That’s right. We have upgraded the RenderStreet GPU machines for the third time in as many years, so we can offer you faster than ever renders at a lower cost. The new T4 GPUs are power-efficient data center GPUs based on Nvidia’s Turing architecture and each new server holds 4 such GPUs, with 16 GB of RAM per GPU. Read on to see how they fare against the previous-gen Volta boards in our rendering battery of tests.
One more thing before you begin: the new GPUs are already live – in fact, if you use RenderStreet, you have been using them for the past month. The hourly price remains the same, which means that your renders are now cheaper – because they complete faster.
We put the new boards to our standard battery of eight Blender Cycles rendering tests, to see how they perform. Each scene was rendered twice, and the lowest time was recorded. Let’s see the numbers! (new GPUs are shown in green)
1. BMW27, 960 x 540 px, 1,225 Samples (35 squared)
The BMW scene has been created a few years back, and with the advances in technology it renders quite fast on new hardware. Because of this, the time differences are not so obvious. Still, the new GPUs are 16% faster in this benchmark. The render time for this scene falls below half a minute.
2. Classroom, 1,920 x 1,080 px, 300 Samples
The second benchmark, Classroom, starts showing the real power of the new machines. The Nvidia T4 servers are 36% faster and the new time for this scene is now just a bit over one minute.
3. Fishy Cat, 1,002 x 460 px, 1,000 Samples
The cute cat with an attitude gets delivered 33% faster with the new GPUs. The numbers are consistent with the previous benchmark, which shows that the new setup performs well with fur, too. Let’s see what the next test will show.
4. Koro, 720 x 1,280 px, 500 Samples
The speed difference is increasing when rendering everyone’s favorite llama. The new servers are delivering the image 43% faster this time. The new time falls under the one-minute threshold, too.
5. Pabellon Barcelona, 1,280 x 720 px, 1,000 Samples
A relatively complex scene, Pabellon Barcelona has all the common elements of an exterior archiviz render: good lighting, reflective and transparent surfaces, vegetation. The new servers are delivering the image in 39% less time.
6. Victor, 2,048 x 858 px, 600 Samples
Only three years back, it was difficult to render this scene on GPU. The memory requirements caused it not to fit in the memory of the boards available at the time, so CPU was the only option then.
Now, with the new T4 GPUs, the scene renders only in a hair (sic!) over three minutes. That’s 39% faster than the old servers, quite a good result.
7. Barbershop, 2,048 x 858, 32 AA samples
Another scene from a Blender movie, the Barbershop image is delivered in under half the time by the new boards (51% faster, to be precise). The new render time is 4 minutes and 19 seconds, a very good performance.
8. Spring, 2,004 x 1,000, 300 samples
The Spring benchmark is the odd duck in this battery of tests. The render time is approximately the same when using the new and the old GPUs. Still, at just over 4 minutes per frame, rendering the entire movie fast won’t be a problem for our farm.
The new servers are available now, for all of RenderStreet’s users and this performance is just a click away. Remember that hundreds of these machines are available, and all you have to do to use them is launch a render. No reservation or pre-booking is necessary, even for large projects. This means that, if you have a project that would take weeks or months to render on your own, we can deliver it on the same day in most cases.
Putting things into perspective, let’s look a bit at the performance numbers before our 2019 hardware upgrade. The BMW scene was taking 1m 16s to complete, now it’s delivered 3 times faster. Classroom – 4 times faster. Fishy Cat – 3.5x faster. Koro is 5+ times faster. Pabellon Barcelona, 5 times faster. The Victor scene wasn’t rendering on GPU at that time, and now it completes in 3 minutes. After only two and a half years, your dollars are buying significantly more processing power at RenderStreet, and are saving a lot more of your time. Indeed, part of the speed improvement is also due to the optimizations made in Cycles. But the hardware does the heavy lifting in this case.
We’ll keep on working on improving our render farm – both the hardware and the software layer – for your benefit. In the mean time, happy rendering!
