Supported Graphics Cards documentation is still confusing #65962

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opened 2019-06-20 17:59:36 +02:00 by Gavin Scott · 5 comments

"My video card doesn't work in Cycles but the web site says it should be supported." - FAQ

  1. Can we perhaps add a link to the Cycles GPU requirements manual page (https:*docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html) in the Supported graphics cards section of the Blender Requirements page at https:*www.blender.org/download/requirements/ ?

Something like:

"The Cycles renderer has additional requirements if you want to use GPU accelerated rendering and they are described here: "

  1. Additionally, on the Cycles documentation page referenced above, the AMD requirements are especially difficult to interpret. It refers to "GCN 2.0" but as far as I can tell there's no such thing. Referring to the Wikipedia page, it seems that there are GCN generations 1st, 2nd, etc., and OpenCL Compute capabilities 1.2, 2.0, etc. and I'm guessing it's really OpenCL compute 2.0 that we're talking about here? Or is it really Gen 2? Gen 1 is described as "OpenCL 1.2 (2.0 possible)" which seems ambiguous as well.

And honestly that Wikipedia page is awful., It uses different fields to describe every generation/series of cards, sometimes listing GCN Gen, sometimes listing OpenCL capability, sometimes neither, and sending users to that page is hardly going to result in a good experience. However, I can see there's no hard cutoff date between generations, etc. so I can understand this was the only easy way out :)

"My video card doesn't work in Cycles but the web site says it should be supported." - FAQ 1) Can we perhaps add a link to the Cycles GPU requirements manual page (https:*docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html) in the Supported graphics cards section of the Blender Requirements page at https:*www.blender.org/download/requirements/ ? Something like: "The Cycles renderer has additional requirements if you want to use GPU accelerated rendering and they are described here: <link>" 2) Additionally, on the Cycles documentation page referenced above, the AMD requirements are especially difficult to interpret. It refers to "GCN 2.0" but as far as I can tell there's no such thing. Referring to the Wikipedia page, it seems that there are GCN generations 1st, 2nd, etc., and OpenCL Compute capabilities 1.2, 2.0, etc. and I'm guessing it's really OpenCL compute 2.0 that we're talking about here? Or is it really Gen 2? Gen 1 is described as "OpenCL 1.2 (2.0 possible)" which seems ambiguous as well. And honestly that Wikipedia page is awful., It uses different fields to describe every generation/series of cards, sometimes listing GCN Gen, sometimes listing OpenCL capability, sometimes neither, and sending users to that page is hardly going to result in a good experience. However, I can see there's no hard cutoff date between generations, etc. so I can understand this was the only easy way out :)
Author

Added subscriber: @GavinScott

Added subscriber: @GavinScott

This issue was referenced by blender/documentation@5169

This issue was referenced by blender/documentation@5169

Added subscriber: @Blendify

Added subscriber: @Blendify

Changed status from 'Open' to: 'Resolved'

Changed status from 'Open' to: 'Resolved'
Aaron Carlisle self-assigned this 2019-06-21 18:06:45 +02:00

Can we perhaps add a link to the Cycles GPU requirements manual page (https:*docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html) in the Supported graphics cards section of the Blender Requirements page at https:*www.blender.org/download/requirements/ ?

Done :)

And honestly that Wikipedia page is awful., It uses different fields to describe every generation/series of cards, sometimes listing GCN Gen, sometimes listing OpenCL capability, sometimes neither, and sending users to that page is hardly going to result in a good experience. However, I can see there's no hard cutoff date between generations, etc. so I can understand this was the only easy way out :)

It is rather complicated however, AMD is a bit complicated and some cards within the same generation have different GCN generations.
I changed the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Core_Next#Iterations which should be a bit simpler to understand.


I also cleaned up the GPU rendering page, see rBM5169.

> Can we perhaps add a link to the Cycles GPU requirements manual page (https:*docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html) in the Supported graphics cards section of the Blender Requirements page at https:*www.blender.org/download/requirements/ ? Done :) > And honestly that Wikipedia page is awful., It uses different fields to describe every generation/series of cards, sometimes listing GCN Gen, sometimes listing OpenCL capability, sometimes neither, and sending users to that page is hardly going to result in a good experience. However, I can see there's no hard cutoff date between generations, etc. so I can understand this was the only easy way out :) It is rather complicated however, AMD is a bit complicated and some cards within the same generation have different GCN generations. I changed the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Core_Next#Iterations which should be a bit simpler to understand. ------------------- I also cleaned up the GPU rendering page, see rBM5169.
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Reference: infrastructure/blender-org#65962
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