Topic: dedicated GPU

[jpizzini]

Hi All,
I'm trying to find out if lumion has the ability to dedicate a GPU for display and the other(s) for rendering on multiple GPU systems?

Thanks
Joe

[peterm]

Hi Joe

Lumion can only access one GPU to do the rendering. Multi-GPU/SLI has been investigated in the past by the developers.

You can however, have one GPU dedicated to Lumion, and doing renders, and another GPU for other tasks, if you run with two screens, one for each GPU.  That is done via the cards Control Panel settings.  This is used by some users, to date I am only aware of users with NVIDIA cards such as a Titan and GTX 660.

[mba]

From what I can detect, from testing, Lumion only allows users to specify which GPU Lumion renders from only in instances where one of the two GPUs is an Intel integrated GPU, ie a laptop configuration.

I have a workstation with a Geforce Titan and a K4000.  I run the displays via the K4000 and even after specifying the Titan as the only GPU for Lumion to use via the Nvidia Manage 3D Settings menu Lumion still only uses the K4000.  I have confirmed this by using the GPU utilization graph that is built in with the Nvidia Control Panel  However, if I switch over to the Titan to drive the monitors Lumion will then use the Titan.  To confirm this in ability to switch between dedicated GPU cards, I then use the Manage 3D Settings to tell Lumion to render solely on the K4000 and I get the same result.  Lumion wont render on the card specified in the GPU settings it will only render on the card that is actively driving the monitors.

I suspect that this is not a limitation of Lumion as I have configured Lumion to run on an Nvida GPU on my laptop, and this is a limitation of the Nvidia drivers.  So Lumion can switch between GPU's when one card is an Intel integrated card and not two separate Nvidia stand alone GPU cards.

Can you confirm my results?  I have been fairly exhaustive in my testing and want to make sure that there is not somehting that I am missing as a configuration setting in Lumion as I have played with every GPU setting available in the Nvidia 3D Settings menu and the operating system.

[peterm]

Hi mba

Thanks for the information on your tests with multiple cards. 

Just to double-check before replying further.  You refer to monitors as in more than one.  Are you running each monitor separately from each of the cards, that is one monitor from the Titan, and one from the K4000?

[mba]

I only ran the sets tests with the monitors coming out of one card, either the K4000 or the Titan.  I don't think you can run dual monitors with the monitors running into separate cards.  I haven't ever tried that before though.

[peterm]

You can. 

Connect one monitor to one card, and the other monitor to the other card.  So in this sort of setup, you will be able to dedicate Lumion to one card such as the Titan, and run other applications on the K4000.  Lumion can then render whilst working on other tasks.

[mba]

Ha well I will give that a try, and report back with the results.

[peterm]

Hi

Yes, please let us know how it goes.

[mba]

Yes it worked.  With a K4000 and a Titan I was able to dedicate which GPU Lumion was using.  However, I should point out that it only used the GPU that was driving the monitor that Lumion was running on.

So for example when I specified which GPU Lumion was to use it would still only use the GPU that was driving the screen Lumion was on.  So to get Lumion running on the GPU I wanted I had to move Lumion over the the screen that was being driven by that particular GPU.

I confirmed this by disabling the GPU specific settings in the nVidia Manage 3D settings.  In this instance I had two different GPU driving their own screen and if you don't specify the GPU via the nVidia Manage 3D settings Lumion will just run on what is listed as the primary GPU no matter which screen you are on.

[peterm]

Hi mba

Good to hear you have the dual GPU option working for Lumion.

Thanks for clarification.  Lumion must be running on the monitor that the GPU is dedicated to, and that is assigned in the NVIDIA settings.

Having a K4000 and a Titan working from the same PC is an interesting combination, so hope you have a good PSU to drive both, especially during a rendering.  Let us know how things work out.

[mba]

Im running on one of the BOXX 4150 Extreme workstations and I can render Lumion frames at max settings and run Max/Revit at the same time without a slow down.  Work has never been better, ha.  The BOXX workstations are solid and can handle pretty much anything you throw at them.

[peterm]

  great.