Need GPU Buying (In Laptop) Help

[Deleted member 1957140]

Greetings. I'm looking for help in choosing between 1660 Ti (6GB) and latest 3050 (4GB); both mobile (Laptop) version so around 10-20% weaker than desktop counterparts.

I'm from a 3rd world country and have been trying to make my own VN for a very long time(around or just before COVID hit the earth) but mostly am constrained by Money and hardware availability in my country. Even when things are available, they are far more costly than US prices. E.G. 3090 is 4000$+ (converted), 3060 is 1200$+ and so on. Latest Ampere GPUs are out of my reach. Except maybe the new 3050 but in Laptops. The laptop manufacturers have bought last gen parts before the inflation I assume and thus can offer those at moderately convenient prices compared to latest offerings.

So here are the two options in my budget. 1660 TI (6GB) with 10th gen i5 (6core) VS 3050 (4GB) with 11th gen i5/ latest 5000 series better AMD cpu(But costlier than i5).
Here are the GPU specs for comparison:
1660 Ti (Mobile) has 6GB GDDR6, 1536 Cuda Cores, 192-bit Bus, 288GB/s Memory Bandwidth.
3050 (Mobile) has 4GB GDDR6, 2048 Cuda Cores, 128-bit Bus, 244GB/s Memory Bandwidth. In Addition 16 RT Cores and 64 Tensor Cores.

As I'll be mostly doing rendering in Daz, I know Cuda Core count is very important. 1660 Ti lacks there. Also it's on last gen 12nm Turing architecture. 3050 on other hand lacks VRAM which is also very important for rendering higher quality textures and adding more things in one scene as far as I know, also lower Memory bandwidth. But it has higher Cuda Core count on latest gen 8nm Ampere architecture. Plus it has RT and Tensor cores but I have no idea how they will factor in given the very little amount of them.

Now for rendering time, there isn't much information available right now for the 3050 but based on Gaming performance and some synthetic benchmark charts; it appears that it won't be that slower than the 1660 Ti (mobile). 3050 Ti is definitely faster in rendering than 1660 Ti but it's overpriced and is almost on par in price with the 2060 laptops which I can't afford.

I'd like to do fully rendered scenes with 1-3 characters in them but I think that's too much in my budget (It'll take too long or run out of VRAM). So I'm thinking about doing character sprites (2K) and rendering backgrounds in 1080p or even 720p. That's the kind of workload I'll have if you were wondering.

Additional Info: Used part is out of the question as there is no such market in my country. At least not online or offline near where I live. I can only find very lower tier hardware in used market and they are sketchy at best. No last gen 2060s or 1080s flying around at lower prices, on wings I suspect. My initial budget is for a 1650 Ti Laptop but a friend is helping me in finance (basically loan), SO I can't go any higher than what I mentioned. Just try to advice on the two configs I mentioned and not suggest other parts cause believe me when I tell you that I've considered all available parts and prices for almost two years now and my head is full of so much data that it hurts XD. There are no other options in my budget. Building a desktop with same parts that the 1660 Ti laptop has will cost almost double the money. WHAT IRONY!

Anywho Since I lack knowledge in GPU rendering time, VRAM usage, viewport fluidity etc. I'd very much appreciate help regarding choosing between these 2 GPUs. And soon cause I suspect those 1660 Tis will run out fast and I'll be stuck with 30 series anyway. At that point I'll have to roll back to buying 1650 Ti laptop, which I really don't want to

Thank you for your time.

 

[BannedAccount6543]

A good friend had the same problem in Eastern Africa. 3rd world country, 3rd world products, 3rd world prices. Funnily enough, his best deal was importing his rig from Amazon. Low tariffs apply all over the world for hardware and the only major increment was pack and ship. The equivalent rig in his country was still 50% more expensive.

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

A good friend had the same problem in Eastern Africa. 3rd world country, 3rd world products, 3rd world prices. Funnily enough, his best deal was importing his rig from Amazon. Low tariffs apply all over the world for hardware and the only major increment was pack and ship. The equivalent rig in his country was still 50% more expensive.

I don't know when your friend got the deal, that is if before inflation; but it's a different story for my country. The shipping and import cost alone is more than what I'll have to pay for a full 1650 Ti laptop in my country. May be because my country is exactly on the opposite side of Earth to US, and not as close as East Africa. Other than that, I've checked US prices before. For around same specs from same brand with same gpu, US laptops always have better CPU and also around 10-20% cheaper on converted currency. I don't know if it was cost effective before to import but it's definitely not the case right now. Plus the shipping time is showing 1-2 months. I live in a remote place in my country and not in a big city, so even if it gets here, I'm sure I'll have to travel hours to reach a drop point to collect it and all of these hassles won't save me any money. May be at another time in another country...

 

[gamersglory]

The problem you will have with any laptop is rendering puts out a ton of heat which all laptops never have good cooling to deal with it so it will shut down and thermal throttle all the time

 

[BannedAccount6543]

The problem you will have with any laptop is rendering puts out a ton of heat which all laptops never have good cooling to deal with it so it will shut down and thermal throttle all the time

Agree. Asus ROG 15, great specs RTX 3060 and Ryzen 7 5800. Overheating all the time and either slowed down or rebooted. Couldn't do more than 3 characters with environment and had to refresh my RAM after each render. Sent it back when I noticed smell of burnt plastic coming from the bottom.

 

[zger]

any rtx will perfrom better than gtx in rendering. (idk about 3050) but rtx 2060 renders same or a bit faster in some cases than gtx 1080ti coz of optics support. (do your own research). rtx 2060 has about 2000~ cuda cores and gtx 1080ti 3500~.

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

The problem you will have with any laptop is rendering puts out a ton of heat which all laptops never have good cooling to deal with it so it will shut down and thermal throttle all the time

I understand that very well. But sadly money is a huge issue for me. Ironically desktop with same parts cost 50% or more with same config than a laptop in my country right now. Even before considering that, there aren't any decent desktop GPU that I can afford, available right now. Absolutely zero stock of 10 and 20 series gpus here. I'm sure I can't even buy 3050 on desktop when it arrives, given how the pricing trend is going on for other products. What a time to be alive!

I want to mention something though. A dev here started with a 1050 4GB laptop bought with loan(The game is decent with okay to good renders and he has nearly 200 patrons now). About a year later, he could afford 1080 on desktop. I'm in a similar position myself where my options are very limited. So even if I know that it is not good long term deal; if I could work hard and the laptop holds its own for over a year(may be two); that's all I need right now.

 

[MashUp47]

I understand that very well. But sadly money is a huge issue for me. Ironically desktop with same parts cost 50% or more with same config than a laptop in my country right now. Even before considering that, there aren't any decent desktop GPU that I can afford, available right now. Absolutely zero stock of 10 and 20 series gpus here. I'm sure I can't even buy 3050 on desktop when it arrives, given how the pricing trend is going on for other products. What a time to be alive!

I want to mention something though. A dev here started with a 1050 4GB laptop bought with loan(The game is decent with okay to good renders and he has nearly 200 patrons now). About a year later, he could afford 1080 on desktop. I'm in a similar position myself where my options are very limited. So even if I know that it is not good long term deal; if I could work hard and the laptop holds its own for over a year(may be two); that's all I need right now.

Me personally I ordered my RTX3080 16gb laptop in February and I'm still waiting. So best of luck with yours.
I would go with the 1660ti 6gb and with the saving's buy a cooling pad for it. The 3050ti will struggle with only 4gb memory. Also try to get a minimum of 16gb of ram for the laptop running at 2666mhz. If the laptop come's with Nvme plus hard drive you could use the Nvme slot to plugin a Dedicated gpu at a later date. (will need a extra power supply for the Gpu)

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

Me personally I ordered my RTX3080 16gb laptop in February and I'm still waiting. So best of luck with yours.
I would go with the 1660ti 6gb and with the saving's buy a cooling pad for it. The 3050ti will struggle with only 4gb memory. Also try to get a minimum of 16gb of ram for the laptop running at 2666mhz. If the laptop come's with Nvme plus hard drive you could use the Nvme slot to plugin a Dedicated gpu at a later date. (will need a extra power supply for the Gpu)

Yes, the cooling pad is definitely on my shopping list. Laptops are readily available here. 2-3 days delivery time. On day delivery in big cities. Both laptops come with single 512GB nvme storage on board and another free nvme slot. The laptop with 1660 Ti comes with 16GB(8+8 dual channel) 3200MHz RAM but the 3050 has only 8GB as it is considered as a budget laptop, even if the launch price matches the 1660 Ti laptop. All laptops with new hardware suck at pricing. Some 3050 Ti variants have 16GB RAM but at that price range, it's better to buy 2060 laptops.

I know the extra 2GB VRAM will help. My only concerns include, by how much(for the workload I mentioned on my 1st post). And whether the 3050 will outperform the 1660 Ti in render time due to higher Cuda Core count and the added RT & Tensor Cores. If someone moved from say a 1070ti/1080 to 2060/2060S, they can tell the difference. Those cards have similar rasterization performance(No ray tracing gaming performance) but the newer cards have RT features. How much does that help in rendering? I'd still buy the 3050 and take a loss if it's 50% faster. 1660Ti if that margin is within 10-15% or if 1660ti is actually faster in rendering.

Usually cards can be compared(for render times) by just looking at their gaming performance. But the RT features kind of messes with that rule of thumb. In gaming, 1660 Ti is 10-15% faster than 3050 and 5-15% slower than 3050 Ti.

 

[MashUp47]

This mite help (but i am sure you have seen this in your research).

You must be registered to see the links

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

I understand that very well. But sadly money is a huge issue for me. Ironically desktop with same parts cost 50% or more with same config than a laptop in my country right now. Even before considering that, there aren't any decent desktop GPU that I can afford, available right now. Absolutely zero stock of 10 and 20 series gpus here. I'm sure I can't even buy 3050 on desktop when it arrives, given how the pricing trend is going on for other products. What a time to be alive!

I want to mention something though. A dev here started with a 1050 4GB laptop bought with loan(The game is decent with okay to good renders and he has nearly 200 patrons now). About a year later, he could afford 1080 on desktop. I'm in a similar position myself where my options are very limited. So even if I know that it is not good long term deal; if I could work hard and the laptop holds its own for over a year(may be two); that's all I need right now.

More CUDA cores = faster rendering
More GPU RAM = bigger/more complex scenes

Whichever one you go for, look at it this way: Make sure the chosen laptop has a Thunderbolt 3 port, that way at a later date you can have an eGPU enclosure; this will solve a number of problems; you can use a desktop GPU on your laptop, the heat from the GPU won't affect the laptop, and you can upgrade that GPU as newer ones are released.

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

This mite help (but i am sure you have seen this in your research).

You must be registered to see the links

Seen that page and similar comparisons for more than 100 times now. The problem is, none of those dirctly reflect DAZ or BLENDER rendering performance. I've also checked the DAZ forum page where all the GPU render times and various other results are shown from real world users. No 3050/Ti results yet. That one will be most accurate.

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

More CUDA cores = faster rendering

Sadly not Always. Depends on architecture and many other factors. If 1660 ti and 3050 both were from same generation and 3050 had no RT or tensor cores; then by simple CUDA count, 3050 would be faster. But in reality it's 10-15% slower in gaming cause it's on 128-bit bus instead of 192-bit on 1660 ti. Lower memory bandwidth hurts a card a lot.

A similar comparison in gaming: RTX 3070 bottlenecks playing Latest Doom on Nightmare difficulty due to VRAM limitation(8GB GDDR6). But 3070Ti works fine; even though it also has 8GB VRAM, but it's faster GDDR6X memory.

If 1660 ti also had rt features and it performed 10-15% better in gaming than the 3050; then I'd be 100% sure that it'll be similar amount faster in rendering. But the RT cores add a different variable when in comes to just rendering and not gaming. If 3050 had 192-bit bus then in opposite case, it'd be faster than 1660 ti. So as you can see that in some areas it's better but worse in others. How it all translates to actual rendering performance is very much unknown at this point.

One thing is very clear though; the 4Gb VRAM won't be enough at all, specially as it is on smaller bus. BUTT(BIG BUT), if my workload fits within 4GB, then it just might give a considerable edge over the 1660 ti.

Sadly none of these laptops have thunderbolt port at this price. That tends to be very high end feature.

 

[MashUp47]

Shepard1063
A Better question is What do you intend on rendering? the whole scene or part of the scene and then moving it to photoshop or are you doing animations as well?
edit: You do not need Thunderbolt to add another GPU as I posted above you just need a spare Nmve slote.

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

Shepard1063
A Better question is What do you intend on rendering? the whole scene or part of the scene and then moving it photoshop or are you doing animations as well?

MY GOD!!! No Animation. These gpus will die or I will . I'll render a background, say a bedroom or coffee shop or The abyss of hell(joking); at 1080p maybe. After that I'll have Character sprites appear on top of them. Renpy can do that. No need for photoshop. I want to have details on the characters so maybe do them in 2K at least. 4K would be nice. It doesn't take that much VRAM for that to be honest. I've done it on my 4-core only cpu(no gpu) with 8GB system RAM. It takes nearly an hour but it doesn't crash or anything.

But some scenes will have 2-3 characters at one plane(have to be rendered together). My system crashed when I tried to do that. That might be the only problem case. Still I have no idea how much VRAM it'll eat. In that case, maybe render in lower quality and try to upscale in photoshop... I don't know how it'll all work out to be honest. Never rendered anything on gpu so a complete newb there.

 

[MashUp47]

You must be registered to see the links

 

[31971207]

MY GOD!!! No Animation. These gpus will die or I will . I'll render a background, say a bedroom or coffee shop or The abyss of hell(joking); at 1080p maybe. After that I'll have Character sprites appear on top of them. Renpy can do that. No need for photoshop. I want to have details on the characters so maybe do them in 2K at least. 4K would be nice. It doesn't take that much VRAM for that to be honest. I've done it on my 4-core only cpu(no gpu) with 8GB system RAM. It takes nearly an hour but it doesn't crash or anything.

But some scenes will have 2-3 characters at one plane(have to be rendered together). My system crashed when I tried to do that. That might be the only problem case. Still I have no idea how much VRAM it'll eat. In that case, maybe render in lower quality and try to upscale in photoshop... I don't know how it'll all work out to be honest. Never rendered anything on gpu so a complete newb there.

3 detailed characters will very likely exceed 4GB and the rendering will fall back to CPU. Also don't forget to budget DRAM for CPU. You'll want 2x DRAM for VRAM or otherwise Daz will crash regardess of your VRAM.

Having said that, Iray does render faster on RTX3xxx GPU than GTX1xxx GPU.

 

[Deleted member 1957140]

3 detailed characters will very likely exceed 4GB and the rendering will fall back to CPU. Also don't forget to budget DRAM for CPU. You'll want 2x DRAM for VRAM or otherwise Daz will crash regardess of your VRAM.

Having said that, Iray does render faster on RTX3xxx GPU than GTX1xxx GPU.

16Gb system memory should be fine for 4/6GB GPUs. RTX cards are definitely faster than GTX cards in rendering but 3050 is like bottom of the barrel. The 16 RT cores present there is more like a gimmick. It can't game with RTX on in any meaningful way and provide visual improvement. You'll have to heavily use DLSS and at that point native non-rtx resolution looks better anyway. I've checked some synthetic benchmarks(not Iray render) and it appears that 1660Ti is still a bit faster. Of course in rendering it can be slower but as you said the 4GB is a big issue for 3050. I mean I can stomach rendering at 10-20% less speed but running out of VRAM would mean absolute throttling.

 

[Vreek]

I strongly advise against 4 GB of VRAM (when using DAZ). Sometimes even one character with hi-poly hair would not fit into GPU memory when I had a 4 GB card. I can not add anything to notebook vs. desktop. Only used the latter and never had any big problems.

Things I found out:
- RTX 3000 series is crazy good for DAZ, I've finished well lit simple (object-wise) outside scenes (only sun) with 6+ characters with hair in under 3 minutes render time in 4k
- pre-built systems with GPU can have the same price as the GPU alone (talking RTX 3000 series here)
- GPU prices seem to be over the crazy peak of 2.5 times the MSRP slowly going down right now, maybe waiting a bit will help further on a tight budget - when ETH 2.0 will hit, there will be a flood of 3000 series GPUs on eBay...
- sweet spot GPU-wise would be RTX 3060 because of the 12 GB VRAM
- 'professional' GPUs like RTX A4000 (16 GB VRAM!) did not experience the same crazy price hike as 'gamer' GPUs - maybe something to consider albeit they use to be more expensive from the start

Thoughts:
-Importing and flying under customs radar with "gift - value $20" declaration - some sellers will do this for you, maybe someone will help with such an undertaking

Scene optimization:
-You're already on a good path to use sprites and such! Also I do a lot of viewport optimization, i.e. delete objects not seen etc., reduce amount of light sources, low detail levels on character if not super close to the skin