Graphics Cards - Suggestions - etc

[PJWhoopie]

I searched the forum (ok, briefly) for any info on getting a graphics card. There is a shit ton of info for "Gaming" cards, but I am kinda at a loss for good/current info on card for graphics/rendering.

I am anticipating some sales on black friday (22 Nov this year?) and want to be ready if something worthy shows up for a good price.

Personally, I am looking for something in the $500-$700 range, but I am sure there are others with a bigger (or smaller) budget, so if you have ideas or opinions, please chime in.

I will eventually migrate the card to a new build (maybe after the new year). Probably go for one of the new AMD Ryzen 9 3900s or so

I've been checking out the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and of course the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 ....

Pros/Cons? Does anyone use either? Rendering/Creating is in the front seat... gaming is in the back, for me.

 

[Perverteer]

If you want to use Iray in DAZ3D you won't have much use for an AMD card. Iray is an Nvidia-specific technology utilizing the CUDA cores on the card. The RTX 2080 is a very nice option for rendering, though the 8GB RAM is a limitation for larger scenes. Textures and geometry get loaded into the RAM of the GPU during rendering and if it doesn't fit, the renderer will revert to the CPU. There are various workarounds, but please be wary of this.

As for other renderers, notably Octane and Blender's Cycles, the card brand (Nvidia or Radeon) doesn't matter. I haven't got much experience with these engines though, but I know they're crazy fast and produce fantastic results in the hands of a skilled artist.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Going with that price range, here is my suggestion
~ GTX 1060 Sub 300, not worth your time really, but a great gaming card for 1080p (avoid the 3-gigabyte versions near the 100 dollar mark)
~ GTX 1070 A good gaming card for 1440, matches your price range at bellow 600
~ GTX 1080 a good gaming card for 4K, Just above your price range, but expect them to fall into the less than 700 range
~ GTX 1080Ti beyond your price range, may get close to your price range during a sale, I am currently using this.

The difference between a gaming card and other types of cards. Memory and viewport display. Professional cards have a lot more memory. Blender (the program I use to render) use to not work if the video card memory filled up (from too many things in a scene or too many large 8k textures). Blend solved this as well as shares gpu and cpu rendering together, but i don't know if daz has this issue with only being able to render if a scene fits in the video card memory. viewport display isn't something you have to worry with daz, game cards tend to be the best at viewport display compared to some more slower professional cards, but daz and iray preview runs like junk anyways.

I recently thought that the GTX 1080ti might be a bit old now, almont 3 or so generations behind the latest teck, so I checked last week to see how the GTX compaired to other cards, other workstation cards, newer cards, and turns out that the GTX 1080ti is probably still the second best top-scoring only beaten by the GTX 2080 and these are still beating out professional cards. I will probably not need to upgrade for another 4 years.

In fact I am saving 2K so I can build a new computer-based on ryzen cpu next. as the only thing holding my computer back now is the gaming-oriented cpu since I can now use both cpu and gpu to render at the same time with blender.

amd cards wouldn't work with daz iray

 

[mickydoo]

I have a RTX 2070, not as good as the 2080 but it was in my price range. If you have the coin, the 2080 is the way to go, but don't get anything that is not RTX, DAZ uses that technology now, so anything less would be a backwards step

 

[Porcus Dev]

In my humble opinion, if it's for DAZ, and for that price range, look for a 1080Ti. Its 11GB will make you happy

 

[xide]

I use a RTX 2060 Super which does very well if the scene isn't too complex, but my CPU (i5 8400) has my card bottled necked so that's my new upgrade. You may want to save your money because the RTX 3000 series cards will be released in spring and if the rumors are true they'll be cheaper than current offerings and have more vram.

 

[thecardinal]

I use a 1050, not a very powerful card. But I bought a permanent Octane license years ago, which is a far better render engine than Daz Studio in my opinion. It even has a plug-in that works within Daz Studio, so the learning curve isn't that difficult.

It allows for a lot more versatility and renders much faster. People love to spend on cards and then not consider that there is something better than Studio.

 

[badsantagirl]

Radeon RX 5700 XT is not useful for rendering. An earlier Vega (56/64) is much better, because you can use a lot of memory with it. I have a Vega 56 with 8 GB memory, but with 24 GB cache segment, so the programs thinks that the hardware has 32 GB of physical memory. This is a huge advantage for rendering. The RX 5700 don't support this. It is even possible to configure 64 GB of video RAM, but you need a lot of system RAM for it. I only have 32 GB, so my optimal cache segment configuration is 24 GB.

For Iray, you need a GeForce. But that render engine is outdated. Cycles and even Prorender is far better options now even with an NVIDIA GPU. They are also much faster.

 

[Wicked Garden]

I have a RTX 2070, not as good as the 2080 but it was in my price range. If you have the coin, the 2080 is the way to go, but don't get anything that is not RTX, DAZ uses that technology now, so anything less would be a backwards step

How much did you pay for yours?

 

[mickydoo]

How much did you pay for yours?

Im Aussie, $600 (maybe $700) for the cheapest one I could find a few months ago, the 2080 was a grand.

 

[Wicked Garden]

Im Aussie, $600 (maybe $700) for the cheapest one I could find a few months ago, the 2080 was a grand.

This is gonna be more difficult than it thought. Thanks anyway.

 

[PJWhoopie]

Just to follow up....
I am just about to pull the trigger on my "new rig".
What is set in stone is the Ryzen 9 3900, Asus TUF X570, 32MB DDR4 3600 and a Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1TB M.2

My old/current system has a GTX 1060 6MB Video card... which I am thinking I will continue to use until I get better at Daz/3D Modeling and hopefully the new stuff from AMD & NVDIA will be out by summer and I can re-evaluate my needs.

I had thought about getting a RTX 2070 Super as they are about $500 US... but at my level of exp, I am wondering if the 1060 wouldn't suit me better for now, and just save for the better stuff later. Thoughts?

A last question though...

Some of you speak of Octane, Cycles & Prorender as a rendering tool... how does that work exactly? Do you/Can you work in Daz and then port it out to another Rendering tool? Does that require plugins or ?

I am working on a VN... and have most of the Writing done, I just need to start working on the image aspects, but as a newbie, it seems a tough hill to climb.

Time is on my side though, I guess.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Just to follow up....
I am just about to pull the trigger on my "new rig".
What is set in stone is the Ryzen 9 3900, Asus TUF X570, 32MB DDR4 3600 and a Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1TB M.2

My old/current system has a GTX 1060 6MB Video card... which I am thinking I will continue to use until I get better at Daz/3D Modeling and hopefully the new stuff from AMD & NVDIA will be out by summer and I can re-evaluate my needs.

I had thought about getting a RTX 2070 Super as they are about $500 US... but at my level of exp, I am wondering if the 1060 wouldn't suit me better for now, and just save for the better stuff later. Thoughts?

A last question though...

Some of you speak of Octane, Cycles & Prorender as a rendering tool... how does that work exactly? Do you/Can you work in Daz and then port it out to another Rendering tool? Does that require plugins or ?

I am working on a VN... and have most of the Writing done, I just need to start working on the image aspects, but as a newbie, it seems a tough hill to climb.

Time is on my side though, I guess.

It truly depends on the scope of your game, you first have to determine your needs. How many renders do you have to pull a day or a week? How fast you are at integrate them in the game? Which quality do you aim for? You max time for a render without hurting your workflow? Do you have planned animations? If yes, how much average frames they need?

Octane and Cycles are insanely good and faster rendering engine. With the counter part where your have to fiddle shaders for every surfaces coming from Daz. Depending on the complexity of the scene, your average use of Daz assets, it can be or not be a problem. But if you're planning on decent animations, you're gonna have to take a serious look at them. Outside animation, Iray can do wonder as long as you're smart with your lightening/tone mapping with a decent card.

You should try to make a very short game, something like 300 renders long and see where you at, and what you need.

 

[polywog]

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