Hi, since 2.69 it is possible to activate OpenCL rendering in Blender.
It is a bit hidden/tricky to activate but here you are:
EDIT: Since 2.75 OpenCL is activated for AMD GPU.
If you want to activate for all devices change environment variable to
CYCLES_OPENCL_SPLIT_KERNEL_TEST=1
If you want to use old mega kernel use environment variable in the following way:
Windows:
Win Key + R type CMD press enter
go to your blender folder. ex: cd C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender
press enter and then type: set CYCLES_OPENCL_TEST=all
And now: start Blender with blender.exe
Inside blender go to File -> User preferences -> System
Under compute device select OpenCL and then your card
Close the preferences windows and go to the render panel and select device: GPU Compute.
LINUX:
Open xterm, change directory to your blender folder with “cd”.
Type “export CYCLES_OPENCL_TEST=all”
Enter
Start Blender with “./blender”
All without quotes.
Inside blender go to File -> User preferences -> System
Under compute device select OpenCL and then your card
Close the preferences windows and go to the render panel and select device: GPU Compute.
OSX:
Open a Terminal (e.g. via CMD+Spacebar to open spotlight, search for “Terminal”)
cd into the folder where you put Blender
“export CYCLES_OPENCL_TEST=all”
Run Blender via “./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender”
Procedure from DingTo
Please post your OS, AMD card name and driver version to help other user.
Keep in mind that nvidia Cards are working from the beginning but are slower with OpenCL. So it is not needed to put Nvidia cards here!
I tested 1055T, Juniper (5770) and Tahiti (7950) on Windows 8 with the 13.12 drivers and a tungerz build from GraphicAll. Didn’t work, testing on Linux next.
Also, the volume absorption and subsurface scattering appears to work as well, but not the the volume scatter (latest vs13 build from builder.blender.org).
As things stand right now OpenCL on GPU is no faster than on the OpenCL CPU, or the normal CPU kernel. You can try running both the GPU and the CPU at the same time with OpenCL and that might be faster, however the 8670D isn’t exactly overflowing with abundant compute power.
Only way to know really would be to try. Please report any results here.
With a good card (200$ +) a GPU is much faster in some cases.
It seams Cycles is not optimized for OpenCL at the moment so there is not much advantage.
One thing is may be interesting, a CPU speak also OpenCL, you can render with CPU and GPU at the same time.
@Writer’s Block, I heard they kick the MinGW build, try the Experimental VS 2013 build.
Think of OpenCL as a open non proprietary standard for parallel computing that kind of works like Nvidia’s CUDA but instead it should eventually work for all processors including Nvidia, AMD, FPGAs, other GPUs and CPUs. If you have got a 12 core CPU it can use those other cores also if the software is set up to use them! OpenCL is kind of in its infancy and it is just gaining momentum. OpenCL is being promoted by the Khronos group the same people that do OpenGL for 3D graphics and OpenGL ES for 3D graphics on mobile devices.
@octol: nice renders! btw, your posts only have to me moderated for the first 5 or so posts, then you can post away. i think its supposed to be a spam-check thing.