WHAT’S THE BEST FIT FOR YOUR NEEDS?

The best fit in your situation depends on what features help you in your daily work. Time savings do not come from just the final render time. For me, render time isn’t an issue since I do mostly stills and render the final image on a render farm. Real-time feedback does however make a big difference for me in the creative process. And although I have a rather fast CPU, the GPU renderers really shine here.

One other thing to keep in mind is how dependent you are on others in your daily work. When you work as a freelancer for studios it might be a good idea to adapt the tools that they are using.

The best way to find out what option really fits your needs is to try it out for yourself. All of the five rendering options that we covered have a trial version available to play around with. Make sure you do not have two GPU renderers installed simultaneously because that will lead to freezing or crashes.

Note: for testing I used a 2019 Macbook Pro with an 8-core Intel i9 CPU and an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M. The Intel processor is fast but also produces a lot of heat while rendering; fans start spinning at full speed, which is pretty annoying. The GPU can do a lot more work before it needs cooling. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the new Apple Silicon when they are available with more memory.