New Laptop or Graphics Card for Rendering?

[JamesBean]

Hey, so I tried to make my own game a couple months ago. As far as the creative side things went really well, but when it came to rendering I realized the speeds were too slow to ever make something to the quality I wanted so I gave up.

But a new wave of inspiration hit me and I want to give it another shot. I'm now willing to spend money to make my dream game a reality.

What I need to know is what's my best option. Buy a completely new laptop or just update the one I already have?

I have a dell i7, with 16gb ram, and when I check my devices it says I have Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 and a NVIDIA GeForce MX130.

My only problem was the rendering speeds. Is it best to just buy a better graphics card, or will I need a whole new laptop to get rid of these rendering times?

Also what are the best graphic cards you'd recommend to get rid of rendering times, and/or affordable laptops for the same purpose?

Thanks!

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

You won't be able to upgrade the GPU in your laptop as it's soldered onto the motherboard.

If it has to be a laptop you want then you should look at 2080ti or 2080 Super for the best performance, steer clear of anything that says MaxQ because they have reduced performance, especially for rendering.

 

[JamesBean]

Dang, sucks to know I can't just buy a new graphics card then lol. Guess I'll start looking in to those new laptops you mentioned. Appreciate it!

 

[soukunsenpai]

Dang, sucks to know I can't just buy a new graphics card then lol. Guess I'll start looking in to those new laptops you mentioned. Appreciate it!

Does it take long time to render images or animations?

 

[JamesBean]

Does it take long time to render images or animations?

Images, never even tried animations lol. Used DAZ3D.

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

Does it take long time to render images or animations?

Images, never even tried animations lol. Used DAZ3D.

Animations are just lots of renders joined together, so a 10sec clip at 30fps is 300 renders; if one render takes 20mins to make then you're looking at around 4 days just to make the renders. On an MX130, I doubt very much that it's as low as 20 mins though

 

[JamesBean]

Animations are just lots of renders joined together, so a 10sec clip at 30fps is 300 renders; if one render takes 20mins to make then you're looking at around 4 days just to make the renders. On an MX130, I doubt very much that it's as low as 20 mins though

Definitely not xD

 

[Porcus Dev]

Indeed, the animations are a series of images, and Daz will have to render all of them, which results in very long render times to finish depending on which animations... BUT, I also have to say that preparing a scene to render an image or preparing a scene for an animation can be different... for an image, it takes 5, 10, 20 minutes, or even hours (it can happen with some depending on what light is used, if there are reflections, translucent objects, etc, etc) you are not going to optimize it; instead, for an animation, the scene has to be optimized as much as possible, that means eliminating objects that aren't in the plane and don't affect the animation, using the most optimal light, modifying materials to optimize reflections, rendering at 1080p instead of 2k or 4k, even rendering part of the scene and characters separately. .. to do everything possible to make each image of that animation take the minimum time to render, and you can make an image that takes 20m to render take 1m; and so it's more bearable to be able to render animations... taking 24h or less for an animation is "bearable", taking 3 or 4 days is not, lol

 

[N7's Slut]

I actually suggest you to buy a pc just for rendering, you save a lot of money and you will have more processing power with the same components compared to a laptop and you dont even need to buy a 5k pc aswell something around 500 would suffice most likely.
Having 2 systems will also boost your productivity, you can let your pc render the scenes while you do coding / writing on your laptop aswell.

 

[JamesBean]

I actually suggest you to buy a pc just for rendering, you save a lot of money and you will have more processing power with the same components compared to a laptop and you dont even need to buy a 5k pc aswell something around 500 would suffice most likely.
Having 2 systems will also boost your productivity, you can let your pc render the scenes while you do coding / writing on your laptop aswell.

That's a clever idea. I can see myself doing something like that. Idk too much about computers so I'll have to do some research before buying something right for me.

 

[N7's Slut]

That's a clever idea. I can see myself doing something like that. Idk too much about computers so I'll have to do some research before buying something right for me.

if you want i can help you choosing for you the right config just pm me if you are interested

 

[harem - king]

Is there any particular reason it needs to be a laptop? A PC would likely be a much cheaper option I'd think.

 

[OhWee]

Does your laptop come with a Thunderbolt port? If so, you could always go with an external GPU, and slap say a RTX 2080 Ti in that box. Those boxes can be a bit pricey though, and of course you need to make sure to get one with enough wattage to power whichever video card you end up with.

There are newer laptops that have Nvidia mobile graphics. You'll want an Nvidia graphics solution for the Iray rendering, with enough VRAM for 'everyday use'. I'd recommend 8GB of dedicated VRAM as a minimum (system ram is another thing entirely). You can get away with say just 6GB of VRAM, or even 4, but the less VRAM you have, the more likely it is that a more complex scene will not fit in the video card's VRAM, which means slow CPU only rendering, or spending extra time trying to cut your scene textures and such down to fit inside of your available VRAM, and maybe setting up multiple render passes with say 2-3 characters included in each render instead of say 6 or more and merging them together later in Photoshop or whatever...

So do yourself a favor and don't scrimp if you can afford a better Nvidia graphics option.

In the long run, you'd probably be much better off building a desktop system though. Those are much easier to upgrade later as faster and better video cards hit the market. Plus, then you can get cards with more VRAM, including the very pricey quadro cards with say 24 GB or more of VRAM if you hit the lottery or something...

 

[N7's Slut]

Does your laptop come with a Thunderbolt port? If so, you could always go with an external GPU, and slap say a RTX 2080 Ti in that box. Those boxes can be a bit pricey though, and of course you need to make sure to get one with enough wattage to power whichever video card you end up with.

There are newer laptops that have Nvidia mobile graphics. You'll want an Nvidia graphics solution for the Iray rendering, with enough VRAM for 'everyday use'. I'd recommend 8GB of dedicated VRAM as a minimum (system ram is another thing entirely). You can get away with say just 6GB of VRAM, or even 4, but the less VRAM you have, the more likely it is that a more complex scene will not fit in the video card's VRAM, which means slow CPU only rendering, or spending extra time trying to cut your scene textures and such down to fit inside of your available VRAM, and maybe setting up multiple render passes with say 2-3 characters included in each render instead of say 6 or more and merging them together later in Photoshop or whatever...

So do yourself a favor and don't scrimp if you can afford a better Nvidia graphics option.

In the long run, you'd probably be much better off building a desktop system though. Those are much easier to upgrade later as faster and better video cards hit the market. Plus, then you can get cards with more VRAM, including the very pricey quadro cards with say 24 GB or more of VRAM if you hit the lottery or something...

External gpus died out pretty much already

 

[Flecc]

Rendering would go for pc all day long more Bang for your buck ,but be savvy and look for something with upgrade potential, or better still self build very easy to do these days and you can spec it to what you need. Also look for a motherboard that will allow upgrade potential. Also overlooked by many The Case some of these graphics cards are long so you need a case that can cope with them half inch between end of graphics card and front of case not a good fit. good luck with whatever you decide

 

[OhWee]

External gpus died out pretty much already

And yet Newegg still has eGPU boxes...

You must be registered to see the links

Note that I did say that they can get pricey. As in 'approaching the cost of a newer laptop' pricey in some instances.

If you don't have a Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop, though, it's pretty much academic. Regular USB generally won't cut it, at least not up to this point. USB 4, who knows...

You are usually better off going with a desktop solution for a number of reasons (easy to swap out components, better heat management, bigger power supplies, etc.) but if you are on a laptop, yeah there are not a lot of other options short of buying a newer, more powerful laptop. Unless you'd care to share an alternative for laptop users with the rest of the class?

 

[JamesBean]

Thanks everyone! Yea, it's looking like I'm going to go with the up-gradable PC option instead of a laptop. Makes the most sense and I don't have a thunder port. When I get some time I'll start doing research on one best for me.

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

Don't forget NOT to buy 1st hand. Instead, get a 'proper' workstation PC of a generation or two back from Ebay. Costs next to nothing and will have a 2nd PCIe slot for an additional videocard and possibly some other goodies. If you have a little budget to start with, stick the money you save into a 2nd videocard right away.

Adding the second card will chop your render times in half - for the most part. Oh, and make sure any box you get has a videocard with at least 8Gb of RAM. 4Gb will be semi-ok for smaller scenes but once you start filling up your scenes with props and environments and a lot of characters, you simply need more videocard RAM to hold that stuff on the card. If the the scene is too large for the card RAM to hold the render engine will opt to render on the CPU and you'll never stop drinking coffee. Ever.

You can get away with a 4Gb card for a while by using the Scene Optimiser if you're rendering with Daz, or make sure your textures aren't all 4k or 8k in whatever other program you're using. In the end though you'll just be much happier if you start out with 8Gb of videocard RAM in the first place.

Have fun!