Tech Talk Thread Hardware for Rendering

[obiwan21]

Copying a post from the BB Fan Art thread I made, asking for help.

At min. intel 3Ghz quad core with as much ram the mother board can handle up to 32Gb with at least GTX 1060 at min. (1080 would be great though.) Extra case cooling fans.

You really need to have an nvidia card with at least 4gb of ram. But I would recommend something with a nvidia geforce gtx1060 or better. The more system ram the better... the larger the scene and the more characters you want to use will require higher ram... I'd recommend 16GB+. You also want a multi-core processor... 2ghz or better. Hard drive will have a little effect but it not too big a deal.

So, Black Friday deals are going to start in about a month and I need to upgrade to have that sweet iRay render speed
Was hoping to get some help on what pieces I should replace.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5 GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5

I know the GPU has to be upgraded. Most of the chat has focused on a 1060+ (mainly 1080) GPU. Should I aim for a 1080 as mentioned above? Also, will 16GB to 32GB make a huge difference? GPU is PCI 3.0, I can put it in my 2.0 slot and use a new GPU for rendering only.

 

[a1fox3]

Copying a post from the BB Fan Art thread I made, asking for help.




So, Black Friday deals are going to start in about a month and I need to upgrade to have that sweet iRay render speed
Was hoping to get some help on what pieces I should replace.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5 GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5

I know the GPU has to be upgraded. Most of the chat has focused on a 1060+ (mainly 1080) GPU. Should I aim for a 1080 as mentioned above? Also, will 16GB to 32GB make a huge difference? GPU is PCI 3.0, I can put it in my 2.0 slot and use a new GPU for rendering only.

You would be way better off getting the 1060 than that 760, the 1060 has min of 4 Gb ram and the 760 only 2Gb ram.
The more video ram you have the faster it will do the job.

As for cpu and for the same price range.
Your:

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[Cirro84]

I started this question about hardware ... collected that tech talk and post it here as a starter in quotes. ...

Max, you may want to split the one huge spoiler you made into several smaller ones, as spoiler headline use the different user names. It's more easily readable this way and mems can follow the disc from the start.

Welcome to the forum by the way, and already active. I like that. Nice to have you with us.

 

[Cirro84]

Copying a post from the BB Fan Art thread I made, asking for help. ...
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5 GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5

Newer Core i5 cpus are not that much faster, a more expensive video card will help. Maybe one 1070? Be aware you may need a better, more performant PSU in the end. 500 watts should be sufficient, keep in mind the 12 V link for extra current. Please see:

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If you can go for a Core i7 maybe this is an upgrade path for you later. A good 500 watts PSU should still be enough.

Edit: You're also still new, so... Welcome to the F95 forum, I like to see you being active here. Nice to have you and all the other new mems. Enjoy your stay.

 

[Max Headroom]

Max, you may want to split the one huge spoiler you made into several smaller ones, as spoiler headline use the different user names.

I did that in the first attempt and it looked horrible. One spoiler headline after the other repeating mostly 3 or 4 names alternatly, not really clear. I find it better how it is now.

 

[obiwan21]

You would be way better off getting the 1060 than that 760, the 1060 has min of 4 Gb ram and the 760 only 2Gb ram.
The more video ram you have the faster it will do the job.

As for cpu and for the same price range.
Your:

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Better:

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No need to splurge on a 1080? I know BF will have some deals. The current price of a 1060 could probably be the price of a 1080. But if there is nothing spectacular going from a 1060 to a 1080, then I can save money on a 1060. Also, future-proofing, if in 2 years, I wish I woulda got a 1080, then that's also a factor.

Newer Core i5 cpus are not that much faster, a more expensive video card will help. Maybe one 1070? Be aware you may need a better, more performant PSU in the end. 500 watts should be sufficient, keep in mind the 12 V link for extra current. Please see:

You must be registered to see the links

If you can go for a Core i7 maybe this is an upgrade path for you later. A good 500 watts PSU should still be enough.

Edit: You're also still new, so... Welcome to the F95 forum, I like to see you being active here. Nice to have you and all the other new mems. Enjoy your stay.

Thanks for the welcome. Trying to be usefully active, haha.


I will keep that CPU in mind, so that if the new GPU pairs much better with a new CPU, then sure. I don't mind splurging a bit this holiday Also, I have a 750w PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2

So, my computer isn't too bad. Will look into a new i7, PSU is good, memory should hold up, and just need to see if a 1080 is worth the extra $$ compared to 1060. I know it's better, just need to see if it's worth it in terms of performance and so on.

 

[penecultor]

This is what i'm using right now. Cheap and pretty good imo.
CPU:

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4.40ghz with

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Mother Board :

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Ram :

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GPU :

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Case :

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It's an old pc i was using mostly for photoshop and so on.
16gb Ram is enough unless you're planning to use cpu rendering or load a ton of stuff in your scene.
Like a1fox3 said, buy some extra case cooling fans.
I just upgraded the gpu from gtx970 to gtx1080. I would recommend you a 1080, that way in the future, you could get another one and put them together.

 

[celtic1138]

I'd recommend going with the 1080 if you can afford it, but certainly get the 1070 over the 1060, the ram difference is a big plus. You'll certainly be able to render well with any of them but GPU ram can be an issue with how much you want in your scene so it's best to have some spare to play around with.

Low system ram will effect the daz viewport. So if you load a huge scene with lots of characters you will start to get slowdown as you try an move the camera around. I would say at a minimum you want 16gb, but memory isn't hugely expensive so there is no point in limiting yourself if you can help it.

 

[obiwan21]

Okay.. Settled.. 1080 hunting for black friday. CPU, i will still keep an eye out, and RAM, will look into that 3rd.

Thanks all for the help! I have my holiday list planned out now
When I was building my computer, i found this site super helpful. May be a good way for us to share our builds.

Current:

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CPU:

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Motherboard:

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Memory:

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Storage:

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Video Card:

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Case:

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Power Supply:

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[Max Headroom]

Case:

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Why do you prefer (all) Mid Towers? I think big towers have more air to breathe or not?

 

[OhWee]

I use Daz3D 4.9, rendering with one "Titan X" (12GB non-pascal) video-card. {I have a LOT of large scenes and Daz is rather bloated with crap, when it comes time to render. Most 12GB scenes actually get reduced to about 4-8GB in the video-card, but if Daz thinks 12GB won't fit, it will simply fallback to CPU rendering, never even trying the GPU. Unless you setup a render-batch.}

(snip)

OK someone else covered the issue before if you have that 'dual GPU' Titan with two blocks of memory, i.e. that it has 6 GB per core, not 12 GB for all. Just reiterating that Daz Studio needs to load the entire scene into the memory for each GPU, so the memory doesn't stack.

This obviously applies to multiple cards as well, with the card with the smallest amount of VRAM, etc. limiting the size of the scene that can be rendered with multiple GPUs. You'll still get the performance boost though, which is still rather helpful.

Anyways, the reason I'm replying is to note that (for those using Windows), Windows will reserve a portion of your GPU memory for it's own uses. This has been an ongoing issue as it seems to be a percentage of total GPU memory, not a set amount. This means that for GPUs with larger amounts of VRAM, etc. you'll lose as much as 2 GB or more of that to Windows.

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People have been requesting a 'fix' for this for a couple of years now, but Microsoft hasn't provided one as of yet...

 

[bacchusplateau]

OK someone else covered the issue before if you have that 'dual GPU' Titan with two blocks of memory, i.e. that it has 6 GB per core, not 12 GB for all. Just reiterating that Daz Studio needs to load the entire scene into the memory for each GPU, so the memory doesn't stack.

This obviously applies to multiple cards as well, with the card with the smallest amount of VRAM, etc. limiting the size of the scene that can be rendered with multiple GPUs. You'll still get the performance boost though, which is still rather helpful.

Anyways, the reason I'm replying is to note that (for those using Windows), Windows will reserve a portion of your GPU memory for it's own uses. This has been an ongoing issue as it seems to be a percentage of total GPU memory, not a set amount. This means that for GPUs with larger amounts of VRAM, etc. you'll lose as much as 2 GB or more of that to Windows.

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People have been requesting a 'fix' for this for a couple of years now, but Microsoft hasn't provided one as of yet...

Another reason not to upgrade to Windows 10? I'll just keep slumming along with Windows 7...

 

[OhWee]

Gotta luv how Microsoft's support team likes to duck the Windows 10+Nvidia VRAM issue...

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Another thread (from another site) on the issue. Several people talk about going back to 8.1 or 7...

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It amazes me that Microsoft and/or Nvidia have let this issue linger since 2015...

If you care about such things, this MIGHT be a good excuse to go Linux...

As for Daz Studio it appears that the Linux 32 bit port works pretty well, but the 64 bit version is hit or miss...

 

[Max Headroom]

Thank you all here lightening up my darkness a little bit.
As you maybe read I'm going to built a new machine. (OK I asked a colleague for help today.)
What do you prefer 32 or 64 bit? Someone wrote 64 bit systems need more RAM and so I'm undecided again. :closedeyesmile:

 

[Cirro84]

...What do you prefer 32 or 64 bit? Someone wrote 64 bit systems need more RAM and so I'm undecided again. :closedeyesmile:

Software written for 64 bits OSs (no matter what OS) takes up a little bit more storage space in general, and may take some more RAM when processed. But with normal desktop OSs only the 64 bits variants can use more than 4 gbs of RAM satisfactorily (goes esp. for Windows). 32 bits server and workstation hardware and their OSs did not have that kind of difficulty.
And storage space should not pose a problem either, given you can add tbs big HDDs or fast SSDs to your desktop, even external drives (think of backups, too).

Go for 64 bits OS, apps you can still use as 32 bits version as long as they are stable and do the job. Also 16 gbs of RAM for a render 'workstation' (read: performant PC) is quite alright, will be supported by modern desktop OSs (OhWee mentioned Linux above).
DAZ Studio for Linux 32 bits seems an example that you sometimes can / should / must choose 32 bits variants, if better working / more stable than 64 bits pendants. Godspeed Max.

@OhWee which Linux distribution may you recommend, in case you are using it?

 

[Techn0magier]

64bit is the futureproof concept. So if you want to use the system another battiolion years, take it.

 

[OhWee]

Linux isn't my thing, but there are some others that use it regularly. I'm on Win 10 at the moment.

 

[NoesisAndNoema]

What do you prefer 32 or 64 bit? Someone wrote 64 bit systems need more RAM and so I'm undecided again. :closedeyesmile:

I agree with the others... 64-bit, because it can use more than 4GB system-RAM. (All the rest would have to be done in swap-file virtual-memory.)

Ignore the fact that 64-bit consumes more "space". Going to a 16GB system should be your first priority. 16GB of RAM is like $30 now. (You can live with 8GB, if you are in a pinch. Anything over 4GB is all you will "want".)

SSD's help a LOT for loading scenes and loading the rendering buffers. However, my Daz3D object library is currently at around 3TB, and another 2TB for other stuff that is 3D related. (Backdrops, generic materials, project-renders...) Just get a reliable 4TB or 2TB drive that you can later expand.

 

[OhWee]

Another fun use for extra ram...

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There are other ramdisk products as well, that's the one that came up in my google search. Short form is that ramdisks are still waaaay faster than SSD's once their image loads, so they can be useful for a few things.

The 4 GB version of Radeon Ramdisk is a free download (larger versions are in the $10-20 range), and I'm sure the other products out there come in varying sizes.

One of the things they talk about about in the Newegg TV video r.e. Radeon Ramdisk (just after the 17:30 mark) the is giving each of your AAA game titles it's own ramdisk image, then pointing the ramdisk utility at whichever image relates to the game you are about to play. If you have a game with a lot of transitional loads, ramdisks can make these a much smoother (and faster) experience. Of course, you need to have the additional ram on hand in the first place...


The other thing they talk about in another video is striping your ramdisk with an SSD or HDD to increase performance. While an intriguing idea, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with that. The idea of having a more secure web browsing experience by putting stuff in volatile memory may be of interest to a few of you here, as long as you have your urls and such memorized...

...
I've used the 'temporary internet files cache on a ramdisk' thing before on a previous system - it does dramatically increase response times for slower websites that you visit regularly. The RamDisk still needs to image these to another drive as a backup though to be truly useful in this regard.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around how a ramdisk might help with Daz Studio. They do talk about productivity/content creation as something you can use a ramdisk for, but I'd be worried about making sure the drive paths are addressed correctly in that case...

 

[obiwan21]

Why do you prefer (all) Mid Towers? I think big towers have more air to breathe or not?

I didn't want a huge case. Plus, with all the open air spots and fans for intake/outake, my system is cool. I don't ever hear my fans go super speed to cool it down.