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Version 2.0 Renderer Performance Comparisons
Macbook Pro 2011 with ATI 6750M
OpenCL GPU is 2.7X faster than Flam3.
OpenCL GPU is 3.6x faster than OpenCL CPU.
Macbook Pro 2009 with Nvidia 9600M
OpenCL GPU is 3.1X faster than Flam3.
OpenCL GPU is 4.4x faster than OpenCL CPU.
Macbook Air 2011 with no OpenCL usable GPU
Flam3 is 1.4x faster than OpenCL CPU.
Conclusions
Note that the Macbook Pro 2011 OpenCL GPU is 7.3X faster than Flam3 on a Macbook Air 2011. So, a better Mac makes a big difference in performance.
Flam3 is consistently faster than the OpenCL CPU renderer. The OpenCL density estimation algorithm is culprit here. But Flam3 is consistently slower than OpenCL GPU.
Fractal Architect v 2.0 has been released
Fractal Architect 2.0 is available on the Mac App Store as of January 23, 2012.
The theme of this release is: A Taste of Fractal Animation. Its not the full animation solution the product line is evolving toward, but there is a lot to play with now.
A secondary theme is: No More Flam3. The author of the Flam3 renderer requested that it be removed from the product. So its no longer bundled with Fractal Architect.
Fractal Architect can still interface to the Flam3 renderer, but you the user, will have to provide your own Flam3 copy for Fractal Architect. As Flam3 is GPL licensed, you have the complete freedom to do just that. But of course, this is totally optional, as Fractal Architect provides its own renderer(s).
Another secondary theme is: OpenCL based CPU & GPU Acceleration. For Macs with recent ATI & Nvidia GPUs, the Fractal Architect renderer can run on the GPU and a good deal faster than on the CPU. A Flam4CUDA renderer has always been part of Fractal Architect, but it was Nvidia only, so ATI users could not use it.
So with Fractal Architect, you can choose between 4 different renderers:
- OpenCL CPU (Flam4 compatible) – for all Intel Macs
- OpenCL GPU (Flam4 compatible) – for Intel Macs with recent discrete GPUs – both ATI & Nvidia – (Intel IvyBridge mid 2012 or so)
- Flam4 CUDA (Nvidia GPUs only)
- Flam3 CPU – if you provide your own renderer copy
In the future, Fractal Architect plans to support the Flam5 OpenCL renderer with support for true 3D, custom variations, and pure Xaos based topology.
(Note: Flam5 has been previously called Flam4OpenCL on PCs. The OpenCL renderer provided now with Fractal Architect is derived from the earlier Flam4CUDA which matches the Flam3 feature set.)
Version 1.3 released with new Lion features
Available on the Mac App Store.
New and Improved Features for Mac OS X Lion ================
1. Lion Full Screen mode support.
2. Lion Autosaving, File Versioning, Version Browser
3. Lion Autosaving preferences: Autosaving delay & Autosaving Enable/Disable (Enabled is the default).
New and Improved Features ================
1. New Big Feature: Flame Variants window allowing you to see how random changes affects your fractal.
Variants affect one or more of: colors, Transform weights, pre/post matrix tweaking, and mix-in other transforms.
You select the types of changes to be applied. Fractal Architect will create the variants for you.
Keep rolling the dice and play with Variations of Variations …
2. Improved Color Gradient Editor. It features a detachable fractal Preview pane. Its detached location is sticky.
You can stash good gradients in the Gradient Stash and switch between them with ease.
3. Editor windows have been resized to fit on better on 11 inch MacBook Air.
Bug Fixes =========
1. Fixed fatal crash that occasionally happened at the very end of rendering to an image file.
2. Fixed fatal crash when an thumbnail is dragged from OR dropped on the Welcome Screen -> Make New thumbnails.
3. Fixed fatal crash when a fractal preview window is closed, while the render for its fractal image has not yet finished.
4. Fixed QuickLook showing the wrong fractal during the opening animation.
Continue reading Version 1.3 released with new Lion features
Fractal Architect 2.0 – the next big release for Fractal Architect
This is just a quick little note that some big new features are being added to Fractal Architect. When the time is right, a complete list of new & improved features will be published. Its still a secret ….
Fractal Architect & Lion – Interim Report
Fractal Architect using the default flam3 renderer seems to run just fine under Lion. (If you find issues, please add a comment to the blog or send an email to support@fractalarchitect.net.)
CUDA on Lion ==========
This section only applies to those with Macs having an NVidia GPU and those who have installed the NVidia CUDA drivers so they can use Fractal Architect’s flam4 GPU accelerated renderer.
Apparently the CUDA version 3.2.17 that works best with Fractal Architect does not work under Lion. NVidia has posted a new driver update 4.0.21 that seems to work fine with Fractal Architect for Lion users . http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-40
The 4.0 CUDA driver series removed a very important capability that impacts users with MacBook Pros (2008/early 2009 model). The 3.2 CUDA drivers could use both the 9400 and 9600M GPU chips at the same time. Nvidia removed this dual GPU capability in CUDA 4 and introduced a serious driver bug where they incorrectly report the GPUs available to client programs like Fractal Architect.
To keep this simple, with Fractal Architect and Macbook Pro’s having both 9400M/9600M GPUs in them (2008/early 2009 model), you may only use the flam4 CUDA renderer with the slower 9400M GPU. (You choose this by setting the Apple System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Graphics: Better battery life). The “Higher Performance” setting will cause Fractal Architect to crash.
For all other Nvidia GPU powered Macs that are CUDA capable, there is a new Fractal Architect bug, where Fractal Architect shows a warning in the Rendering Options pane of the Fractal Architect Preferences. It is right beside the radio buttons for selecting either Flam3 external or Flam4 Internal renderer. (These are not visible unless you have a CUDA capable Nvidia GPU on your Mac AND have installed a CUDA driver.) Just click on the Flam4 option and the warning disappears and to enable the Flam4 renderer. Click on the Flam3 options to use the non GPU accelerated renderer.
Release Notes for Update 1.2.1
Available Now as a Mac App Store update for Fractal Architect!
Changes for Version 1.2.1
New and Improved Features ================
- Gallery contents can now be changed. Put your own favorites there.
- Added Export for Apophysis 7x (File -> Export for Apophysis 7x). Creates a flame file that Apophysis can read.
- Added + Linked button to Transforms table, which adds a new Transform that is linked to the currently selected transform by chaos. (The chaos weight from selected transform to new transform is 100% and 0% to all others.)
- Improved parsing of flame files created by Apophysis.
- Added chaos and linked transform tutorial to help manual.
- Rendered PNG files are no longer added to the File -> Open Recent list.
Bug Fixes =========
- Fixed the Flame “temporal_filter_type” XML attribute value to be “box” and not “ga” when defaulted.
- Fixed File -> Render Image to File using Flam4 GPU accelerated renderer with very high quality settings > 9,000.
- Fixed error logging from background thread.
- Fixed drag & drop from Preview window with new unsaved random flame, so that it drops a “randomFlame_nnn.flame” into Finder (was leaving Picture Clipping before).
- Fixed crash from spacebar press on Interpolated view (when no frame has been selected).
- Fixed interpolation/slider manipulation of these text fields on Triangle Editor.
Flame Params Tab: hue, highlight power, brightness, gamma,& vibrancy,
Dimension Tab: x, y, scale, zoom, rotation
Version 1.2.0 Update now available
Goal:
- Completely support all features of the flam3 renderer.
- Functional completeness for static fractal image creation.
- Prepare for fractal animation.
- Support for Fractal transform “chaos” (sometimes called “Xaos”) for default renderer.
- Support for all of the many flam3 render engine parameters.
- Drag and drop entire color maps from the Color editor. Color values now show the HTML color code. (You can edit those directly too).
Welcome!
Welcome to the Fractal Architect blog. This is a place for us to post ongoing news and tips about using Fractal Architect.