For the last 18 months I’ve been without a GPU which, understandably, makes DAE-ifying images somewhat time consuming.
I just tried out one of the Cloud Gaming PC offerings - it wasn’t very good. Although it reported really well on some tests using a 2070 equivalent GPU it was next to useless as it only let you install games from Steam and/or Epic - not what I was after at all, really.
After my beta trial of the realy nice but useless offering I did a little shopping around today discovered a Russian company who offer a full Windows 10 desktop with the equivalent of a 6GB NVIDIA GTX 1060 class GPU (something in that region anyway). The machine also has a good 4 core CPU, 28 GB main memory and 400GB disk. All this is far better than my aging, ailing laptop could ever hope to aspire to in terms of raw power.
OK - it’s not a RTX-3080 but to me this is potentially heaven…
I’m running some tests on the machine which I’ve got for a month for the princely sum of £7.50 between 10PM and 10AM UK time (when the Russians are sleeping). You can also buy the thing by the hour at any time of the day but that’s more expensive (and I’m poor). The middle of the night is actually when I usually work anyway so it’s no real issue as far as I’m concerned. If I want to render out some video (I will) then nightime is perfect for doing it anyway.
One issue with a Cloud PC is of course that you need good Internet. Mine’s not great but then again I’m not bothered about how many FPS some game plays at (well, a little maybe, I’ll touch on that at the end)
While typing this I’ve had the Russian machine rendering out a test image using Artistic AI with GPU Power - it took about 40 mins. I then tried the same test on my laptop - which estimated 21 hours for the same job, needless to say - I aborted that run
If you’ve never tried Artistic AI, well, it’s the most demanding thing you can ask DAE to do - it really puts any computer through some serious processing. It is also capable of producing some of the most interesting effects but it takes FOREVER (without a GPU)
This all looks very promising, I’ll write up a full report once I’ve had a proper play with it. I should also be able to produce a video tutorial showing how to get the Cloud PC running with CUDA (I suppose that’s a little bit of a spoiler - yep, this machine is GPU-ing with CUDA).
I’ve only had the thing for a little over four hours and there are some issues. The main one being that the PC is Russian - WIndows is Russian, Chrome is Russian - you get the idea If you don’t speak the language (not even slightly) its a bit of a nightmare switching it to English (or anything other than Russian) - I’ll do a video on that as well…
OK - gaming and FPS - well, I do have an interest in Gaming but I’m more on the supply end of things though (developing stuff to make games). I keep abreast of the latest RPGs - don’t understand why eveyone wants to run around with guns shooting people, gimme a sword + spell book any day. To this end I purchased Divinity Original SIn 2 as its very well regarded. I have to play it with minimal settings at 1366x768 - and it chugs, The Russian machine runs at full HD with everything cranked up to max settings - a nice diversion from my usual PC activities…