Graphics Cards

[PawAll3Deller]

Why doesn't AMD have a CUDA / Optix counterpart ???
Unfortunately, I work in Blender, and I already had to sell my Rx5700xt, but hopes remain and I really want to buy Rx6800xt, but in Blender it makes no sense against rtx3070 with Optix, are there any plans to make this technology rival, only for AMD video cards ??

[colesdav]

See: https://community.amd.com/t5/blogs/gpuopen-updates-for-the-launch-of-amd-radeon-rx-6000-series/ba-p/...

[PawAll3Deller]

Ok, this does not mean anything, for comparison with some kind of analogue of Optix ... There is power - But the technology to use it - no. ProRender doesn't make much of a difference from Cycles on OpenCl ...

[colesdav]

I agree.
They need something to improve perfomance in Blender Cycles.
But that is all the info I have seen to date.
AMD Did do lots of work to make their GPUs faster in Blender 2.79.

I have been asking about RX6800XT here:
https://community.amd.com/t5/graphics/blender-2-79-includes-new-amd-opencl-optimizations-and-faster/...

[PawAll3Deller]

Yes, but CUDA is supported in many programs, which often only use CUDA support, not just Blender. You need to be able to cope with such power, and give it the opportunity to open up, there is no point in buying a 6800 segment for games, this is too wrong, mining is yes, but games, especially work on OpenCL ...

[deksman2]

The problem comes down to software developers only using CUDA and OptiX as opposed to open source solutions such as HIP/ROCm and Vulkan.

AMD's GPU's are perfectly capable of doing compute operations, but OpenCL has been abandoned (which is why AMD switched to HIP/ROCm with RDNA 2).

The main issue right now is the fact that software devs will probably not be using anything other than CUDA or OptiX because they grew accustomed to this.

For gaming, AMD works perfectly fine... and Blender has now improved Cycles so that AMD GPU's are much better supported via HIP/ROCm in Blender 3.3.

Problem is that Blender seems to be the only platform which does this.

Other software devs such as say those from Adobe have NOT integrated Vulkan into their pipeline... they still use CUDA (primarily for GPU acceleration).
Similar applies to most other video editing and rendering software (in particular, Autodesk's 3dsMax has 0 support for AMD - they are CUDA/OptiX exclusive).

[PawAll3Deller]

Thanks for the long awaited reply! Tell me if there are ways out of this situation, I'm talking about a monopoly in the market. I know that Radeon ProRender is made by AMD, is there any connection between similar OPTICS technology for AMD. Is it even possible to do this on our own, by AMD. Or is it solely about the interest of the studios to use the work manual they are used to? Sorry, I'm not strong in technical knowledge, I can not understand.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Performance has a lot to do with it too. If AMD can get HIP to within a few percent of Optix, offer a competitive price, and keep the TDP similar to Nvidia within the same price brackets. You would see a change because companies that would want to populate render farms, or data centers, have the buying power to dictate that kind of change.

Basically, money. It's always money. Until AMD, or anyone for that matter, has an offering that can be equated to companies spending less money, or getting more for the same money, things will remain the way they are. As well AMD has to determine that there is money there to be made. They might not even really care about that market segment because the cost of competing is too high to justify it. Less about risk more about why bother if there's nothing to be gained.

Now if HIP came flying out of the gates and was competitive with or beating Optix. That would turn some heads, but again it would still require a financial incentive to get companies to devote Dev time. At least when it comes to companies like Autodesk, or Adobe.

Blender so far is the only software I know of to adopt HIP, and the industry still looks at Blender with a "Isn't that cute" mentality. Also by industry, I mean the companies, not the artists. Artists typically love Blender. However, industry-wise Blenders adoption rate is still low, and slow. Growing! But not fast enough to incite change.

But mostly. It's all because of money. Always has been, always will be. AS much as I hate it.