Rendering and GPU acceleration

[Not An Artist]

How much of an impact does the GPU acceleration have on how long it takes to render a file with AS9pro?

I ask because I am considering setting up a small render farm with 2 to 4 Mac minis. The new Mac minis (with 2.6 i7) have Cinebench and Geekbench score almost identical to my current iMac. But, they lack a GPU and thus score much lower on Open CL.

Would the Mac mini be a good option to use as a rendering machine for Anime Studio 9? I'm not so concerned with speed on each machine, but the convenience of having a couple of machines with AS9 installed that I can use for rendering, thus increasing my output.


(BTW this may seem like a similar thread, but my original one got deleted somehow, as did my next one)

[slowtiger]

I deleted it because it looked like spam: several links to pages not your own, and a question without a real answer. You should be able to see it yourself: a machine without GPU can't be very good at rendering.

[InfoCentral]

And OpenCL isn't really being supported. What Adobe and others are supporting is nVidia CUDA standard which means you will need a nVidia graphics card and not an ATI. Can't find any information on what standard they are basing their GPU acceleration on. The major ones are based on CUDA, OpenCL, or DirectX rendering. Anyone know what standard ASP uses?

[J. Baker]

How much of an impact does the GPU acceleration have on how long it takes to render a file with AS9pro?

None.

I believe the viewport for editing has gpu/hardware acceleration but the rendering of an animation is software only. For rendering, best get a fast cpu and good amount of memory.