There's a bit of an industry adage here: Every improvement and enhancement in compute performance enables an equal and opposite advancement in software capabilities and complexity, resulting in render times staying the same. While a fairly broad and generalized statement, it is reasonably true for a lot of aspects of our industry.

For fun I asked Kagi "why haven't render times gotten better over the years?". The results were pretty spot on:

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Increased Complexity: As software evolves, the complexity of scenes and effects increases. Features like advanced lighting, volumetrics, and motion blur require more computational power, often offsetting any improvements in hardware.

Higher Quality Expectations: The demand for higher resolution and quality (e.g., 4K and beyond) leads to longer render times. Users expect more detailed visuals, which inherently take longer to produce.

Hardware Limitations: While hardware has improved, the efficiency gains may not be enough to keep up with the growing demands of modern rendering techniques. For example, ray tracing can dramatically increase render times, and not all hardware can handle it efficiently.

Software Optimization: Not all software updates prioritize optimization. Some updates may introduce new features that, while enhancing capabilities, also increase render times.

Rendering Techniques: Different rendering engines and techniques (e.g., CPU vs. GPU rendering) have varying performance characteristics. Depending on the setup, some may not see substantial improvements.

Overall, while there are advancements in technology, the balance between quality, complexity, and hardware capabilities often results in stagnant or even increased render times.

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