For those who don’t know the tool: V-Ray runs inside Autodesk 3ds Max and Blender and many other DCCs, with V-Ray GPU as the hybrid GPU and CPU engine alongside CPU rendering.
AMD is back on the render menu
After a long stretch of one-vendor reality for GPU finals, Chaos reinstated support for GPU rendering on AMD hardware in V-Ray GPU by implementing HIP as a render backend in V-Ray 7 Update 3 for Autodesk 3ds Max. The change lands in the V-Ray 7 Update 3 build for 3ds Max, (build version 7.30.02).
This matters because V-Ray GPU previously supported AMD through OpenCL, and that path wound down with the V-Ray Next era in 2018. In production terms, many shops treated V-Ray GPU as effectively tied to NVIDIA backends for years, even if the CPU engine remained fully cross platform. Support for HIP is also expected to roll out to other V-Ray integrations, including V-Ray for Blender.
What exactly changed inside V-Ray GPU
V-Ray GPU now exposes HIP as a backend option in the 3ds Max integration, alongside CUDA and RTX modes. HIP is designed to let developers target both AMD and NVIDIA from a single code base using a CUDA-like programming model, and it sits within the broader ROCm stack. On AMD, V-Ray GPU runs through HIP, and the team also opened HIP RT as the ray tracing acceleration path. HIPRT remains a work in progress in V-Ray GPU. In other words, this is not a checkbox labelled “AMD” that secretly does CPU. It is a new backend that runs V-Ray GPU on modern Radeon hardware, with the HIP path delivering the strongest and most consistent AMD results in the current test set.
Supported GPUs, drivers, and the fine print you actually need
The supported AMD generations for V-Ray GPU via HIP currently include RDNA2, RDNA3, RDNA 3.5, and RDNA4, across consumer Radeon and selected Radeon Pro products. The recommendation is RDNA3 and above. The minimum supported driver listed for AMD is AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 26.2.2.
A concrete example used for testing is the Radeon RX 9070 XT, a consumer GPU with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, a 256 bit memory interface, and up to 640 GB per second of memory bandwidth. AMD announced the card at a €799, while retail pricing varies by board partner and region. Currently, you can get variants around 650€.
If you want to map that to pipeline decisions, the takeaway is that the minimum bar is no longer latest flagship only. The supported list includes multiple generations and both consumer and workstation lines, with a driver baseline you can actually put into an IT image.
Performance: competitive, then weirdly spicy in out-of-core
The performance story splits into two very different conversations: in core scenes that fit in VRAM, and out of core scenes that push textures into system memory.
Across the current test scene set, results are described as solid overall, with most scenes rendering without issues and output matching expected results. The RX 9070 XT is described as delivering competitive performance for a 16 GB consumer GPU, while the RTX 5080 stays ahead in most in core cases.
Then the out of core path shows up and flips the mood.
V-Ray GPU has a Use System Memory for Textures option that moves texture memory pressure into system memory. That matters when your scene does not politely fit into VRAM and you do not want a last minute downres exercise.
In the out of core scenes tested, the RX 9070 XT is not just competitive but clearly faster in several cases, with the largest gaps reaching multiple times faster in the current dataset.
That is the part to pay attention to if you live in archviz city blocks, hero characters with absurd texture stacks, or anything where the phrase texture budget is usually followed by laughter and then silence.
HIP and HIPRT: what artists should take from that alphabet soup
HIP is the enabling layer that makes AMD execution possible in V-Ray GPU. HIPRT is a separate ray tracing library for HIP aimed at ray tracing acceleration.
In the current state, HIP delivers the best AMD results, and HIPRT remains under active evaluation and not production ready. The implication for day-to-day users is simple: backend choice still matters, and the fastest mode on one vendor does not automatically exist on the other in the same way today. That is also why you should treat this update as you would any other new render backend. Test it on your own scene types, your own noise tolerances, your own texture formats, and your own deadline pressure, before you let it touch finals.
Workflow impact: more options, more responsibility
The practical upside is hardware flexibility. Some teams already sit on Radeon cards, and some freelancers shop by VRAM per euro. Bringing AMD back into the V-Ray GPU conversation adds some choice again, especially in that midrange 16 GB bracket that appears in purchasing approvals. The practical downside is that a new backend tends to surface edge cases. Output matching is described as consistent in the tested scenes, but you still need to validate your own shading networks, your own IPR expectations, and any pipeline automation that assumes a specific engine string.
If your pipeline uses Blender for lookdev or layout, it is also worth noting that HIP is not foreign there. Cycles already supports HIP as a GPU backend option on Windows and Linux, which at least reduces the surprise factor when artists see the acronym in preferences.
The boring conclusion that saves productions
That is enough to make a lot of workstation build spreadsheets suddenly look different, adn enough to justify real evaluation time in a studio where GPU rendering is not a side hobby.
https://blog.chaos.com/amd-gpu-rendering-vray
https://documentation.chaos.com/space/VMAX/707559558/7.30.02
