As Blender 2.80 development advances toward the first Release Candidate, Eevee becomes more stable and receives more features. With Blender Internal out of the picture and the promise of greatly improved speed, Eevee generates a lot of excitement – and a corresponding amount of questions. The most important two are, of course, “how fast is it?” and “how does the output quality compare to Cycles?”
We decided to run a few tests on our farm and see what the results will tell us. We picked three different scenes that have both Cycles and Eevee versions and rendered them on our servers. The resulted images are not identical, as lighting works differently in the two engines. They are close enough to be relevant for the purpose of this test, though, and they should give you a better insight into Eevee’s capabilities.
Each scene has been rendered three times, with the same resolution and samples count:
- Once with Eevee on the specially-configured render nodes available for Eevee rendering on our farm
A second time in Cycles, using the same render nodes- Finally, in Cycles on the standard GPU render nodes available for Cycles rendering on our farm
This array of hardware configurations has been chosen to illustrate the speed differences between Cycles and Eevee in the two most important scenarios for a user: when rendering at home (or in the office), using the same hardware, and when using a render farm. All tests have been done using the Blender 2.80 version available on our farm, from February 26th.
The first two scenes have been modified so that both renders (Cycles and Eevee) look approximately the same. This means a slightly different scene setup for each version, to obtain a close enough visual quality.
1. Green Dragon, 3,840 x 2,160 px, 256 samples
Render time in mm:ss, lower is better
Link to large Cycles image
The Green Dragon scene (courtesy of Zacharias Reinhardt) is a good example of Eevee’s performance. For the nice dragon sculpture, the Eevee render is three times faster compared to the Cycles one, when running on the same server.
When switching to the regular servers we use for Cycles rendering on our farm, the difference drops to only 26%, with Eevee still being faster. The explanation is that Eevee is limited to a single GPU by design, while Cycles can take advantage of all 4 GPUs on our render nodes.
2 . Lighthouse, 1,920 x 1,200, 200 samples
Render time in mm
Link to large Cycles image
The second scene is a lighthouse model created by Davide Tirindelli. When rendering a model which is a bit more complex, Eevee is 4 times faster than Cycles when running on the same machine. Again, when moving the Cycles render to our regular GPU machines, the difference drops to 28%.
The last two tests were originally Eevee projects, which we simply switched to Cycles without any major changes. This way, the two versions of the scene have exactly the same setup in terms of geometry, materials
3 . Outdoor scene,1,920 x 1,080, 128 samples
Link to large Cycles image
The third example is an outdoor scene created by Andreas Strømberg. Here Eevee is 11 times faster than Cycles when running on the same machine. As the scene gets more complex, Eevee starts showing its potential and the speed difference increases. Again, when moving the Cycles render to our regular GPU machines, the difference drops to Eevee being only 2.4x faster for the same image.
4 . Indoor (bathroom) scene, 960 x 1,305, 500 samples
Link to large Cycles image
The fourth scene is an interior render created by Chanya Thaninsurayut. This is again originally an Eevee scene switched to Cycles for this test. The lighting is quite different as a result, but both versions hold their own in terms of the render result. This scene also has the largest number of samples in the test. Eevee is almost 12 times faster than Cycles when rendered on the same hardware. Switching to the regular GPU servers makes the Cycles version only 4 times slower.
Final words
Circling back to the questions from the beginning of the post: yes, Eevee is fast. When rendering on a single GPU machine, the speed difference between Eevee and Cycles is significant. The gap is increasing with the scene complexity because Cycles gets slower as the scene becomes more complicated. Rendering on RenderStreet can close that gap, though, as every project is being assigned to the hardware that offers the best performance. Also, please remember that Blender 2.80 is still in beta at the moment, so the final version may have a different performance.
In terms of image quality, in some scenes, Eevee can get pretty close to Cycles. Depending on the style of the scene and its purpose, Eevee may be good enough, or you may need to use Cycles (or a combination of the two). The choice is entirely yours. Just know that, whether you choose to render with Eevee or with Cycles, RenderStreet has your back.
