Top 5 best GPU-accelerated rendering software to try in 2023

The advent of GPU rendering has made a new mark in the rendering process. GPU acceleration reduces rendering time many times compared to using CPU rendering. Because of those speed advantages, more and more GPU render engines are being developed. Out of that bunch of GPU render engines, here are the 5 best GPU-accelerated rendering software you should try in 2023. Let’s find out!

What are GPU render engines?

GPU render engines or GPU-accelerated rendering softwares are both software-only concepts built around the principles of light physics, mathematics, and visual perception. The rendering engine works on the GPU card platform. 

GPU rendering engines are of two types, single-GPU, and multi-GPU rendering engines. Some rendering engines use only one GPU card to render. It is called single-GPU render engines; those rendering engines that use multiple GPU cards at the same time to speed up rendering are called multi-GPU render engines.

Top 5 best GPU-accelerated rendering software to try in 2023

Redshift 

Redshift is a powerful, flexible, and customizable GPU-accelerated rendering engine. It is a biased rendering engine that lets you fool the way images work, making it one of the fastest rendering engines available today. 

Redshift integrates with industry-standard CG software and includes a number of strong features. For high-quality rendering, it also features complex, advanced shading networks, and texturing capabilities. Redshift supports multi-GPU rendering, thus you can use several GPU cards concurrently to speed up Redshift rendering projects.

OS support: 

• Microsoft Windows: 64-bit Windows 10
• Linux: 64-bit distribution with Glibc 2.17 or later
• Apple macOS: Big Sur (11.5) through Monterey (12.5) and macOS 13 Ventura

3D Applications Supported: Maya, 3Ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Kanata, Blender. 

Recommended Requirements

• 16 GB of RAM or more
• Core i7 or Xeon equivalent, 3.0GHz or better
• For Windows and Linux: NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 7.0 or higher and 8 GB of VRAM or more. We recommend an NVIDIA Quadro, Titan or GeForce RTX GPU for hardware-accelerated ray tracing
• For macOS: Apple M1 16 GB or AMD “Navi” or “Vega” GPU or later with 8 GB VRAM or more. 
• Multiple GPUs

Price:

There are two options for you to buy a Redshift license: a monthly plan and an annual plan. With the monthly plan, you will only pay €46.74 for a month. The annual cost is €22.85/month. It’s convenient and economical.

OctaneRender 

OctaneRender is a rendering software developed by OTOY. Octane is the fastest and most spectrally accurate GPU rendering software. Unlike Redshift, Octane is an unbiased rendering engine that delivers quality results along with excellent rendering speed.

Octane renderer includes a wide range of complicated capabilities that support OSL script and volumetric shading and make it easy to learn, making it useful for a wide range of applications. With its speed and realism, Octane is the rendering engine used by many VFX designers in their projects; even film directors and studios do not ignore the excellent rendering engine. This great.

OS: 

• Microsoft Windows: 64-bit Windows 10 up to. 
• Linux: Linux (64-bit) is built and tested on Ubuntu 10.04 using GCC 4.4.3 or late. 
• Apple macOS: macOS® 10.11.x or later, and it requires CUDA driver version 9.1 or later

Recommended Requirements

• 8-core CPU
• 16 GB RAM
• A CUDA-enabled card with at least 2 GB VRAM, and 10GB video memory of NVIDIA GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU, GTX, Quadro, Titan.
• Multiple GPUs

Octane requires that the workstation be equipped with an NVIDIA® CUDA®-capable video card. When using GTX Geforce cards, Octane has high performance and fast speed, according to OTOY. However, when compared to the more expensive Quadro or Tesla, GTX Geforce has less VRAM, allowing you to combine GTX 3080 with Quadro 6000. Or mix GTX 3090 cards together, but NVLink is required to assemble the VRAM.

3D Applications Supported: Standalone Engine, ArchiCAD, AutoCAD, Blender, Cinema 4D, DAZ Studio, Houdini, Lightwave, Maya, Modo, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, Softimage.

Price: 

Previously, you could only buy an annual plan or two years, but Octane has added a monthly subscription option for users. This is more convenient for 3D creators. You can purchase a monthly license for €23.95/month or a yearly license for €19.99/month.

V-Ray 

V-ray, created by the Chaos Group, is a widely used rendering engine in the VFX and 3D animation industries. V-ray is a GPU-based 3D renderer that delivers fast, realistic, and responsive results in the process. Unlike other renderers, V-Ray quickly processes results by using up all your GPUs or CPUs without changing the results. It is used in film projects, shows, games, advertising, architecture, etc.

V-ray is a ray tracing renderer that provides a rich set of useful tools like scatters and decals for easy material mapping to create all kinds of professional designs, VFX, and animations. 

OS: 

• Windows 10, 11 64-bit
• macOS (Apple macOS 10.15 to 12).
• Linux (x64)

Recommended Requirements: 

• Graphics card recommendation: NVIDIA, NVIDIA RTX, Hybrid Rendering (running CUDA on GPU and CPU).
• System memory (RAM): 8GB (minimum) – 16GB RAM or more (recommended).
• Multiple GPUs

3D Applications Supported: 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Maya, Sketchup, Revit, Rhino, Hounidi, Nuke, Unreal, Blender, Standalone.

Price: 

V-ray has many different prices for you. If you buy a license for educational purposes, you will be offered a promotion for $12.42 per month but will buy a one-year package. As for commercial purposes, V-ray will have three different prices. Monthly rates range from $77.90 to $119.40, and year-round rates begin at $38.90.

Buying a license by the month is also cheaper than having to buy a yearly package. It is more convenient and easier for 3D artists and creators.

Arnold GPU 

Arnold is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing rendering engine that helps 3D artists deliver beautiful and predictable results. It is an unbiased render engine that focused on usability and stability for large production workflows. Arnold provides high-quality results with high-speed rendering. 

Because of its good stability and optimization, Arnold is used in many different industries with large products such as movies, games, and visualization,… In addition, Arnold is also a flexible and easy renderer. Easily switch from CPU rendering to GPU rendering.

OS: 

• Windows (10 or later) 
• Linux with at least Glibc 2.17 and libstdc++ 4.8.5 (GCC 4.8.5)
• macOS (Apple macOS 10.13 or later).

Recommended Requirements: 

• Graphics card recommendation: Optix™ denoiser requires an NVidia GPU with CUDA™ Compute Capability 5.0 and above. Recommended using the 551.09 (Quadro), and 511.09 (GeForce).
• System memory (RAM): 8GB (minimum) – 16GB RAM or more (recommended).
• Multiple GPUs

3D Applications Supported: 3DS Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D, Katana, Maya. 

Price: 

Arnold has up to three choices for 3D designers and animators. There are three plans available: a three-year plan for $1,140, an annual plan for $380, and a monthly plan for $50. Distribute packages for customers to easily choose according to their needs.

Cycles GPU

Cycles and Eevees are the two renderers in Blender. You can use GPU rendering with both Eevees and Cycles. However, with Eevee, you can only use the single-GPU render engine. With Cycles, you can use multiple GPUs and also have the ability to switch between GPU and CPU.

GPU Cycles is a ray-tracing-based GPU rendering engine with artistic controls and flexible shading nodes that produces exceptional results for production rendering. Cycles have an intuitive, easy-to-use shading system that’s easy for beginners to grasp. With Blender 3.0, Cycles also now offers exceptional speed and real-time denoising via Nvidia Optix or Intel Open Image Denoise.

OS: 

• Windows, Windows 8.1, 10, and 11 
• Linux
• macOS 10.13 Intel · 11.0 Apple Silicon

Recommended Requirements: 

• 64-bit eight-core CPU
• 32 GB RAM
• 2560×1440 display
• Three-button mouse or pen+tablet
• Graphics card with 8 GB RAM; NVIDIA GeForce 400 and newer cards, AMD GCN 1st generation, and newer cards, and Intel Haswell architecture and newer cards are recommended.

3D Applications Supported: Blender 

Price: Free 

Do you know which of these five GPU-accelerated render engines is the fastest? Many 3D artists have experimented to find the fastest renderer with the highest image quality. Let’s see which renderer it is below.

Redshift and Octane are the best GPU-accelerated rendering software

The two most important criteria for evaluatingbest GPU-accelerated rendering software are speed and image quality. Both Redshift and Octane ensure both of those criteria. 

1. Speed rendering 

Octane and Reshift are both faster and more powerful rendering engines than the others.

When executing the same scene with Redshift and other rendering engines on the market, Redshift executes faster and delivers results sooner. This is a very important factor for projects with tight deadlines.

Octane, even though it is an unbiased renderer, still guarantees render times, making it the fastest renderer available today. A lot of VFX artists enjoy using Octane for their projects. Because their projects are all large and have strict requirements on completion time, after many changes, all VFX artists confirmed that Octane was the renderer that met their requirements.

2. About image quality

It can be said that if Arnold is the champion for CPU rendering image quality, then Redshift and Octane do well in GPU rendering. They provide consistent quality, much better than Arnold, Blender, or Vray GPUs. Since the Arnold and Vray GPUs were developed recently, they will not be as complete as Redshift, which has been in development for a long time.

Conclusion 

Redshift, Octane, Cycles GPU, Arnold GPU, and V-Ray GPU are the top five best GPU-accelerated rendering software packages that we recommend you try right away in 2023. And now these GPU renderers are also available in bundles. A monthly plan makes it easier, more cost-effective, and more efficient for creators, 3D designers, and animators to purchase licenses.

In addition, we reaffirm once again that Redshift and Octane are still the two fastest and highest-quality renderers available today.

See More:

What are Render farms that support Blender GPU rendering

Arnold GPU vs CPU – which one should you choose for your project?