which render farm is the wisest choice?
As a freelance artist who used both render farms, I present this iRender vs. Garage guide as a demonstration to make it easier for newcomers when choosing a rendering solution.
1. What is Garage?
Garage was established in 2010 with a team of two, Tomek and Minhee. They are a UK-based business who provides cloud rendering services. Coming to Garage farm, you have two options for rendering: GarageFarm & Xesktop.
GarageFarm.NET is a cloud render farm that uses CPU and GPU nodes to render projects prepared in 3D software. The company supports many software and for each of them with a separate plugin that automatically prepares the project for rendering on their side. You can render using any of the most popular render engines and industry standard plugins.
Xesktop - it is a cloud server rental service where you can rent a GPU server via Remote Desktop, where you can install everything you need and render your project yourself. With this service, you use your server remotely just like a standard PC. It is offered as a separate brand, but powered by GarageFarm
2. What is iRender?
iRender is a Vietnamese-based software company, who pursues cloud rendering solutions. They service worldwide rendering solutions with powerful configuration for rendering (RTX 2080Ti/ RTX 3080/ RTX 3090 cards system), which includes many machines pre-set with 2/4/6/12 cards according to job requirements.
The company provides high computing performance with many CPUs & GPUs, users will get access to the servers through Remote Desktop Application with just a few simple clicks. This has similarities to Xesktop of Garage. iRender offers you 2 main services: GPU Server Rental & CPU Server Rental.
With iRender, cloud rendering solution automatically calculates and expands machine resources in case your project is too large, you don't need to worry about interruptions if power failure or rendering error.
3. Remarkable Difference
* GarageFarm offers 2 GPU rental packages all of which support multi card. That would be a great deal for large projects. However, if you are a freelance artist, a small brand preferring to use Lumion, Daz...which only support single card, iRender would be a better choice for you. With many sorts of high configuration server packages varying from 1x2080ti to 1x3090ti, you can take advantage of those to keep up with the progress.
* It’s quite hard to tell which one is better since both of 2 render farms provide excellent render services. Anyhow, iRender seems to jump on the trend with the newest graphic cards, from high-end to budget solutions. In the past few months, Nvidia has dropped the RTX 3080, RTX 3090. And, iRender didn’t miss an opportunity to lunch new server packages with 1/6x RTX 3080ti and 1/6x RTX 3090ti. I can see a number of compliments from customers about RTX 3090ti on their website, that is quite impressive! Even that, iRender is also about to launch a new single GPU with RTX A6000, which is worth looking forward to.
* At GarageFarm, purchasing licenses that require using a MAC address is not allowed because the company can’t guarantee full compatibility. Most software uses rather online or serial based licensing. Yet, there was some 3dsMax plugin that used MAC based licensing. Also, for example Arnold if you want to run the license server then the license must be generated with a specific MAC address. Meanwhile, iRender can help you with all of that.
* In addition, iRender gives many special discount offers on purchases, such as Christmas promotion for this December with bonus up to 100%.
4. Final Note
Both iRender and Garage are powerful platforms with features capable of satisfying rendering needs.
You can try using both of them to find out which is the most suitable for your team or your projects. Garage has been in existence since 2010 with substantial experience in render farm service, before iRender was founded. Despite that, iRender has managed to achieve considerable success and gain popularity in recent years.
From my point of view, i would prefer iRender for some reasons. The main advantages is that I can have a diversity of packages to choose from, and 3 types of OS to set up, which I can utilize for different types of projects. Also, I found that iRender also offers high quality at much more reasonable price. . Finally, I can use almost all 3D softwares for my own end such as Lumion which is used by over 70 percent of the top architectural offices in the world but is not effectively supported by Garage. All in all, I suggest that you take a test and consider thoroughly to find out which platform suits you best.
Replies
If you are genuinely sharing this info as an artist that found these 2 RF to be the best, then i suggest you change the title of the post to something less misleading (just like marketing) because i initially thought you were asking for help.