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OpenCL is a platform for harnessing GPU power for activities other than real-time 3D rendering to screen, also known as GPGPU. Unlike NVIDIA's CUDA platform, OpenCL is open source and can be ported to anything with processing power. So drivers are available for CPUs as well, both from Intel and AMD.
A popular tool for testing OpenCL performance is LuxMark. We haven't run this on any workstations before, so we don't have comparisons amongst our past reviews. But we have other past experience with version 3.1 of LuxMark. We ran the Sala scene on CPU only, GPU only, and then both.
It's obvious that the AMD Radeon Pro Duo has loads of OpenCL grunt available, way more than the eight cores of the AMD Ryzen 7 CPU. From previous experience elsewhere, we can also reveal that the Radeon Pro Duo's OpenCL performance is not far off what NVIDIA's Quadro P6000 can provide, and that costs over £5,000, more than five times as much.
So there's a huge amount of processing power available here, as long as you have the software to take advantage of it. Fortunately, AMD is beginning to have that covered.
LuxMark is a synthetic benchmark – it doesn't correspond directly to an application actually used in a production environment. GPGPU has shown potential for literally decades, ever since 3D graphics accelerators hit the mainstream in the 1990s.
But the concept never quite became common for 3D rendering. AMD hopes to change that with its ProRender plugin. We wanted to see how much benefit it gives, so we loaded one of the Blender demo scenes – the “Famous BMW” scene. We then rendered it with CPU only and ProRender.
The difference in performance is nothing short of staggering. Using 50 passes for ProRender, the later was 34 times quicker than just the CPU, and even when we increased the passes to 800 to improve quality, ProRender was still quicker than the CPU alone.
However, if you take a look at the screengrabs below, it will be clear that the scene doesn't look the same with the two renderers, and in fact the CPU version is better quality than the ProRender version until the number of passes go up to 400 or so.
We can't profess to being Blender experts, so not all the correct materials have been used in the ProRender version because these need to be reassigned. There are also some strange flecks that an expert could probably iron out with the right render settings.
Overall, though, since the speed gains are so enormous, the potential is clear. These kinds of gains with Cinema 4D, Maya and 3ds Max are likely to be very welcome indeed amongst serious 3D content creation professionals.
It’s very expensive for a ryzen based system. You can build a standard sized mini tower with a 1070 core at 1000€ less !
Taking ~£ prices:
1800x: £450
Mobo: £110
Ram: £250
nvme: £240
Cooler: £60-95 (unsure if it’s a h60 or h90 140mm from the pics)
SFF plat 750w psu: £150
32gb Radeon pro duo: £999
Windows 10 pro: £150
Case: ?? (50-75 conservative estimate? sff cases tend to be pricey.)
Total: ~£2400 (€2700 or so)
Actual price: ~£3100 (about €3500)
Then whatever you value build / 3 year warranty at. I’m not sure I value them at over £700/€800 though. Price seems excessive for a weak motherboard (biostar aren’t exactly top tier) and no large storage.
And that’s just off the shelf prices from ocuk, I’m sure I could go bargain hunting and get everything a little cheaper, probably settle around £2200 for the same components. Hell, you can grab windows 10 pro keys on the likes of reddit for about £20, that’s over a £100 saving alone. Then factor in how much cheaper buying bulk components with no retail tax / vat on them is, I’d say they’re charging well over the cost per unit for these.
I’d say it’s close on £1000 overpriced with its current components, with a gpu less than half the cost of the one it comes with, I’d say it’d be more like £1500 cheaper.
Armari’s systems are expensive, but take a look at that chassis. It’s a custom design that’s better than what the blue chip workstation manufacturers have to offer. The company also offers support for professional applications, which you definitely won’t get buying the components yourself. I think one thing in particulary you have wrong in the pricing above is the PSU. It’s actually pretty pricey because getting the kind of industrial strength PSU in 750W form and that small is expensive – it’s a server PSU. That’s an area I know Armari is looking into. You also forgot to add VAT! The price quoted is inc VAT. It’s £2,599 ex VAT, so you’re only paying a £200 premium ex VAT for the chassis, server PSU, and 3D content creation-focused service and support. Professionals would pay that premium to have a system they can trust.