
When does Nvidia become a hassle? I've been using my 1060 on NixOS for a while with no issues so far. Everything has just worked. Are there edge cases i should consider?