Research
Octane Pixel Determinism Versus Runtime Instability
Octane produced matching decoded pixel payloads, but execution timing failed FARPY's frozen benchmark stability requirement.
Question
Do matching rendered pixels prove that an Octane workload is stable enough to publish as a verified performance result?
Scope
WHAT WAS TESTED
Frozen Octane workload on one hardware configuration. FARPY tested output determinism separately from runtime stability.
- Engine
- OctaneRender 2026.3
- Contract
- 1.0.2
- Hardware
- Two NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs
- Measured passes
- 6
- Workload SHA-256
32771d4753270bfdf81500e69bd2ea33267c82081fad0062c3c32e663a99be37
Result
WHAT EVIDENCE SHOWED
The measured variance exceeded the frozen acceptance gate. FARPY therefore rejected the benchmark result.
| Run | Seconds | Milliseconds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30.269 | 30,269 |
| 2 | 16.129 | 16,129 |
| 3 | 20.638 | 20,638 |
| 4 | 35.647 | 35,647 |
| 5 | 30.131 | 30,131 |
| 6 | 26.141 | 26,141 |
- Required runtime CV
- ≤ 3%
- Best consecutive three-pass CV
- 15.579055%
- Decoded pixel payloads matched
- YES
- Complete PNG hashes matched
- NO
- Hash difference cause
- changing PNG metadata
- Performance result published
- NO
- Verified Octane results published
- 0
- Outcome
- REJECTED
Method
Matching rendered pixels are evidence of output consistency. They do not prove that execution time is stable enough to publish a performance score.
Limitations
WHAT IS NOT PROVEN
- The record covers one known hardware configuration: Two NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs.
- The record covers one workload and contract version: OctaneRender 2026.3 1.0.2.
- The execution count is limited to 6 measured passes.
- These observations should not be generalized to all Octane versions, GPUs, drivers, or scenes.
- This report does not claim Octane is generally nondeterministic or unsuitable for benchmarking.
- No verified Octane performance score is published from this record.
What changed
FARPY does not publish an Octane performance score from this record. The pixel-match and PNG-hash observations later became research notes FRN-2026-001 and FRN-2026-002.
Evidence / files
OCTANE-BENCHMARK-V1.0.2
octane-benchmark-v1.0.2-contract-20260717T235242Z