Solution:
The most notable difference between CPU and GPU rendering is that CPU rendering is more accurate, but GPU is faster.
3ds Max offers several built-in render engines which take advantage of both CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) rendering. Traditionally, most computer graphics renderings have relied solely on powerful CPUs, but today, fast video cards with large amounts of RAM can take on the task of rendering and speed up look development of the final scene.
CPU RenderingIn 3ds Max, the Scanline and ART (Autodesk Ray Tracer) render engines use CPU rendering only. The faster the main CPU is in the PC, the more quickly the final render will be created. Both the Scanline and ART renderers take advantage of symmetric multithreading, i.e., they will utilize the available cores in the CPU and divide up rendering tasks among them. In addition, the more RAM (Random Access Memory) is in the PC, the faster a rendering may initiate as it loads scene assets (such as texture bitmaps) into local memory.
CPU-based render engines need a powerful modern processor; for more information, see
the 3ds Max System Requirements here.GPU RenderingVersion 6.x of the
Arnold renderer in 3ds Max can utilize both CPU and GPU rendering. (Previous versions of the Arnold renderer included GPU rendering as a beta feature.) The CPU renderer will utilize all available threads of the PC's CPU(s), and will also take advantage of the Intel CPU Hyperthreading and AMD CPU Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) features.
To choose between CPU or GPU rendering in Arnold, go to the Rendering > Render Setup > Arnold Renderer > System tab.
When using Arnold's GPU rendering, see the video cards listed on the
Certified Hardware List for 3ds Max. A fast Nvidia GeForce RTX or Quadro RTX, or an AMD Radeon Pro with large amounts of video memory will perform best. (For GPU rendering, the 3ds Max scene needs to be loaded into the graphics card's memory first so that the rendering process can begin.)
The legacy Quicksilver renderer in 3ds Max also uses GPU rendering for quick non-photorealistic renders.
For an extended list of GPU renders available for 3ds Max with some additional configuration details, see: GPU configuration and render engines for 3ds Max.
3rd-Party Render Engines
Various 3rd-party render engines, such as
Chaos Group's V-Ray,
Cebas Software's Final Render and
Maxwell Render can render with both CPU and GPUs.
Both
Redshift and
iRay utilize GPU rendering.
The
Corona renderer (now sold by Chaos Group) is CPU-only.
