V-Ray GPU supports AMD hardware through the HIP platform, offering artists increased hardware flexibility, competitive 16 GB VRAM options, and industry-leading performance for out-of-core rendering.
Key Takeaways:
- Expanded choice: Official support now includes AMD RDNA2, RDNA3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA4 GPU generations.
- High-value hardware: The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT provides a professional-grade 16 GB VRAM buffer for a $599 SEP.
- Out-of-core advantage: In specific heavy-texture scenarios, AMD hardware outperformed competitors by over 2.4x.
- Production-ready: V-Ray 7 Update 3 delivers solid performance and consistent output on modern Radeon cards.
This article will cover:
- Why AMD GPU rendering matters?
- Bringing V-Ray GPU to AMD with HIP and HIPRT
- Supported AMD GPUs and requirements
- Meet the Radeon RX 9070 XT
- Performance benchmarks
- Why out-of-core rendering matters?
Why AMD GPU rendering matters?
Choosing a GPU for rendering is one of the biggest hardware decisions for V-Ray users. More hardware choice gives artists more freedom in how they build their rendering workflows. Some users already own AMD hardware. Others are building new workstations and want a competitive 16 GB GPU without stepping into a much higher price bracket.
Adding AMD support gives V-Ray GPU users more flexibility in how they build and scale their rendering systems.
In our testing so far, the results are encouraging. Performance is solid overall, most scenes render correctly and match the expected output, and AMD shows particularly strong behavior in out-of-core workloads.
© Ian Spriggs
Yuan Portrait by Ian Spriggs, rendered with V-Ray GPU on an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
Bringing V-Ray GPU to AMD with HIP and HIPRT
Bringing V-Ray GPU to AMD hardware meant validating a new backend, testing output consistency across a broad scene set, and measuring performance in both in-core and out-of-core rendering scenarios.
On AMD, V-Ray GPU runs through HIP, AMD’s compute platform for GPU workloads. We also evaluated HIPRT, AMD’s ray tracing acceleration path, which is still a work in progress.
The most important result is straightforward: V-Ray GPU now runs well on modern Radeon consumer hardware. In our current test set, HIP delivered the strongest and most consistent AMD results overall.
Supported AMD GPUs and requirements
V-Ray GPU HIP currently supports several recent AMD GPU generations across both consumer Radeon and selected Radeon PRO products:
- Supported generations: RDNA2, RDNA3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA4.
- Recommended: RDNA3 and above.
- Minimum supported driver: AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.2.2.
Currently supported AMD GPUs include:
- RDNA2: AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, AMD Radeon PRO W6800, AMD Radeon PRO V620.
- RDNA3: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, AMD Radeon PRO W7900, AMD Radeon PRO W7900 Dual Slot, AMD Radeon PRO W7800, AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, AMD Radeon PRO W7700, AMD Radeon RX 7600, AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE.
- RDNA 3.5: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics, AMD Radeon(TM) 8060S Graphics.
- RDNA4: AMD Radeon RX 9060, AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, AMD Radeon RX 9070, AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700.
Meet the Radeon RX 9070 XT
For this round of testing, I focused on the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, a recent consumer GPU that sits in a particularly interesting place for GPU rendering.
AMD lists it with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, a 256-bit memory interface, and up to 640 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD announced the card at a $599 SEP, although retail pricing varies by board partner and region.
Meet the Radeon RX 9070 XT
That combination makes it especially relevant for artists:
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16 GB of VRAM is enough to make the card viable for serious rendering workloads.
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It is a consumer-class GPU, not a workstation card.
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It is the kind of hardware many users could realistically consider for a V-Ray GPU system.
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It offers a compelling value angle compared with more expensive high-end alternatives.
In other words, this is not a niche hardware target. It is exactly the kind of GPU that makes AMD support meaningful to a broader group of V-Ray users.
For users who need more memory, AMD also offers the Radeon AI PRO R9700 with 32 GB of VRAM. It is a more expensive option, but it opens the door to larger scenes and heavier memory workloads while staying within the same broader AMD ecosystem.
Test system and methodology
The Windows test system used for these benchmarks was configured as follows:
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CPU: AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-Core CPU.
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Memory: 256 GB T-Force DDR4-3600.
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Motherboard: ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha.
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GPUs: ASUS Prime GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB and ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT 16 GB.
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Power supply: EVGA SUPERNOVA 2000W.
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Case: Custom-built open-frame case.
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CPU cooler: ASUS ProArt LC 420 mm.
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V-Ray version: Official V-Ray 7 Update 3 build.
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OS: Windows 11 25H2.
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NVIDIA driver: Studio Driver 595.79.
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AMD driver: AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.2.2.
For Apple testing, I used a 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max, configured with the 40-core GPU and 48 GB of unified memory.
The goal of this testing was not just to compare vendors, but to compare the active backend options currently available on each platform:
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NVIDIA: CUDA and RTX.
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AMD: HIP, with HIPRT still a work in progress.
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Apple: Metal, MetalRT, and MetalXPU.
All results shown here are based on the official V-Ray 7 update 3 build and the current drivers available at the time of testing.
V-Ray GPU performance
Across the current scene set, AMD performance is solid overall. Most scenes rendered without issues, output matched expected results, and the RX 9070 XT delivered competitive performance for a 16 GB consumer GPU.
For in-core scenes, the RTX 5080 remains ahead in most cases, followed by the AMD RX 9070 XT with very respectable performance.
A few key observations from the broader comparison set:
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On AMD, HIP delivered the strongest results in the current dataset, while HIPRT remains under active evaluation.
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On NVIDIA, RTX is consistently faster than CUDA in the tested scenes.
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On Apple, MetalRT is sometimes faster and sometimes slower than Metal, which suggests that more tuning and evaluation are still needed there.
Why out-of-core rendering matters?
Out-of-core rendering is where the AMD story becomes especially interesting.
V-Ray GPU
In V-Ray GPU, the Use System Memory for Textures option moves texture memory pressure into system memory, freeing up VRAM and allowing larger scenes to render even on GPUs with limited local memory.
This matters because many real-world production scenes are not neatly constrained to the GPU's onboard memory budget.
And this is exactly where the RX 9070 XT stood out. In the out-of-core scenes tested here, the RX 9070 XT was not just competitive. In several cases, it clearly outperformed the RTX 5080, with the largest gaps reaching multiple times faster in the current dataset.
For artists working with heavier scenes, large texture sets, or limited VRAM budgets, that is a very practical advantage.
For the Metal tests, the 16-inch MacBook Pro I tested did not have enough shared memory to render the scene.
Final thoughts
Supporting AMD GPUs in V-Ray GPU is an important step forward for users who want more flexibility in how they build their rendering systems.
The current results already show a strong foundation:
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V-Ray GPU runs well on modern Radeon hardware.
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Output consistency is solid in the tested scenes.
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The RX 9070 XT is a credible consumer GPU option for V-Ray GPU rendering.
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Out-of-core rendering is one of the most promising areas for AMD in the current results.
At the same time, this is still an evolving story. HIPRT remains a work in progress for the time being.
We will follow up with progress on HIPRT performance when it is production-ready.
Even at this stage, though, the big picture is clear: AMD GPU rendering in V-Ray GPU is here, and it already gives artists a credible, practical, and compelling new hardware path to consider.