GPU rendering just as quickly as CPU?

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1

Hello. I’ve been trying out rendering on a laptop I just bought. A simple test scene, Suzzane inside a box with an emission plane above. I set GPU (User Settings -> CUDA -> GeForce 840m) and set it to GPU Compute, but render times are pretty much identical. I’m guessing it’s working because it’s rendering one tile at a time, and increasing tile size increase render speed (but GPU at 256x256 is still as fast as CPU at 16x16), so what gives? Is there anything else I can do to increase GPU speed or is this one of those cases where GPU is on par with CPU? I can’t seem to find anything on the 'net.

My specs:

  • Processor: Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • GPU: NVidia GeForce 840m
2

Notebook graphics solutions (the “m” after your graphics card’s name stands for “mobile”…) are nowhere near as powerful as their desktop counterparts, as they need to be very low on energy consumption and heat creation.

Therefore it’s not that surprising that a notebook-class graphics solution is only just on par with a decent CPU. Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do about that.

3

I see. Thank you for your kind reply.