CPU Render VS GPU Render

[Quantos]

Hi, this is my first post here. I'd like to start off saying that this is a pretty cool bit of kit. I do a lot of photography and I've done a few gigapixel images - this is my first experience with photogrammetry though.

This leads me to an interesting situation though. I want to determine the hardware configuration of my system so that Zephyr can best make use of my hardware.


Hardware

i9 9900K 3.6GHz
32 GB DDR4 RAM
Asus Prime Z390-A
4 Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SSD's
Asus RTX 2070 (I've also tried with 2 GTX 970's - both in SLI mode and EMG)
SeaSonic Prime Ultra Platinum 650W PSU

Software

MS Windows Version 1809 (OS Build 17763.379)
nVidia driver 419.35
Zephyr Free Version 4.351


Now what I've tried, just for the sake of consistency and to negate as many variables as possible is to run the Zephyr Benchmark (under utilities).
I've also insured that the box for CUDA is checked in Options. So the software does recognize my GPU.

What I find puzzling is that Zephyr wants to use my CPU cores, it maxes those out right away - it doesn't seem to be even trying to use my GPU. I've tried a few different drivers for the GPU and I've gotten no joy from any of them.

I don't know what I'm missing. Is it an extra driver that I need or an extra software package to enable that? Or is it simply a feature that's not available in the Free software package?

I appreciate your time and attention.

[cam3d]

Hey Quantos, how are you monitoring your GPU? -

Zephyr utilizes CUDA cores in the GPU/s and this isn't reflected in the task manager very well at all - There is a cool system info tab which is available to view when you run a process in Zephyr - This should give you a better indication of when particular hardware resources are being utilized. Also, something I like to do is monitor temps - if your GPU/s are heating up then they are probably working hard

[Andrea Alessi]

Hi Quantos,

adding to what Cam said, if you can share with us a log we can make sure they are actually being used. But as Cam said, i think it's simply because you are using the windows task manager.

[Quantos]

I was using system info in Zephyr to monitor it and the performance never went above ~20%. I even tried with only allowing it to use one CPU core - which slowed things down to an abysmal pace.

[Quantos]

Here are the logs that you asked for, I hope I have the right ones.

[Quantos]

Oh man, some tool in an IRC channel had me install the CUDA Toolkit (nVidia's product) - I'm looking at it though and I get the feeling its for programmers, not as an end result utility. I think I should uninstall it, unless there's a reason that I might want it?

I can't program my way out of a paper bag - my VCR still flashes 12:00 and I've never had the Auto feature on a coffee maker work.

<edit>I did uninstall that crap - but then I had an idea and installed the Asus GPUTweak2 - my GPU clock and Memory clock are going insane. I'm also including a screenshot of the system info feature.</edit>

[Quantos]

These results are very surprising for me. I reran the 3DF Zephyr benchmark with 4 CPU cores enabled and again with 8 CPU cores enabled. In case you are interested here are the results.

<edit>I'm going to have to retest with the SLI and EMG GTX 970's</edit>

[cam3d]

Hey Quantos, to save your log file right click on the 'log' panel and save to file

[Quantos]

Well dangnabit - that's just about too easy now :P

<edit> Any idea where the feature is to have it make coffee for me? </edit>

[Quantos]

I just did my first render from scratch. The software really worked my GPU on it. I think it's something about the benchmark that just doesn't access as much of the card maybe. It was very useful for configuring my system though.

[Andrea Alessi]

The benchmark is really a quick reconstruction. Some parts of the algorithm are CPU only by nature (e.g. clustering), so maybe you noticed more GPU usage because you had a bigger dataset. Anyways, if you see [GPU0] [GPU1] etc in your log, you're safe - cuda is enabled and working

[Quantos]

Yeah, I've really noticed it in the logs, and in the GPU monitor. I've just done my first from scratch rendering, so I'm using that as a baseline and today I'll try the same job with my 970's in SLI and see if there's any difference from the 2070

Thanks for your reply