Daz Graphics Card advice wanted.

[Network 34 Games]

Currently, I am running 2x 1050ti graphics cards for rendering (yeah yeah. I know.. potato...) But I am looking shortly to upgrade the card.

My original goal was to pick up a 3090, but then the nVidia 40 series came out and confused issues even more for me.

Currently, I am looking over the 4070 (and possibly 4060) that 12Gb VRAM seems rather nice, although not the 24Gb of the 4090, but.. I aint got the extra $1k to spend.

Now. as my performance aim was the 3090, I am wondering what my best bang for the buck is going to be with the 40 series for use with (mostly) Daz.

I'd appreciate some input and advice here on which way to go (and no. saving for the 4090 isn't an option)

 

[GNVE]

More VRAM is more better in my opinion. I bought my 3090 after the 4090 came out just because of the VRAM. So maybe see if a mom and pop shop somewhere still has one for sale? Maybe consider the second hand market as well? Yeah it carries some extra risk and you want to take some precautions to make sure you aren't getting a dud. I'd rather have 24GB of VRAM over a faster card. If you render overnight using a render queue you most likely aren't going to be limited by rendering time.

For full disclosure I do like to render giant scenes with lots of people in them so make of this what you will. I did run into constraints a lot when rendering on my 1070 at the time due to the VRAM 'only' being 8GB.

 

[Network 34 Games]

Yeah. VRAM is my main criteria. which is also making me look at the 16Gb 4060ti's as well. although i suspect performance there would be well below a 3090?

 

[GNVE]

Probably. I'd read some reviews for that to see some comparisons on that. Make sure they include some kind of rendering software as that is what you are interested in. And think hard about if the performance impact will be an actual issue for you.

 

[Network 34 Games]

honestly.. it's those reviews that are making me even more confused.

 

[osanaiko]

Here's the thread in the Daz official forums with comparisons between various cards. Unfortunately looks like no-one has submitted (or maybe OP has not been updated) with a 40x0 card result yet.

You must be registered to see the links

EDIT: the table in the first post has not been updated since Feb 2023, but there are some posts about 4090, 4080, and 4070 in the end of the thread.

tl;dr:

4090 24GB - 26.23 Iterations Per Second
4080 16GB - 22.20 iterations per second
3090 24GB - 18.668 iterations per second
3080ti 12GB - 18.85 iterations per second
4070 12GB - 12.71 iterations per second

Note: that there's also the variable of the Daz version. i.e. 4.16.x is faster than 4.21.x but there's new functionality in the iray version supported by 4.20+

My take on things is to echo what GNVE said: better to get big VRAM than a slightly faster render speed - you will hit scene limits with lower VRAM that are more troublesome to your workflow than queuing your "quality" renders overnight using a tool.