By VRLA Tech  ·  3D Rendering  ·  April 2026

V-Ray is one of the most widely deployed production renderers in architecture, product visualization, and VFX. It supports both CPU and GPU rendering, giving studios the flexibility to match hardware investment to project requirements. V-Ray GPU rendering on NVIDIA CUDA is significantly faster than CPU rendering for scenes that fit in VRAM. V-Ray CPU rendering scales with core count and handles scenes of any complexity. Understanding which mode fits your workflow determines the right hardware investment.

V-Ray CPU vs GPU rendering: choosing your mode

V-Ray CPU (V-Ray, formerly V-Ray RT CPU) runs on all available CPU cores. It handles scenes of unlimited complexity since system RAM provides effectively unlimited scene capacity. Ray-traced results are accurate. Render times scale proportionally with core count — twice the cores means approximately half the render time. For scenes with dense geometry, very high-resolution displacement, and many millions of polygons, CPU rendering often handles what GPU cannot fit in VRAM.

V-Ray GPU (V-Ray GPU CUDA or RTX) runs on NVIDIA GPUs and is significantly faster than CPU rendering on scenes that fit in GPU VRAM. V-Ray GPU supports out-of-core rendering when scenes exceed VRAM, but performance degrades substantially in that mode. For most architectural visualization and product rendering workflows where scenes are manageable in size, V-Ray GPU delivers production output 3–8× faster than CPU rendering.

VRAM requirements for V-Ray GPU

CPU for V-Ray CPU rendering

V-Ray CPU rendering scales nearly linearly with core count. The AMD Threadripper PRO 9995WX with 96 cores renders V-Ray CPU scenes in approximately one-sixth the time of a 16-core workstation. For studios that primarily use V-Ray CPU for production rendering — either by choice or because scenes exceed GPU VRAM — core count is the primary investment. The Ryzen 9 9950X at 16 cores is appropriate for individual artists; Threadripper PRO is the right choice for production studios with turnaround requirements.

Recommended configurations

Architectural visualization — V-Ray GPU primary

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090 (32GB GDDR7)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
• RAM: 64GB DDR5
• NVMe: 1TB OS + 4TB projects and assets

Production studio — large scenes, V-Ray CPU primary

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090 (for viewport and GPU preview)
• CPU: AMD Threadripper PRO 9995WX (96 cores)
• RAM: 128GB DDR5
• NVMe: High-capacity for large scene files and asset libraries

Browse V-Ray rendering workstation configurations on the VRLA Tech V-Ray Workstation page.

VRLA Tech has been building custom workstations since 2016. All systems ship with a 3-year parts warranty and lifetime US-based engineer support.