Maxwell Render v2 is getting close to release, and the folks at Next Limit have put some examples comparing the current v1.7 to the new v2 on their website. Focusing largely on speed and noise improvements, this first set of examples show the incredible improvements they’ve made.
Randall Hand
Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.
Don’t worry about a sacrifice in quality for these speed improvements. Maxwell 2’s new roughness model is actually more accurate and realistic (and faster) than version 1.
I just hope that they don’t sacrifice quality for the improvement of speed. But it’s an awesome renderer. I just can’t wait until the right hardware for this will be cheaper. However it’s a pain in the ass to render this if you want to make animations. Just forget it. 😛 You can do it but it gets inefficient. You must at least have a render farm for it to work nicely. =D I look foreward at the future. I discovered a benchmarking site for Maxwell renderings. Can be of use for anyone considering buying new software!
http://www.benchwell.com