Checking out Cycles X (Patreon)

I've been doing some render tests for the last two days, checking out the new Cycles X. The results are quite interesting! 

I’ve spent two days across three computers doing these tests, and it’s  been quite an eye opener for me. Using my own real life scenes and  systems shows mixed results that do not quite compare to the Blender  tests. Like one of my supporters said, we don’t all own a high-end GPU  from 2018 (i.e. the Qudro RTX 6000 for $4000… although it’s certainly on  my wish list).

The card in my reach that currently benefits the most from Cycles X is the GTX 970 from 2016. It consistently renders twice as fast compared  to the regular Cycles 2.92, even up to 3x faster depending on the  scene. That’s seriously unexpected, and a wonderful surprise.

While a single RTX 2080 shows some speed improvements, it’s not as  significant as I had expected. Perhaps it’s my own fault for not letting  scenes render for longer, a much higher sample count may deliver  different results. I may try that another day.

Dual GPU configuation doesn’t seem to give Cycles X as much of an  edge as we see in the 2.92 version, where two cards generally translate  into “twice as fast”. Having said that, it seems to depend on the scene,  as the dual K4000 test shows: sometimes Cycles X is faster, sometimes  Cycles 2.92 is faster (but really not by much).

You can read my full artilce here.