trashcan Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 (edited) Has anyone gone through the process of creating a Benchmark Renderworks file and testing it across several systems with different specs? Thinking GPU, Cores, RAM, Mac vs PC, etc. I have a few different machines at my disposal and would love to check to see what the fastest rendering is - but wondering if there's a standard to check against. Generally speaking, I would imagine that a better GeekBench score would determine better Vectorworks processing, but I know there's several "Gotchas" with Vectorworks that may prove that to be untrue. Is RAM more important than processor speeds? Is individual processor speed more important than multi-processors? Is Metal better than CUDA? My understanding is Vectorworks doesn't use Metal at all... I can certainly post results here when a rainy day allows for it. --- Whoops can a moderator move this over to Hardware? Edited May 12, 2020 by trashcan move Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 (edited) The more multicore GPU power the better. RAM only needs to be large enough to fit the model. No CUDA, no METAL, no fancy GPU etc. Look at the Cinebench R15/R20 Multicore Benchmarks. Twice as many points means twice as fast renderworks renderings. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/de/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r15_multi_core-8 AMD Ryzen 3000 has best price-performance ratio, AMD Threadripper best performance atm. Intel/Apple are currently far behind in performance and price for GPU rendering. Edited May 12, 2020 by herbieherb Quote Link to comment
trashcan Posted May 12, 2020 Author Share Posted May 12, 2020 That's super useful. For clarification: you mean the more multicore CPU the better? Sounds like GPU is irrelevant then? Quote Link to comment
Kevin Allen Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 5 minutes ago, trashcan said: Sounds like GPU is irrelevant then? GPU helps with Vision, not Renderworks. 1 Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 You need the GPU for 2D and 3D geometric calculations and OpenGL-view. Basically the GPU only needs enough VRAM to fit your model. For larger projects I wouldn't go below 8GB, but only because even midrange graphics cards have that much memory today. The same for RAM, you basically only need enough to fit your model. You don't need ECC, registered etc. But the Ryzen CPU's like fast clocked RAM e.g. 3200-3600Mhz and of course low timings around CL16 is the sweet spot. Here is an example of AMD's current dominance in the multicore CPU values: The maxed out Mac Pro reaches 9.705 points in Cinebench R20 Multicore. That's about the level of a 16 core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X consumer cpu. But the Ryzen PC would only cost about 2.500 $. Apple is of course still unbeaten in the Macbook Pro's when it comes to CPU-Rendering. But the Ryzen Mobile CPU's coming onto the market right now seem to catch up. 1 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 53 minutes ago, herbieherb said: Look at the Cinebench R15/R20 Multicore Benchmarks. Exactly. RW Render uses the same CineEngine like C4D from Maxon for Rendering. And Cinebench from Maxon is the 1:1 Benchmark for CPU Rendering with CineEngine. So if you compare two machines Cinebench resultes and one has double the points, your RW Render will be double as fast than the slower machine. But for your GPU, I think C4D/Maxon bought Redshift or something which may be a GPU Renderer. At least VW CEO said something in the keynote video about such thing finding its way into VW at some point. So it may be a good idea to have a powerful GPU for the future anyway. 2 Quote Link to comment
rDesign Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 (edited) @trashcan — There is a Vw KB Tech Bulletin titled User Success - Hardware Benchmark Results. It discusses a lot of what you’re asking about, using Cinebench R15 for the benchmark. Unfortunately the results list on that page hasn’t been updated for several years. Edited May 12, 2020 by rDesign 1 Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted May 12, 2020 Share Posted May 12, 2020 I think at one time JimW from Vectorworks was running some benchmark tests. Way back in 2010 I wrote a version of the Total Timer script in the attached file. At one time I was going to update it to also do Viewport update times, but that does not work yet. If there is enough interest, I may be persuaded to look into adding different rendering modes, making viewports work and changing the test file to get better results. Quote The attached VW 2020 file is set up in Perspective view. This is so the rendered area is cropped and not dependent on the screen size. Open the File and double click on the Total Timer script. Check all the boxes in the dialog box that opens and click OK. The script will run through all of the rendering modes and then give you a list of the time each render took. On my 2019 MacBook Pro 16" 2.4GHz i9 32GB of ram I got the following times: OpenGL 0.1 Fast RenderWorks 3.2 Final Quality RW 15.5 CustomRW 15.3 ArtisticRW 1.7 The Custom options may change depending on your custom settings. The times will vary depending on what else your computer is doing at the time. For the most consistant results restart your computer. Launch VW and nothing else and run the scripts. Total Timer v2020.vwx 4 Quote Link to comment
trashcan Posted May 12, 2020 Author Share Posted May 12, 2020 (edited) Super useful, all. @Pat Stanford that's a great little tool: benching married to VWX! I think this tool ultimately wants to get reported somewhere - I.e., a submission of stats to some database (like geek bench or cinebench). On my Mac Pro 2013 6-Core 3.5 GHZ / 128GB Ram / Dual AMD D700 6GB OpenGL 0.1 Fast RenderWorks 8.5 Final Quality RW 44.9 CustomRW 45.3 ArtisticRW 2.7 I imagine my 2019 MBP and Windows station will fair a bit better 😉 Edited May 12, 2020 by trashcan 1 Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 AMD Threadripper 2990wx, 32 GB Ram, Geforce RTX 2070: OpenGL: 0.1 Fast Renderworks: 2.0 Final Quality Renderworks: 5.0 Custom Renderworks: 4.9 Artistic Renderworks: 1.9 @Pat Stanford can you crank up the details or resolution of the scene, with todays GPU/CPU the results are a bit too low to compare. 2 Quote Link to comment
trashcan Posted May 13, 2020 Author Share Posted May 13, 2020 @herbieherb wow that threadripper is amazing 🌟. Though I'd imagine most users probably aren't working with any more than 12 cores at their work station. I see a lot of MacBook Pros more than anything - so I think @Pat Stanford current bench point of reference is still valid. Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 Yeah, you're right. I focused on the OpenGL test, which spits out 0.1 seconds on any hardware. By the way, the Threadripper 2990wx is on the market for almost two years. The currently strongest Threadripper has doubled the speed and should reach: Fast Renderworks: 1.0 Final Quality Renderworks: 2.5 Custom Renderworks: 2.5 Artistic Renderworks: 1.0 So it's already pretty close to the renderworks-benchmark limit. I really don't get it why people still run Vectorworks on iMacs when they could have one of these Threadripper-builds for the same price. Quote Link to comment
trashcan Posted May 13, 2020 Author Share Posted May 13, 2020 @herbieherb absolutely. For me, at least, it's that my machine(s) have to serve multi-purpose and for Multimedia the workflow on a Mac is still superior IMHO (though rendering and price-tag often is not). Most of our Windows boxes are optimized for multi-channel playback and those retail for $3-7k. The next time we need to build something I'm going to push for a VWX build, though as a company it's not necessarily our priority to speed up the VWX renders. I'm speaking from my POV which I'm sure is different from many others. It would be great if RW utilized more of the GPU! Which I'm sure everyone can agree on... I'm sitting with a machine that has a 12GB GPU and VWX (not to mention most programs) barely utilize. That is a fault of Apple's though. And that speaks to the bigger problems with Apple and their pro users... But I digress. I did a quick build using the threadripper 32 core and to create a hybrid machine that covers all the bases has a $5k price tag. The iMac fully souped up (not the iMac Pro) is the same price and the performance in VWX is about 50% the 32 core threadripper. The iMac Pro doesn't get you much further so hardly worth the price tag. The Mac Pro @ 28 Cores is just one step below the threadripper 32 but costs more than 3x the price to get decent specs to support the 28 cores! 2 Quote Link to comment
herbieherb Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 Yes, I must apologize to the base model users. With the base-model iMac you really get a very good package at a great price. It's only when you need to go near the upper limit of the iMacs performance that the price gets worse and worse. 1 Quote Link to comment
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