So last year I upgraded from my old EVGA GTX580 Classified to a Palit GTX980ti JetStream. I expected a massive increase in performance in Blender, both in the preview rendering whilst working on models and also in final render times. Since I’ve been incredibly busy on other projects I’ve not had much time for working in Blender.
I ran a few benchmarks and was more than a little disappointed in the results. Using the BMW Blender benchmark file I was getting render times that were in fact slower. Since I wasn’t doing any serious work at the time it wasn’t a huge problem, however I’ve now got a bit of time to look at this again. Turns out there is a known compatibility/performance issue using this card. The issue is not limited to a single manufacturer and seems to be related to the GM200 chip used in the 980ti and Titan X cards.
This issue is now being investigated by the Blender developers and you can keep up with the developments on their Blender bug reporting site here.
Update!
OK, so we’ve actually seen quite a bit of movement on this issue both from Blender and from NVidia. NVidia have reproduced the issue and are looking into it. That said, if they do make additional improvements things are looking very good indeed.
I’ve just performed a new test with Mike Pans BMW benchmark file.
With the very latest NVidia driver (368.22) and using the latest Blender nightly (2.77.0 – nightly – Thu May 26 04:46:46 2016) my time has drastically improved from 2:10 down to 1:01. I think with the rapidly moving world of NVidia drivers we may well see further improvements over these times.
So last year I upgraded from my old EVGA GTX580 Classified to a Palit GTX980ti JetStream. I expected a massive increase in performance in Blender, both in the preview rendering whilst working on models and also in final render times. Since I’ve been incredibly busy on other projects I’ve not had much time for working in Blender.
I ran a few benchmarks and was more than a little disappointed in the results. Using the BMW Blender benchmark file I was getting render times that were in fact slower. Since I wasn’t doing any serious work at the time it wasn’t a huge problem, however I’ve now got a bit of time to look at this again. Turns out there is a known compatibility/performance issue using this card. The issue is not limited to a single manufacturer and seems to be related to the GM200 chip used in the 980ti and Titan X cards.
This issue is now being investigated by the Blender developers and you can keep up with the developments on their Blender bug reporting site here.
Update!
OK, so we’ve actually seen quite a bit of movement on this issue both from Blender and from NVidia. NVidia have reproduced the issue and are looking into it. That said, if they do make additional improvements things are looking very good indeed.
I’ve just performed a new test with Mike Pans BMW benchmark file.
With the very latest NVidia driver (368.22) and using the latest Blender nightly (2.77.0 – nightly – Thu May 26 04:46:46 2016) my time has drastically improved from 2:10 down to 1:01. I think with the rapidly moving world of NVidia drivers we may well see further improvements over these times.